I listened to a bit of that rap you posted in H & S. One point struck me - as it is a point very often made. That corporations care only about profit. But that their PR says different.
I guess there is a coming of age for many people, when they realise this very point. That even when big companies do genuine good, it’s only for the public relations value - which in turn enhances profit. And this can be so even if the top executives retire to become genuine philanthropists, or become so as private persons while they are still working. Because people can be truly generous even if the companies they are running aren’t.
Why should this not be so?
Corporations exist to generate money, which ultimately flows to individuals, who may be charitable and kind, or not. But why should a corporation be truly charitable and kind?
“Every relationship is superficial, people only get in bed with you to do business” - me
This statement is generally a good assumption to make if you are trying to thrive in a capitalist society. You have to assume everyone is trying to make a profit off of you to protect yourself; you are inevitably out to make a profit as well.
If you are a player in the capitalist game, I don’t think there are many ways around fronting through greedy smiles.
From the left I see things like pictures of ghettos with American flags flying or a gag sign with one stick man holding a pistol to the head of another stick figure and the word “capitalism” underneath. I must admit a lot of my passion comes from reminders like those.
To go into why capitalism necessitates exploitation is to build a straw man, because ideologically capitalism doesn;t necessitate anything. But I will build this straw man for you Faust, and I will have you compare this straw man to your own conception of America
Theoretically we all have the means to rise to the top; we all have a chance. No matter how oppressed you are there is always a way, even if you are doomed never to find it. This is generally one of the main tenants of capitalist ideology, but keep the term “chance” in mind, because in the end it becomes the anti-thesis to american capitalism.
Using competition as a means of distributing wealth is a good way to get things working. The people who create wealth are able to regulate themselves, and in that freedom they create the infrastructure and resources needed to support a growing population. Through private efforts taxes are paid, expansions are made, and a nation creates wealth, though constantly privately owned.
These privately owned resources get distributed in a free market where the demand provides an instant and easy way to regulate efficient distribution/production/cost ratios.
In essence we all trade whatever has value, which is usually our own direct labor. The inherent problem in this trade of value is that entities emerge who begin to accumulate excessive stagnant wealth. This is a problem because though all parties produced something, one entity ends up with most of the gains. Given time this will happen invariably, but there are other aspects which go into securing a one sided gain.
This is bad for a society because it means that some people have to continue working hard to produce, but they see no growth of wealth. If they saw their own deserved profits, they would conceivably be able to work less. The inevitable unequal gain means that the division of labor is perpetually imbalanced.
Invariably capitalism needs workers; not everybody can be rich. As more people get rich, the cost of commodities is likely to rise. The good news is the price of labor rises too, but in reality it only rises after the fact due to government regulation . This is an example of how a desire for profit creates this imbalance.
In a laissez fair system an entity can employ you, charge you more for the housing, food, and tools you need to live and work than what it actually pays you. They can do this without the slightest moral pang. Competitive capitalism has ways of simulating this sort of effect.
When it comes to a society I do not believe that entities should be allowed to do whatever they want, in an economic sense. The people of a society live together to make their lives better; a society that allows entities to exploit its population is one you would not want to live in.
I do not oppose a capitalist market in theory, but in America things are lop sided; unbalanced.
As the rap said, the government tells us that we are nothing without the companies that invest in us, and they are half right. the government is nothing with out the companies that invest… The entire infrastructure of society is paid for by the big piles of wealth that corporate entities have accumulated. Without their superficial piles of gold our resource division system falls to pieces. The government is dependent on the success of companies and their continued profit. They need companies to be interested in America, to give them a profit. The subsequent exploitation and thereby unfair draining of resources and labor from the greater population is self evident. If it did not happen the infrastructure could not support itself.
The gist of what IM saying is that the u.s government needs the population to produce more than what it needs to survive, and for them to give that wealth to major corporations, which in turn give that to the government through tax and other seedy ways.
So if we view this inevitable one sided gain on a global scale, let’s say that the majority of the world is losing resources or at least not sharing equally in profits, to American corporations, and that these resources through taxes create a government which becomes dependent on the large inflow of resources. Where does that leave the governments dependence on the actual population itself?
Would this government aid the exploitation in order to secure its own funding? The Cadillac government needs the population to work the factories. All it then has to worry about is general organization and control.
What the government needs to do to continue operating is clear. If the government treats the population like a worker; a slave, how does that affect how the government would perceive the need for votes from these slaves?
If you put them to work to survive, why not manipulate their votes too?
…
It’s not just that capitalism invariably creates losers, it’s that it inevitably keeps those losers down.
Having everyone fight over resources (overly critical?) is an easy avenue to confusion, chaos and a general lack of power/awareness for those who are weaker. I have heard right wingers try to justify capitalism based on some sort of appeal to evolution and natural selection, saying let the best survive…
I was making a point that when we come together and organize ourselves into society, we make certain unspoken logical agreements.
By living together we hope to make our lives better; that is our agreed upon goal, simple as that. If in this society you try to justify a way of things with an appeal to evolution like, the fittest should survive, then there is really no moral barrier preventing me from organizing a mob and taking anything i want and murdering those in my way.
A society modeled on anarchy; everyone for themselves…
I told him that society should try to help as many people as possible, to try and create the most amount of happiness without creating unhappiness to do so. I told him I don’t think it’s fair to have one guy be born into wealth, never have to work, and partake in the fruits of the labor of others, and another be born into poverty and a life of toil in an unwinnable battle against debt, who will create what the other man will consume.
This right wing person told me that he would rather let chance decide who gets what rather than some government which takes away the resources of a hard worker and gives it to a lazy person. for they are corrupt lazy theives…
Why even bother with society if it’s a dice game I said, if it’s chance then so be it, there is no need to justify anything.
But… That whole train of thought is a digression, sorry to have bored you with it.
In a nut shell I oppose our society because it does not serve the people.
The game of capitalism was played long ago and won… But most of us lost…
I watched a movie of the old west where they lined up a bunch of settlers, and made them take off in an actual race to go and stake their claims of land.
Imagine wagons of settlers ferociously and violently charging across the plains toward their desired oasis’… They were damn lucky…
The wealth of our society does get spread around, and the more the ruling entities gain the more that will trickle down. But our system requires a constant creation of wealth, without circulation the underclasses will have nothing to live off of; there will be no goods…
The middle class of America has it good, and their hard work just might very well be worth what they have, but their situation lies on the x axis in a burden/benefit function of polar extremes.
The benefits of the elite class come about through very little burden/production of their own, they come invariably from those who have more burdens than benefits. The middle class of America must work hard to turn the gears of capitalism. The elites need people to work the infrastructure, and this is where consumerism comes in making the middle class of America, which can pass for the upper class for most of the rest of the world, insecure and greedy; chasing wealth.
The middle class of America doesn’t really generate that much wealth, they consume more than they produce, that I will take on faith. Their earnings for their hard work come from those beneath the burden/benefit equilibrium. Don’t think of that as a rule or direct transaction but rather an inevitable occurrence when then injection of wealth into the u.s economy comes from outside the u.s. The home herd does not need to produce wealth.
The home herd is more or less used to provide the milk and honey for the wealthy; the home herd produces things for the elite, builds the infrastructure. The working class produces the entertainment; the motivation for corporations to continue pushing for profit.
I often think to myself, if there were no macdonalds, 5 dollars would be a lot less desirable.
So you see the picture I tend to paint for myself. I of course am not that well read in social sciences, economics, or even politics. However what I am able to do is made logical deductions and inferences. I can make observations and then ask questions and make theories. The things I said here in this thread are quite general, and I hope I didn’t make such a large post for naught. This is my straw man and I would be much obliged if you could tell me what you see.
Feel free to make a response in social sciences or to move this thread there if you want…
As I think I have alluded to, the flow of the generated wealth (generated by workers, not corporations) is inevitably restricted.
The physical truth is that the harder the underlings are worked the more you can gain, which is how third world countries are treated as a standard…
The more wealth that exists, the more one sided it becomes, the more they have the ability to exploit the “underlings”.
the fact that charity is needed should be an indicator that people do not have adequate oppurtunity.
But…
I have never asked for charity…
I do not ask for kindness…
I simply ask to not be cheated. I ask for a chance, not to draw straws.
ok ok, i did what i did not want to do; i went through every one of your points and addressed them. i did not want to do this because this is not a judged forum, and i could be just wasting my time shouting into a vaccuum… maybe i am wrong about that, i hope that i am, and that you will listen and address my points rationally and with examples and arguments. either way, i cant pass up the chance to address the incorrect statements about capitalism itself. there are so many false claims and ignorant statements about capitalism these days, and i feel required to defend the system, even though i do not want to waste my time on here. lets hope that i am not.
this post is long; but it is a response to your previous long post. i have tried to correct the fallacies about capitalism, and try to show you how to look at the system differently, based not on arbitrary or relative effects (which are actually, and ironically, resultant of the defective and statist elements in our system), but from a perspective of fundamentals, of principles. capitalism is fundamentally about freedom; it is the physical, practical expression of the abstract principles of freedom and individual rights. but i will leave you to read my critiques, and choose to address them or not, as you see fit.
[size=130]In Defense of Laissez-Faire Free Market Capitalism:[/size]
(note: this is not a defense of the American “mixed” economic model, but interprets the strengths of such remnants of freedom (Capitalism) as are left within the American system, and in rejection to the socialist/central planning elements which have by now pervaded and corrupted nearly the entire American economy)
capitalism does in fact entail a great deal of ideological necessities. to briefly name two: 1) individual rights over state rights. capitalism enshrines the rights of the individual to free action and trade without coercion by the state authority; this is because capitalism as a system is the economic or practical expression of the principle of freedom. the principle of freedom is the foundation of the theory of capitalism. the philosophical principle of freedom therefore is manifested politically as individual rights and economically as property rights and rights to free trade. 2) personal responsibility. as a corrolary of the principle of free action and individual rights, personal responsibility entails the possibility and responsibility of the individual to secure his own life and wellbeing. personal responsibility is an ideological concept which places the primacy of the requirement for moral and practical action on the individual, to ensure his individual survival. capitalism does NOT give the state the authority, nor the moral requirement to ensure individual survival.
it is untrue that capitalism leads to “excess stagnant wealth”. even if it were true, however, this would not be in any way bad. anyone who is able to accumulate wealth in a true capitalist system must do it by offering products/services which are superior to his competitors; in other words, he must create value. this is the only way to get rich in a free economy. people must want or need the product/service you offer them, because only their free choice will transfer their dollar into your hands. therefore they must WANT what you have because it has some VALUE to them (a value that only they can judge on a personal level).
however, in fact, those who accumulate wealth in a capitalist system comprise what is called the investment class. the investment class is what drives the engine of capitalism. in order for industry to exist, in order for small or large businesses to survive, they must be able to have access to mechanisms which grow wealth over time, via interest rates. they need these mechanisms because most businesses require short-term and long-term loans. and of course, only those people with “excess wealth” can have the required capital to give out these loans. in a free economy, the lending of money is a huge industry, because there is a tremendous potential for profit. it is those wealthy individuals who invest their “excess wealth” into financial instruments, in order to gain a return on their money. most financial firms which end up loaning money to small and large business operate by taking in millions of dollars from wealthy individuals, applying this money to various investments such as hedge funds, stocks and bonds, commodities trading, housing markets, etc and make a lot of money in this process, because the economy as a whole grows over time.
profit and wealth may be gained in a free system ONLY by being productive and by creating value (you can only gain wealth by theft in a “mixed” system (a system like the current american system, which is a mixture of freedom and controls), via force (i.e. government-granded priviledge or government-sanctioned monopoly).
there is no reason why anyone who produces would see “no growth of wealth”, as you claim. by definition, in a free system, true production is profit. if the employer is not sharing these profits with his employees to the satisfaction of the worker, then that worker is free to leave and seek employment somewhere else. that is the nature of a free system: employer does not force the employee to work for him, nor does the employee hold a gun to his employers head and force some arbitrary level of compensation. employer/employee is a non-binding contractual agreement between freely-consenting parties. if one party is not happy with the agreement, it should terminate the agreement and seek better terms elsewhere.
ok. i will take these one at a time: “Invariably capitalism needs workers”; what does this even mean? capitalism itself is just the name for a free system; it does not NEED anything. do you mean that, in order to function effectively, there must be workers? i assume this is what you mean, however it is untrue. workers are merely individuals who sell their skills and labor power to another entity which finds use for these skills and labor power; work is a mutually-advantageous exchange, and a free one. at present, the economy would not function without workers, but why would there suddenly be no workers? even employers are workers; they work for themselves, or for their shareholders. EVERYONE who participates in production on some level is a worker, from the highest CEO to the lowest laborer.
“not everyone can be rich”; why is that? first of all, how do you define rich? it is a relative term. compared to poor countries in africa, even the lowest-paid manual laborer is “rich”. if you mean the wealthiest percentage of individuals within the country itself (by whatever arbitrary percentage you wish to use), that is fine. of course some people will make more money than others. in a free system, you are rewarded for your level of production. the more value you create (i.e. profit generated), the more you are rewarded financially. this is logical, and moral. those who give more, gain more. in addition, there is no necessary reason why “not everyone can be rich”. this claim is false by necessity. yes, there will likely always be people who are relatively poor within society, just as there will always be people with few skills and abilities to offer employers. why does this mean that “not everyone can be rich”?
“As more people get rich, the cost of commodities is likely to rise. The good news is the price of labor rises too, but in reality it only rises after the fact due to government regulation . This is an example of how a desire for profit creates this imbalance”; this is the biggest misconception about capitalism that i know of. the assumption underlying your claim is that profits are gained via theft. the assumption is that there is an unchanging, static quantity of resources or value, and that profit is just the appropriation of greater and greater amounts of said quantity to one person, thus diminishing the remaining whole (and this reduced supply would then cause the “rising prices” you speak of). the truth, however, is that profit is creation of value. profit creates wealth WHERE IT HAD NOT EXISTED BEFORE. if america stole all of its wealth from others, WHERE DID IT COME FROM? the truth is that when one person gets richer, in a free system, this makes everyone richer. it actually drives prices down, due to the effect of increased productivity and efficienty of production. when a businessman gets rich by making his product X for a cost of Y and selling it for Z price, he increases his efficiency of production so that X now costs Y-1. he can either increase his profits by 1, or reduce his price-per-X to Z-1. the real case that happens is that both occur: profits increase by 0.5 and price decreases by 0.5. in a competitive system, there is always a STRONG INCENTIVE to have the lowest price among your competitors. so whenever efficiency is created, you typically reinvest this by reducing your prices of your products, thus remaining competitive and gaining further profit in the end.
the desire for profit creates no imbalance. profit represents an increase in efficiency via technological innovation or overall ingenuity of the productive process or use of resources; profit is then reinvested by lowering prices (GOOD for consumers), and this generates greater long-term income (GOOD for workers).
these are more comon misconceptions of capitalist theory. “In a laissez fair system an entity can employ you, charge you more for the housing, food, and tools you need to live and work than what it actually pays you”; first of all, employers do not charge you for “housing, food, tools”. employers do not charge you anything, except for your time and energy that you put into the job. i dont even know what you mean when you say that “entities employ you and charge you more” for something. it makes no sense, and is untrue. the only place you are charged anything is when you consume someone elses products, and this is not an employee/employer relationship.
“When it comes to a society I do not believe that entities should be allowed to do whatever they want, in an economic sense. The people of a society live together to make their lives better; a society that allows entities to exploit its population is one you would not want to live in”; in a capitalist system, entities are NOT allowed to do “whatever they want”. there are laws which limit illegal activity: for example, businesses or individuals cannot lie to you to get your money, they cannot falsify their documents to decieve you, they cant hack into your bank and steal your money, they cant murder their competition, they cant bribe or blackmail their competition with threats… there are plenty of rules that limit what entities can do, even in a free system. the nature of a free system is not that it is anarchic; it is that entities choose freely who they want to do business with, and on what terms. sellers set the terms (prices) and buyers are free to accept, or to not.
also, the people of a society do NOT live together to “make each others lives better”; they live in society to make THEIR OWN lives better. this is the nature of individual personal responsibility, which is enchrined in a true capitalist system. exploitation is impossible in a free system, because it could only occur by the consent of the exploited; in otherwords, anyone who does not get “paid enough” at their job or is “paying too much” at the store for a product or service can choose to freely walk away. any exploitation which occurs in a free system is either a violation of the law, and therefore punishable by the justice system, or is not true exploitation, because the imbalance of unfairness is sanctioned by the “victim”.
the modern american model of capitalism is not free; it is a mixture of freedom and controls, heavier on the side of controls. the extent that america is “unbalanced” or inefficient is the exact extent that government controls limit the free exchange of good and services in a free marketplace, thus distorting the mechanisms of price, incentive, and profit that keep a free market naturally balanced.
economics 101: corporations do not pay taxes. tax revenue is paid by individuals. any economist will tell you that corporations do not pay taxes. what they do is price the taxes into their products. this marks up the at-the-counter price of a produce to compensate for any taxes that the government levees onto the corporation. it is thus that the corporation does not notice a decrease in revenue or capital as a direct result of taxation; it is individual consumers who suffer from corporate taxes, because they are forced to pay more for the products/services than they otherwise would if those taxes were not in effect.
capitalism itself, as a system, does not create anything. individuals create. and there are no “losers” inevitably created by either the system or by individual or individual businesses. the only true losers in a capitalist system are those businesses which lose out in their industry to more competitive competition, but this is a good thing. it removes waste and inefficiencies from the overall economy and frees up those inefficient resources and capital to be reinvested in more productive enterprises.
in a free system, there is no “fight over resources” because no one is fighting; everyone freely interacts with one another. also, resources are never limited in a free system, because technological innovation and personal ingenuity are so highly rewarded and incentivized that any beginning tendency to an insufficiency of supply for any particular resource is counteracted by technological creation. specifically, a discrepency between the desired level of need for a resource and the actual quantity available of said resource presents an immediate opportunity for profit; the level of profit potential is directly related to the size of the discrepancy. therefore, the free market itself will create new resource discoveries, innovations, R & D, and investment in all of these things in order to capitalize on the short-term lack of sufficient supply of resources.
as to right-wingers claiming that capitalism is justified because it has an “evolutionary imperative”, this is clearly false. most right-wingers today are not true conservatives, and even the more true conservatives usually do not understand the first thing about basic economic philosophy. the justification for capitalism does not lie in its being “evolutionary” and “naturally-selective”; it is true that competition does provide for a constant increase in efficienty and productivity (creation of value), but this is not “evolutionary” in the sense that natural selection is. older forms do not die off and vanish, as they do in biological evolution; in capitalism, businesses which “lose” to their better competitors take their capital and productive potential out of that failed avenue and reapply it in a new, more appropriate market or field. in this sense, everyone wins.
but even with that said, that is not the justification for capitalism. capitalism is not justified by any of the extrinsic effects it produces; while it is true that capitalism creates the most wealth, provides the most growth and secures the most happiness and prosperity for its people, capitalism is in fact justified because it is the only MORAL system; capitalism is the only economic system which recognizes the fundamental rights of FREEDOM, LIFE and PROPERTY. because capitalism enshrines individual rights above all else, it is thus the practical expression of morality as applied to politics and economics. this is its justification, and the positive effects of capitalism are secondary consequences.
of course there are inequalities; some people are born into parents with money, some are not. everyone’s financial heritage is unique. by the same token, some people are born better runners, some with higher IQs, some people are born with better eye sight, some people are taller than others. should we eliminate basketball, because some people are taller and faster, and thus have a better “natural advantage” than others? why not, if its not “fair”?
the fact that some people are born into wealth is not a bad thing; it is what provides the incentive to stand on your own merit and hard work, to create wealth and get rich. when a person has children, they want to pass along their money and wealth to that child. this is natural, and morally correct behavior, because one of your moral imperatives as a living being is to take care of your offspring. in addition, everyone has the basic right to property: this means that they can dispense with what they own AS THEY SEE FIT. if they want to deed it over to their children, there is nothing wrong with that. it is THEIR wealth, THEY earned it (assuming they live in a free system). they can give it to whoever they want to, spend it all, or put it in a big pile and burn it. its up to them. so there is nothing wrong or morally objectionable to inheritance. of course, its not “fair” for one kid to be born into poverty while another is born into riches. but that is life, life is not fair, and we will never make it so. wrecking the entire system of incentives and property rights to try and rectify this does no one any good at all, and harms everyone. furthermore, the inequalities inherent in every aspect of life are what provide the incentives to work hard and become a better person. yes, some people start out with more advantages, but as you yourself said, in the end everyone determines their own success or failure, based on their own hard work. that is personal responsibility, and no amount of inheritance will ever change that.
there is no such thing as “the people”; there are only INDIVIDUALS. by serving individual rights, by enshrining individual freedom and property rights, capitalism serves the individual, and lets him serve himself. in this way, capitalism is the only system that actually does serve “the people”.
wealth is not “spread around”, it is created and transferred willingly from one individual to another via free trade. it does not “trickle down” from anywhere. “their situation lies on the x axis in a burden/benefit function of polar extremes”-- please explain, i have no idea what axis or extremes you are referring to.
“work” is relative; the only common ground for who earns what is who produces more. the owner of a business who sits in a comfy chair and signs papers all day, takes conference calls and makes decisions generates countless more wealth than the laborer who “turns cranks” all day. profit and payment have nothing to do with physical work; people get paid based on how valuable they are, i.e. how much value they create. sorry, but the guy in the warehouse just isnt creating as much value as the CEO, therefore he is not worth as much and does not deserve as much compensation.
another point i cannot stress enough: you cannot consume what you do not produce. for every dollar consumed, you needed to produce (i.e. earn) that dollar. if you did not, then you can only consume via borrowing and debt. in this case, if you continue to consume based on debt, you will get what you deserve in the end. no one can continue to consume what he has not produced for long. so when you say that “The middle class of America doesn’t really generate that much wealth, they consume more than they produce”, this is flat out false. every single person, from any economic “class”, can only consume the equivolent of what they have produced. unless, as i said, they are borrowing, in which case it will catch up to them in the end.
as far as “injections of wealth into america from outside”, you are right. the american economy is being propped up by foreign entities buying our treasury bills for hundreds of billions of dollars each year; this allows us to continue borrowing as a nation without paying down our current debt. however, this IN NO WAY represents a real capitalist system. true laissez-faire would never allow such action by the government. someday (probably very soon), the devastating effects of decades of irresponsible borrowing will come home to america; as hyper-inflation begins soon as a direct result of trillions of dollars of artificial money entering the system via the treasury, combined with low economic growth resultant of government “new deal” policies of the tightening of credit markets and easy artificial credit bubbles, we will see foreign countries stop loaning us their money. the combined effect of hyper-inflation and the cessation of the ability to sell our t-bills will devastate this economy, causing the collapse of the dollar.
most of us have no idea whats coming. but keep your eyes and ears alert: nearly everyone you hear will tell you that the coming collapse is the result of free markets, that it is a failure of capitalism. this is COMPLETELY NOT TRUE. capitalism would never permit the kind of broad reckless action by the government in the economy; in fact, one operative definition of capitalism is “the separation of economy and state”; in this sense, the definition is quite accurate.
so you are right when you say that the american economy is supported by injections of capital from outside, but this is only a reflection of the false and statist policies of america’s current central economic planners. it in no way reflects or says anything about true capitalism; the truth is that all the economic problems in america, including the comming collapse of the dollar, are results of collectivist and statist economic policies, which have resulted in stagnant and collapsed economies in every country they are tried in. america will be no exception.
true capitalism has not been tried yet; even in american in the 1800s, there were numerous excess controls in place. and since capitalism has never been really tried, no historical evidence can refute it in theory. all the past growth of american wealth, prosperity, happiness, technological creation, innovation, etc are all results of the relatively free economic system we’ve had for over 200 years; likewise, in the last 70 years of increasing controls and socialist policies of government regulation and intervention, we have seen a matching rise in systematic instability, monetary insecurity, inflation, and national debt. coincidence? i think not.
Phrases like “deserved profits” are both inaccurate and morally preloaded.
But everyone wants to produce more than they need to survive. Even communists do. Major corporations are publicly owned. They are owned by people. Does the government make a profit?
Then why is it letting all the factories go to China?
This is just factually incorrect. Most of the poor in America are immigrants and moms (and their kids) that don’t get any supoort from dads. The US remains upwardly mobile - succeeding generations of poor immigrants do better and better.
Wonderer - you’re just makking this stuff up. It describe America more than it describes capitalism.
This means then it’s people’s, yours and my, responsibility to not allow them to profit until they have provided us with the things we want. If you don’t like what a company does then dealing with it is your own responsibility.
That doesn’t mean I like what all companies do. It just means I have my own responsibilities and I chose not to address differences I have with them, and that’s because either It is not important enough for me to want to work on, or I don’t feel like I have a competitive chance to make a difference (to go back to our discussion on wealth and competition yesterday).
First it is important to note that though i do implicate aspects of capitalism in this thread i am ultimately referring to american capitalism. For example i acknowledge that socialist agendas have been responsible for many of the imbalances in the U.S. These imbalances however cannot be blamed on the efficacy of socialism or regulation alone; when you try to close the poverty gap through socialism, a charity, in a society that requires you to compete to thrive, you inevitably only make the problem worse. It’s like giving cigarettes to someone who is trying to quit smoking. Why would they need to be competitive if they are on well-fare?
Welfare is a poverty enabler. I would rather build crown corporations which could compete and offer jobs, education, and opportunity to the people and places who need it, because sometimes the market does not provide these things in equal distribution.
I can certainly see your point in that a capitalist society is not designed to ensure survival. This New understanding you have provided me with basically conflicts with my conception or at least, ideological views of what society should be/do.
From what you have said here the government would be responsible for enforcing individual rights, and i can understand that, but what other infrastructure would the government be responsible for providing? Are you pro military?
If so, there arises a few moral dilemmas in times of war. If the government is defending from or at war with an opposing nation, would it not have to regulate free trade with that nation in order to ensure victory of our own side?
Would it not need to prevent it’s own economic entities from giving support to the opposition?
The opposing nation would willingly buy out our own entities just to weaken our own war effort. This and many similar dilemmas arise whenever the government is given power and responsibility. At what point does a threat to the governments “responsibility” justify the government taking more power?
when it comes to wants and the price you charge, i agree that a free market does well in regulating prices. But what about things people need universally?
It’s a fair argument to say that if a cabbage company charges too much, then some new cabbage company will emerge and sell them at a fair price; but that takes time and is not a guarantee.
How long would it take for a cabbage farm to open and charge fair prices?
Then what would happen if the unfair cabbage producer lowered his prices to a point with which the new cabbage producer could not compete just to drive them out of business…
Then they are free to raise the prices again…
Does this make any sense? Instead of cabbages, think oil or electricity or loan institutions.
The way that capitalism reaches a balance is by letting things grow and die. In this process people and places who come to be dependant on certain industries may grow and die as well. A hard working coal miner could lose their job, and the entire town would be forced to gather their things and disperse.
Things like price gouging, monopolies, tax evasion are all illegal, yet they still take place. In order to prevent things like price gouging, we are forced to regulate, which causes even more problems because those regulations cannot keep up with the changing market; they restrict progress.
My point is this: in a society where everyone is in it for themselves, it is inevitable that corruption and cheating will occur.
If we find a pile of gold nuggets in the forest and decide to divide it, let’s say that you allow me to separate the piles, but you get to pick first.
Human nature tells me that i should try and make one pile look deceivingly large in order to get the better pile for myself.
Highway robbery is a strong term, but the free market is not as liquid and reactive as you would think. It is not in reality a collection of many markets? Are some markets not dependant on other markets?
Goods on one side of the country might be worth twice as much on the other side; your labor might get you more on one side of the country and less on the other. And to this you would suggest that people need to move, but moving costs money, some people cannot handle the responsibility brought upon them by a failed market.
Newfoundland used to have a bunch of scattered fishing families off its coast.
Their lives consisted of fishing year round, and they would be visited twice a year by a merchant, who would supply their food in exchange for dried fish.
The cost of things was rarely ever exceeded by the amount the fish they caught was worth.
this depended on the quality of the fish as well as the amount.
In reality the merchants were making tidy profits while the families were often left in debt (not paid fair prices) just to keep them working and working hard.
That industry of course died out, as is the way of a free market, but how many families did out with it?
As it exists today, the fee the banks and lenders take is also quite large, and very private. you might say that the fee the lenders take is competitively stabilized by how much companies can earn; interest rates.
These bankers first of all do not actually create any product, they simply allow others to; they make monetary shift which allow people to produce things; to build their companies.
So the banks pay for themselves by making things more efficient, and I’m sure we all benefit, but what factors go into deciding what the banks cut is?
As single entities collect large amounts of wealth their wealth grows faster and faster until they pull away from the general population. Banks in America reflect this well.
At what point do these mega corporations affect the ability of smaller ones to compete?
what regulations need to be put into place to prevent a corporation like walmart from destroying small businesses, becoming the major employer, and basically start draining the local market.
Concerning economy growth,
It’s true that economies grow over time, and the more you have the faster it grows. One of my main points is that those who have little have a harder time making it grow when they’re below average.
The sucking of wealth into one entity does not cause immediate problem because the rest of the population which does the producing (loses the profit) is able to thrive on it’s own profits.
the latent effect is that it is only a matter of time before monopolies emerge. Companies are out to get profit for their stockholders. Not for their employees, not for the customers they trade “resources” with and not for a country or government. This, i am convinced, leads inevitably to one person group or entity, abusing another person group or entity.
Corruption in human nature is one of the biggest anti-collectivist arguments but everyone left to their own devices results in just as much corruption, evidently.
figuratively we are all plants in the sunlight competing for light. If one plant thrives above all others, it will inevitably choke out and starve the other plants; deprive them of sunlight. The lower plants are given the choice to become a (lower) part of the bigger plant, or to die off.
And once we are a part of the bigger flower, what choice do we have but to feed it, because without its dependable abuse, we would be worse off. (by this i mean we no longer have hydroponic cabbage farms, gas stations, food markets, or organization).
The good news is squatters and the homeless suddenly become tomes of wisdom.
there is no perfectly fair and free market, it is an ideal, like a perfectly rational and intelligent communist government. If there is a way people can cheat to win, they will. I think any self respecting sociologist will admit that. A government that polices these entities, laughably with tax money generated by the same entities, cannot police perfectly.
And frankly there is not always a surplus of jobs, so your economic freedom is limited by the overall wealth of the market compared with the demand in that market. Note that it is not the overall market which produces this effect, but instead a local market.
the nations economy can be doing fine, and the company you work for can be doing fine, but let’s say an industry just died and there are a ton of people out of work, this company all of a sudden finds an opportunity to get some cheap labour.
And the workers will willingly work for an unfair wage because they have no other choice. They cannot afford to move their family to a new house in a new town, and there are hundreds of other people applying for that same underpaid job.
Once we become dependant, competition does not work in our favor.
Without garbage men, mechanics, telephone operators, people who work at dog day cares, there is really no incentive to even be rich.
If people had all this wealth saved up, why would they drive a garbage truck?
Let’s say you instead just wanted to build you own self sufficient house complex in which you could live until you die, but if everybody is rich, who is going to build it for you?
This is what i was getting at. there has to be a relative imbalance of wealth for extravagant things to be privately commissioned, right?
it means that we need servants for people to seem rich…
as i have argued earlier here is an equally strong incentive to push for profit.
sometimes that means lowering your prices to compete, lowering your prices to squash competition, or raising your prices simply because you can.
I see these occurrences as inevitable in a free market just as i’m sure my little brother will try to cheat at snakes and ladders.
it can be good, but it could always be better. I was referring to an imbalance of profit…
Unequal profit is of course what drives people to compete as well as to cheat, and i know it contradicts your theory to be upset over an imbalance in wealth. I know that morally you see nothing wrong with shrewd businessmen running their own lives the way they want to…
On my side of things, i believe in at least relatively equal profit because i believe it helps those who do not produce or cannot produce, to have a fair chance at producing, thereby increasing production as a whole.
what about small towns who are economically masticated by wall mart?
what about indirect monopolies? what about all the crimes which are never discovered or rectified?
There was a news article a few years back about all the gas stations raising their prices mysteriously all together. That’s where i first heard the term price gouging.
They said that the owners had got together and agreed to raise the prices so they would see some profit, because high gas prices lead to a decrease in consumption.
Like the fishing families of newfoundland, or a coal miners town where the coal mine provides the housing and food, or company that pays you to go work in another country for something but you return in debt.
what happens to a market where a population grows so large that it relies on the production of a major company, and this major company decides to fold or a government decides to stop allowing production to take place in some other country?
The demand shrinks before production rises, doesn’t it?
I wish reality reflected this, i truly do.
The market is not that free though.
People cannot get up and walk away if it means getting a bus ticket and going to start a new life.
Your right, exploitation cannot occur in a free market otherwise it would not be considered free.
what can occur however, and without moral pause, are people can be stripped of all avenues to self sufficiency, and be left alone as if there is no society whatsoever.
whether you live in a ghetto, your towns economy just collapsed, your bank went bankrupt, or some thief snuck off in the night, you can find yourself without wealth and without the means to start producing your own. That’s laissez fair morality; everyone for themselves.
when you think about it, it implemented these controls to try and balance things out in the first place. The argument that i bring against capitalism which is that a drive for profit ends up creating theft as well as production is what created the need for regulation in a free market in the first place.
you mean to say that the government does not directly or indirectly see more tax money as the result of an industrial corporation moving products? can you be more specific in your relevance to my overall point that the government requires funding generated by by businesses?
i remember reading that 90% of tax is payed by 2-4 percent of the population. Surely revenue is taxed… And surely it’s the owners of big businesses that have that sort of coinage.
perhaps i was using strong words there. allow me to rephrase.
Capitalism can put companies out of business because more efficient ones come into existence, the problem is this new and efficient company pays the same type of wage to the employees, and keeps the extra profits for themselves.
Consumers benefit by saving a few cents a week, but the employees gain nothing, and the old fired employees are forced to find another job.
Due to a roll of the dice, one persons displeasure is responsible for another persons pleasure. The morality of laissez faire.
I would rather rise and fall as a nation. If one company or market tanks then i feel that society should step in in a unified effort to solve the newly created deficit. But we simply in opinion in these matters.
We think society should exist for different reasons.
some lackings cannot be solved easily through innovation.
When faced with this sort of collapse, what would be considered justified action to save the market?
This is of course when you look at things from the governments perspective. I’m sure you would just want to let it fail and let a new one emerge, but the government when faced with obliteration due to something so trivial as a disagreement about who gets to but whose gasoline, what do you think is likely to happen?
Markets don’t always regulate themselves, and i find it hard to believe that the “super-rich” of America actually produced all that value.
I also have a hard time believing that someone who has worked at MacDonald’s for 20 years has only produced enough value to pay rent on a section 8 apartment eek out a dismal unhappy existence.
I know that these problems would not occur in a true free market, but markets will never truly be free.
you can expect corruption in a free market just as surely as you can expect it in a totalitarian government.
I accept that capitalism can be a universally beneficial system, but i do not accept that it can be considered “fair”. Ripples on one side of the market create problems on the other side and the only consolation to absolve any moral responsibility is that it’s nobodies fault that their boat sunk; it was chance.
Capitalism has us each build a boat and then set out into a raging storm. To work for a company is to have a rowing spot on a bigger, more collective boat. These boats compete and whichever boats are the fastest get repaired and replenished.
Communism is just everybody setting out in the same boat; one big boat.
i prefer it like that because it prevents people from sinking individually, though it does risk sinking everyone equally.
to make use of my most recent analogy, of the sunken ship, only the people who are able to swim to another boat win.
we differ greatly on our conception of what is moral.
Let’s pretend you were born alone in in the forest, lived your life and made yourself an awesome tree fort. Now let’s say that one day a group of people emerge from the forest and see your tree fort and ask you to live there. You refuse and they decide to kill you and take it anyway.
This is a good example of how i would approach “property rights”.
The reason i do not apply this to a society is simple. If people decide to live together and work together, they may do so out of a desire for a happy life.
In that common desire, we make agreements like, do not steal, do not cheat, and do not kill.
The question can be raised of at what point these restrictions on our actions actually prevent us from being happy.
take anti-hoarding laws for example (i know nothing about them). A society might deem it immoral to hoard things because it would deprive the rest of the population to potentially needed resources. Or a society might deem hoarding moral because it is up to you to secure your own safety, and just because the other towns folk did not want to collect perry winkles when you did, doesn’t mean they should get any.
There is a beach in my province called “Hubbard’s beach”. It’s fairly nice…
There is a guy who owns the land next to the beach, the only parking spot for a long ways.
His job is to sit down and collects 6 dollars from everyone who wants to park there…
this is not all bad mind you. he at least keeps debris off of the parking area and also the beach if he is feeling generous.
He sits on his ass all day, his skin has been tanned into leather, and i feel his actions have an overall negative impact on the rest of society. (he’s a nice guy mind you)
Our morals just differ…
What about naturally born intelligence that receives malnutrition? where is the morality of personal responsibility there?
Chance is a major factor. Why would you want to be born into an oppresive situation? one where you have to overcome odds?
why does a rich sheltered kid become successful, while a poor street rat winds up in jail.
superior i.q? i think not.
incentive?
what you’re saying is that inequality is good for a society because it drive speople to work harder, just to reach a regular level of happiness…
Our disagreement again runs along ideological lines. I don’t think that the productivity of a society should come before the happiness created by a society.
you can say that they are one and the same, but the cost of production is sometimes greater than the happiness earned (making you unhappy)
people serve themselves… and once they gain enough power, they get other people to serve them. These servants are seving themselves by serving another person.
And just because humans are greedy, and just because one person decides how much the servant will get paid, the employer will treat the employee like a means to a profit.
The employer will pay the employee less than what their labor is worth to the employer, and the profit, the creation of wealth, will become one sided.
The employee, though being productive, might not be getting a fair wage, and because the free market isn’t perfect, they might not have another choice
they might not be able to walk away; maybe they need the money to pay the biills and jobs are scarce.
If a capitalist society has a failing market, it’s time to get out of that market is it not?
by trickle down i mean goods. products and benifits trickle down which get traded for labor, if i undrestand the point correctly.
Here is what i mean by the x axis.
If we look at the production that comes out of foreign companies and goes into the u.s, like a bananna republic let’s say, the “profit” supposedly created in this trade is not seen by the people of the banna republic in question. The corrupt elite of the banna republic do not even see a fair corrupt share of the profit; the u.s gets most.
So if these people of the banna republic produce some of what the u.s consumes ,they you could say that they produce more than they consume. They are below the x axis, meaning the wealth they generate is more than what they consume. On the other side of things, at the U.S, these resources that are consumed are not actually earned by the consumers because they pay an unfair low price; not fair to the banana republic.
They consume these banannas, which are more than what they produce, making them above the x axis, inferring a rate of consumption on the y scale.
so some people live off the production of other people. You can only consume what you produce right? or what other people produce.
You can only get rich by creating value right? or taking value from other people.
it’s as close to inevitable as possible that people will try to cheat other people.
so when i said that the hard working servants of America deserve their profit, it’s only because what they consume is actually the profit of those below the x axis, those of the banana republic, and what the hard workers of America produces is actually just the useless and stagnant entertainment and “incentives” for the upper class. (useless to those concerned with survival)
his worth is defined by his use to those who control the essentials.
maybe Larry has to turn the crank because there is no other option.
and lets say that the CEO pays Larry more than what it’s worth to turn the crank. The wealth that the CEO generates is skimmed off the production of others, and so by extension is Larry’s wage.
In other words a car company may pay be able to pay its workers so well because they get dirt cheap metal for parts out of an exploitation in Mexico.
reality does not match your ideals here.
you cannot consume what you did not produce unless you borrow or take.
you can produce what you do not consume, just ask a slave.
so when i say the u.s does not produce what they consume, what i mean to say is that the u.s consumes what is does not produce. I’m talking about exploitation, the global farm which America seems to control.
Of course you’re arguing for capitalism, and your position is that a true capitalist state would not allow exploitation, and i can accept that and acknowledge your point.
But keep in mind that reality is not perfect, that people do get exploited, ad that this is my current beef with capitalism, albeit American capitalism.
Also keep in mind that the market is not perfect in reality. That the waves and trends people surf are bound to break, and when they do capitalism is not there to lend a helping hand.
we differ in ideals about how society should function, and even what the goal of society should be. You have given me a new way to look at capitalism but the main issues will always exist in a similar way that they exist for socialism.
A government institution cannot perfectly distribute and predict needs just as a free market is not guaranteed to be able to meet those needs. Capitalism is corruptible on more levels than communism and socialism are, albeit more volatile when communism becomes corrupt.
the boat analogy i liked. We can either become corrupt as a whole or we can watch many individual boats become corrupt.
Perhaps that’s an argument against socialism/collectivism, but perhaps not. At least when it’s a single entity you can persecute much easier. (assuming there is transparency)
the money we get from china is beside the point.
It’s true that the u.s does live outside its means, and this is what i meant when i said the u.s population produces more than it consumes.
it is inherently a bad way of things for obvious reasons. You have to wonder where the founding fathers went wrong. Was it during a war that we decided to save ourselves at the expense of others?
was it during an economic crisis?
what sort of tears did the president have to shed to agree to creating a hollow shell economy which basically exploits everything around it.
it’s a collectivist motive that leads someone to borrow money to save an economy, even if it’s just an attempt to delay, but i don;t think it’s fair to call them collectivist/socialist policies.
i see capitalism as having lead to this situation through corruption. If it was corrupted by misguided socialists then it was still corrupted. Capitalism and democracy are interesting components.
well i thought that the innovations we experienced are the result of a propped up economy?
It makes sense that we invented computers out of boredom rather than necessity.
You echo one of the main defenses of communism, that it’s never been properly attempted.
I often think to myself that everyone would have to want to be a communist in order for it to work, otherwise people would abuse the system.
I think after this thread it’s not hard to come to the same conclusion about capitalism
its nice to know there are some others out there who can appreciate the beauty and essence of freedom. i often wonder what opponents of capitalism/individual rights/limited government tell themselves, that they actually oppose giving themselves freedom… freedom is the power for YOU to think, to act, to choose and create your own life and destiny. anyone who doesnt want that, would by definition actually desire servitude, and i just cant grasp what kind of intellectual or egoistic void must be present to allow for such a complete lack of self-esteem and such a harmful attitude towards onesself and ones life…
what if i replaced deserved with earned, or earned with created?
is there no relationship between who actually is responsible for making wealth and whose hands the wealth falls into?
if cheney is rich, then yes.
because it doesn’t care if teh funding comes from China or from the population; it will get the funding.
If we didn’t buy chinas crap they would stop lending the u.s money.
maybe i was a bit hasty with words like inevitable and invariable, afterall i attempted to build a capitalist straw man.
So i retract my strong words in place of softer ones:
In a capitalist society companies fail and make way for better ones. The problem is these better companies make more profit, but still pay the same type of low wages.
i try not to make stuff up faust, but you know sometimes i just can’t help it…
Wonderer - “fairness” is a very vague term. Whole books have been written just to define it. yeah, "earned’ would be just fine. Businesses earn profits.
Sure there is. Say you invest all your money, and all you can borrow into a business. For the first three years, you turn no profit, yet you work night and day at it. Your employees make wages - whatever the going rate. But you sleep on a couch in the back room, because you sold your house to finance the business. And eat macaroni and cheese every night.
Finally, the business becomes a success. It grows, and it’s time to expand management. So you promote four people to management. But you don’t give them raises, because it wouldn’t be fair.
what about the business owner who strings along his employees with the prospect of expansion and uses that to get them to do the work istead of himself.
he owns the place so he gets to divide the profit.
Well under the law the business owner can offer whatever wages they want as long as they meet the minimum. And if a person accepts a position in a society where people are able to do as they see fit with “their own property”, then theoretically it could be fair, but there are many unexplored facets here which may contribute to, or take away from said described “fairness”.
for example the agreement might have bbeen one made out of desperation, which creates a sort of “unfairness” for the desperate.