Tell me, who was Van Gogh competing against when he painted Starry Night?
Tell me how Facebook, a beacon for social cohesion, is not completely motivated by economic profit?
You make some large and dubious assumptions here
Can people not find motivations to be innovative other than money? Can one not compete against him or herself, or against nature rather than other people?
If competition is the goal, does it not often make sense to work together for the mutual benefit of both parties? (see hulu.com)
Competition is not necessarily the goal . And people in capitalism do work together for mutual benefit, as Adam Smith explains with his “invisible hand” analogy.
Well - you just reiterated all my points (was that your intention?) My point was that capitalism is not necessary for innovation and socialism is not necessary for social cohesion. Competition can thrive in socialism just as social cohesion can thrive in capitalism. People can both compete and cooperate in both, so a mix does not really matter so much.
Much innovation comes from people working to improve the social context of life in direct opposition to the perception of purely economic motive for action. Consider the Internet and Linux and the Apache server, consider the Free Software Foundation, consider Wikipedia, consider Open Office, consider the one laptop per child initiative.
One would have to make a huge leap of logic to believe that every one of the millions of participants in these endeavors was seeking to make some sort of monetary gain from them.
The social context matters and it drives innovation further and faster than the profit motive. The accidental zillionaires at google did not set out to become zillionaires, they just thought they had a better idea about how to do some things and hoped to make a few bucks off it. Meanwhile Microsoft, which is completely driven by the profit motive, dismissed the entire concept because they could see no way to make money off it.
When money drives your decision making, it forces you to forego leaps of intuition and genius in favor of an incremental increase in profitability based on prescribed areas previously proven to make money.
Capitalism is necessary for innovation. It offers and gives the incentive for innovation. The competition it insights leads to innovation. Socialism doesn’t insight competition or innovation. Socialism on its own lives on complacency and thus in time atrophies and collapses. It needs capitalism and the activity of the ‘market’ to stimulate and keep it alive.
I would not be so sure about google… they (for now) have much better business ethics than microsoft, but they were always in it for profit. Their entire business model is based on advertising. It’s very important, and very innovative, and has changing the US economy, but the service it self IS profit
Why should anyone take into consideration that there is no difference between the Mafia and a respected Bank? Should we bring a gun to these negotiations? Perhaps some bodyguards to protect us from being robbed at gunpoint?
There is little to choose between these new “legal†criminals, and the “real ones.†Even those who embrace the concept of a free market do not call the law of the jungle the free market.
We are protected from being mugged in the street. Simple logic demands that any contract have a minimum of honesty. The Prime Mortgage mess , thirty years ago would have had all these characters in jail as petty criminals. That their crimes are now legal means nothing to me.
Corporations went through a lot of trouble to become “Legal Persons.†In effect immunizing the real people from many (although not all) criminal charges. You are now saying that these efforts on their part have paid off. They can commit crimes that you and I would go to jail for.
Trust me, if they were criminally liable, they wouldn’t have to be bailed out.
Minimal norms in business relationships are not a luxury.
When you buy a computer, a television do you read the small print? Should it be legal to make a product that will fail in a month, and you have no redress because the small print excludes what are in effect normal operating conditions? Well, it’s ILLEGAL to have such a warranty - Are you advocating eliminating these laws?
Why not eliminate them? Shouldn’t everyone read the small print?
I want a quart of milk. Should I spend hours of my time hunting it? Or should I not elect people who will make laws making price gouging, price fixing, collusion, illegal?
NB. I refuse to shop at Walmart. But in fact I make more than the poverty level. In that sense I can afford my altruism. But can others boycott a necessity?
Perhaps, but not alone - A boycott to have effect has to be organised…
Corporations from time to time do NOT have it their own way. The Greatest Conservative the Republicans ever produced became known as the “Trust Buster.†And you bet, he had a tremendous effect on Corporate activities. Can it be helped that this ground breaking work of Teddy Roosevelt has been over thrown over the last forty years?
This is nothing more than Plato’s Republic.
What literary, artistic, philosophical, scientific contribution did either the Soviet Union or Germany make to humanity? Perhaps a handful. Life is more than bread. We want our roses as well. Might as well wish for a society where we are manufactured with serial numbers and call it paradise. Scandinavia and Western Europe have the highest standard of living in the world, are they totalitarian states?
Capitalism in the US, was on the same road as Western Europe is following today - Not Socialism, but a legally restricted Capitalist Economy. Now, over the last forty years or so, our country is being victimized by the power of corporate monopoly. Mind you, they have not won yet - But if they did, what you are seeing today will look like small potatoes.
Take the price of oil. Europe’s price has gone up only HALF of what our price has gone up. This is because the US dollar is now worth half of what it used to be against the Euro. When you see $100 dollar oil prices, that is OUR price, not other parts of the world.
Actually the US was set up with large populations in mind. In fact improved communications and transport should make it easier to organise government, if not society as a whole. The failure of our society is the failure of people participating in government, and every day and in every way, the media tells us that this is logical. That different candidates have wildly differing solutions to our problems are reduced to sound bites and fact toides.
Alan Greenspan had the following to say about the Sherman/Clayton anti-trust acts:
“No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would otherwise have been possible.”
That’s what we get for letting an Objectivist control our economic policy for 20 years. I say that No one will ever know how much freedom would have been lost for the American worker, how much wages would have suffered, how much competition would have been stifled, had these acts NOT been passed. I for one am glad that we never had to find out
He, heh! The first trust that was broken up was “Standard Oil.”
Oddly enough thanks to the “unleashing” of the entrepenur laws of the Reagan administration, it is starting to reconstitute itself. Indeed, Corporate mergers are a dime a dozen.
Under the latest FCC ruling, soon we will all be getting our news from one or two corporate giants.
And isn’t it odd that the slow but accelerating fall in our standard of living corresponds with these changes? If you are thirty years old today, what I am talking about might sound like science fiction. We can read about historical changes that take place over fifty or even thirty years, but being born in them, and only knowing what is personally experieinced, makes it a more difficult question to appreciate.
Hello all. First time poster. I look forward to some sort of reasoned contribution to all the discussions, starting with this thread.
Which is better? Good question.
I’ve thought about this simple question and there is no easy simple answer. I tend to think of any comprehensive answer as having at least these four characteristics:
*a third party/outside mediating power (TP)
*future planning beyond present generations (FP)
*unfettered information flow (UI)
*meeting basic humans needs (BN)
On first exposure to these four characteristics, either system can suffice in some optimal, Utopian sense. But we don’t exist in such manner to allow either to be as such. I’m still uneasy not explicitly adding “agreement on property†to the list, as I wish to be attending ecological issues and the issue of “property†is central to that, as well as in general to either system.
There’s no prohibition on either system to having a TP. I claim one is needed based on history, common sense, and modern game/decision theory. The Invisible Hand is in large part this idea, whether instantiated as limited resources or negative exchanges or a system of justice. A central power controlling the means of production could also limit resources, limit or exclude exchanges (as well as make them negative), and create a system of justice. The difference here tends to be that a TP is explicit in its relationship to value exchangers in Socialism, not so in Capitalism.
There’s no prohibition in Socialism for allowing individuals responsibility to control resources if it’s given by the central controlling power. It would seem that under Capitalism, the desire to be as unfettered in one’s ability to exchange value is central and that limits arise are due to the exchangers agreeing to such limits, or limits arising by exhaustion of resources. An unequal power between exchangers could exist in either system, but is explicit in Socialism. But whether unequal power in a Socialistic TP becomes detrimental depends on the TP itself (form, ability, consent of the exchangers, etc.). A Capitalistic TP could become detrimental for the same reasons.
The key to a TP in either system is the ability to optimize the other three characteristics.
It seems to me that the difference between capitalism and socialism is about who controls resources in the social context because it is all one thing, socio-economics.
Capitalism claims that it is only through the completely free action of the myriad of participants in vast markets that social progress can be made. Socialism on the other hand deems that markets are suspect and must be regulated to achieve social advancement because some market activity may be detrimental to social progress.
The only thing I see is that socialists are asking capitalists to act in the interest of betterment of the social structure while pursuing their goal of wealth accumulation.
This was the Roosevelt vision of how Capitalism should operarate in the Modern World. Out of that vision came the New Deal, and the creation of a Middle Class based on income instead of economic position. It did indeed create a workable and humane form of Capitalism.
Most of Roosevelts reforms and regulations have been eliminated. We can see this most clearly in the raw naked criminal greed of the Sub-prime mortgage mess - A gambit that would have been criminal under Roosevelt is now perfectly legal.
Saying all that, Roosevelt was NOT a Socialist, and his programs were not Socialist programs. They were simple accomodations with reality to protect, not attack, Capitalism.
Capitalism. Socialism gives us the least amount of freedom, out of the two. We have the govnernment interfering in matters that they shouldn’t be interfering in - our economy. The government should only exist to protect our rights, which gives us the freedom to live ho we please as long as it does not infringe on others rights. Socialism forces people to pay taxes and abide by laws and regulations they deem necessary. It’s a bunch of bullshit. Our own governments steal from us and force us to bend to their will. And Socialists support them.
Socialists simply don’t value freedom. And I don’t even feel sorry for them. It appears that they would rather be in cages than free.
Socialists aren’t asking. They are forcing us to do this.
And yes, it is too much. We should be free to live how we want, for the sake of ourselves not for society. Otherwise, we are slaves to society and whoever else that needs help. Allow those who want to help, help. But don’t force anyone.
