The whole idea behind capitalism is that you must make a profit. It is like putting 100 dollars in a box and after some time finding 110 dollars. Now how does this miracle occur ?
Mostly by stealing from those that do not have anything at all. The poorest countries have millions of people working all day long just to drink some water. You never notice, but alot of the most basic natural resources used by modern countries are mined or extracted by people who aren’t even paid. Then you got slave labor, child labor and all those boring issues the left wing liberals always talk about. Where were your shoes made ?
By technology applied to production or business processes. But this really accounts for very little of the gain, maybe not even 1 % although they love to tell this fairy tale story that technology - mind power is the driving force of modern capitalism. That is a bunch of bull. If it were true then why aren’t engineers and scientists making millions of dollars a year ? And look at how well mind power is treated in South America, in Russia, India etc.
One of the real forces behind profits is perceived value. Your house was worth 100,000 dollars in 2000, now it is worth 200,000 dollars. How did that miracle occur ? That is the real essence of pure capitalism. Create value from nothing, by psychologically manipulating perceptions. So all of a sudden people start thinking their house is worth more and more, then the cycle goes back again and it starts being worth less. So this game of up and down creates value for those who are talented in manipulating these things. In this case mind power is usefull, but luck counts even more.
constantly moving production - work in different places. Lay off the programmers, outsource to India. Homes in the areas the programmers were start being valued less, buy them up when they are at the bottom, then hire the programmers again and sell them their homes again at double the price etc.
Lets face it, capitalism is a big joke. It just consists of constantly fooling people in all kinds of ways when it is gentle and killing them outright when it is not. Like Economy through War which I think the US is quite an expert at. So the whole world in the next 1,000 years will become like EU, Japan and USA. Then these games will occur more and more inside each country, well in the US it has been going around for decades, but anyways, constantly change jobs, layoff people, hire them back, make them buy crappy cell phones that cost 300 dollars and aren’t worth 10 cents a year after, outsource, create the threat of terrorism, create wars, create insecurity by not giving people health care, make them pay health care more and more, lay off again, retrain, your are no longer competitive, then you are too old then etc. etc.
So this system of constant instability trying to suck out as much profit as possible can go on for a thousand years. Then what ? will the people finally see through all the jokes played on them ? will they decide that the game is over ? Can the system run out of gas ?
Economy is not a science. Reductionism does not work for economy. We cannot think that it is the sum of its parts. How can a few minds decide on behalf of a system of millions of minds ? is it better than no decision at all ?
The truth is the whole concept of Capitalism being a “system” is false. It is nothing, it is a word, what you have in reality is a world with millions of forces acting in all kinds of directions where no one is really in charge and everyone operates in automatic mode.
No it means that Capitalism pretends to be a system which is comprehensible and that it has given laws as if it were some kind of material item, or physical system. It is not, just like economy is nothing, if it were a science, by now WE WOULDN’T HAVE ECONOMIC PROBLEMS ANYMORE since all those thousands of economists have been studying “IT” for years and we still cannot manipulate it at all.
It is like sociology we cannot manipulate societies. What we really have is pure power struggles, economic wars, the strong guy beats the weak one. That is the entire theory in a few words.
There is no real reason today, with all the wealth, technology and mechanized agriculture etc. that everybody on earth couldn’t be practically rich. They can’t be because we are a primitive species, we must fight each other, we must “compete” for what in reality is A HUGE WORLDWIDE EXCESS CAPACITY IN ALL POSSIBLE SECTORS! The best solution to avoid equality is random wars all over the place, the bigger the better.
Well if you want to call something a “system” when it can be described totally and completely in one sentence, ok, call it a system.
It is pure power struggle. A war between haves and have nots. A war between all kinds of people to gain more money - power - control.
The strong guy beats the weak one. END OF STORY. Wow what a complicated and sophisticated “system”.
Just like any other “system”. All systems end up being power struggles, strong guy beats weak guy etc. Communism ended up like this, it actually even started like this. And so everytime there is a group of people this will be. People conflict with each other always on everything, someone always wants more, someone is always bored and wants to fight. Why do the scandinavian countries vote right wing when there system is the best that has ever been ? because they are bored, they want to fight, people like action - excitement. It is exciting being laid off and especially laying off people. Therefore the US must rule the world and their system wins and will always win because they know these truths.
So lets start all kinds of wars for excitement, to avoid boredom. Invade Iran with a few million soldiers, that would be exciting wouldn’t it ?
Didn’t we invent sports for these kinds of problems ? So humanity destroys itself because it needed to get high, it needed some action, it was a bored species.
Capitalism, like socialism, communism and idiosyncratic concoctions of the three, are all control forms of the Money System.
The Money System is the root of all evil.
Hopefully, one day, we will replace the ancient and out-grown mental system of money with a healthy and heart-centered process of socioeconomics and geopolitics.
There is a misunderstanding about economy - work - labor - money: it is always and will always be relationships between people and within groups of people. Even if there were no money and even if it were true that we had an infinite resource society (huge excess capacity etc.) there would always be something else to reflect the power struggles between people, the quirk relationships where one does something for someone else because the other person can force it on the weaker, has some kind of leverage or simply for cultural mandates.
Take the example of Japan where 13 hour work days are the norm. Now they themselves admit that they really don’t “produce” more or that maybe all those hours don’t really seem to have much economic sense; but they are a cultural mandate, a behavior, a hierarchy where people are forced to behave in a certain way. Even if the society had all the wealth in the world (and mind you Japan has alot of money stashed away) there would always be the same structure of relationships between people. The activities they do are just an afterthought, a formality, what really counts is the hierarchy, the power structure, the fact that a person can command another because of pure power.
Schopenhauer would agree with that assessment. People would rather will death, destruction, and mayhem than be bored. Boredom is a scrouge that people attempt to eradicate by the most insidious means. There’s a quote by Schopenhauer that goes, “if every desire were satisfied as soon as it arose how would men occupy their lives, how would they pass the time? Imagine this race transported to a utopia where everything grows of its own accord and turkeys flew around ready-roasted, where lovers find one another without any difficulty: in such a place some men would die of boredom or hang themselves, some would fight and kill one another …”
Capitalism is a typing from within a constructed system, economics.
Economics the system, capitalism a variant type that is used to define a particular instance of a geopolitical position of a part of the greater system.
All systems fall prey to entropy. Thus, capitalism will one day certainly fall. It is summarily unavoidable.
