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On Capitalism
  • Capitalism tries for a delicate balance:
    It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff

    (c) George Carlin

    And I must say that it looks like it can be problems with "enough stuff" in near future with clear consequences :-)

  • 25 Replies sorted by
  • I think this is true for any system. Capitalism is just individual property ownership... that's it. There is nothing inherently evil or bad about the system. All the negativity that people/the media have attributed with capitalism are the same evils that will plague any other. People always want more, people get jealous, some people are born into better situations, some people have better genetics, some people are dumb, some are smart, ...ect. Trying to enforce everything to be equal on a government level goes against the very nature of human kind and evolution. If there was some system that ensured all early human primates had equal breeding opportunities, food, and safety... then evolution would never have occurred. It is like everything else... a double sided sword.

    One day it may be possible to go against the grain of evolution, and create a planned society... but even then... energy, resources, and population will need to be kept in balance. Either by a complicated machine/software overlord (Logan's Run)... or a bureaucracy of scientists. Which could work... but most people would fear/reject this. Both are also subject to corruption as in any capitalistic system. Basically, anything short of complete anarchy... is subject to corruption.

    If people want to continue to run their own lives as they see fit, they're just going to have to deal with competition and the possibility of failure. There's never going to be a system where people can just do whatever they want, all the time, with no consequences. Besides maybe the possibility of downloading your brain into a computer world... which still may not work, even with singularity (heavy philosophy comes into play here).

    This is all part of the "Everything sucks" theory...

    Reminds me of a funny anecdote also...

    "Have you read 1984? It's a great novel..."

    "Yes. It is good. All children should be forced to read it."

    :)

  • "When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease ... But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight."

    John Maynard Keynes, 1930

  • I've been researching lately and wondering if a dual-economic system would ever work. Capitalism model for finite physical goods/property and a more socialist model for the service industries... all in the same country. Using two forms of currency. Might be difficult as some industries (like health-care) have overlap... still interesting to think about though.

  • @bwhitz

    I'll try to tell you how it is possible naturally integrate planning and wild nature :-)
    I just need time to start writing series of posts.

  • Btw I consider us lucky.

    As, most probably we'll see major fuck up in history on the front seat. And it even could be last one :-)

  • Since change never stops in living systems, this sounds like a very sinister outlook…

  • @bwhitz

    Thanks for the Community reference.

    As more of us leave the corporate system and find ways to make money on our own, I think we'll see a shift in capitalism... to what, not sure. But it's exciting.

  • think we'll see a shift in capitalism... to what, not sure.

    I can tell you the direction of the shift. It is called big life level drop in all areas.

  • "As, most probably we'll see major fuck up in history on the front seat. And it even could be last one :-)"

    Warren Buffet has said similar things. Another Black Swan event will come. Hope we can roll with the punch when it comes. In the meantime people, stock up on Spam.

  • When someone in the UK gov't a few days ago advised keeping a full fuel tank "just in case" the tanker drivers went in strike, there was mass panic resulting in petrol stations running out of stock. The strike was never less than 7 days away and has not, yet, even been called.

    It's pretty scary that such things can happen purely based on some careless words, and it also shows me how thin our veneer of "civilisation" really is, when things get difficult (or in this case, just threaten to get difficult because of a strike).

    I hate to think what will happen when stuff starts to become scarce for real!

  • @Mark_the_Harp I was in the LA Riots. In the blink of an eye you can be on your own with the wolves.

  • @hunter

    Haha, yes. Great show. I've also heard the same anecdote once before somewhere... not sure where though.

    But there is a pretty big difference between Capitalism and Corporatism. Most people have them confused these days... so it leaves a sour taste in the mouth when capitalism is referenced. But they are not synonymous. Basically, Capitalism is just individual property ownership and Socialism is when a state (or entity) owns them. Capitalism, with a nice dose of corruption and kickbacks, has LEAD to corporatism, but they aren't really the same. In a pure socialist model, you would not own your car, you would not own your house, and would most certainly not be able to own your own business. You might be "appointed" to run one... but it wouldn't be yours... and you would not have a share in the profits directly.

    If you ask me, the downfall of capitalism was allowing businesses to corporatise in the first place. They should have been sole-proprietorship only. Limited partnerships and contracts with other businesses on a need-to-need basis only. Allowing bigger corporations to buy smaller ones should have been illegal from the beginning.

    Corporatism is basically collectivism, and is, ironically, more related to an inverted-socialist model than capitalism is. Pure capitalism is actually anarchy. (doesn't Rage Against the Machine feel stupid now?) :)

  • Corporations are the new governments. Can't remember who said that but I'm sure there's a lot of truth in it. They can control resources and workers and they can also bury what doesn't fit with their agenda.

    I worked for a supposedly 'creative' organisation for many years and saw a lot of good ideas quietly buried because it didn't fit with the corporate strategy. Big organisations have a huge amount of power and can wreck individual initiative when it suits them. Witness also commercial food businesses buying patents on things like strains of rice that have been developed collectively - whatever the reason for doing that, you can bet its not altruism.

    So I personally worry more about big business than big government.

  • @bwhitz

    It drives me crazy when people conflate corporatism with capitalism. I also agree that corporations are completely antithetical to capitalism. They're artificial entities invented by the state for the benefit of the rich people who keep them in power; how is that a product of any "unregulated" system.

    It's frustrating to hear well-meaning protestors who are fed up with the banksters shouting illiterate platitudes about "deregulation; the LAST thing the conglomerates want is "laissez faire" capitalism -- they'd actually have to compete and earn their money through mutual exchange! Why So much easier to have a bureaucrat rig the game for you instead. It was for these reasons that Ludwig von Mises rightly called corporations, "little lumps of socialism".

    You're also on point about capitalism being anarchy. Sounds like you stumbled into some Rothbard...

  • Yes - free market capitalism should lead to 'perfect competition' (so long as there are proper anti-monopoly laws in place) that will tend to lead to zero profits for competitors. This requires fearless independent incorruptible regulators. Corporatism (I call it crony capitalism) is corporations buying/ capturing regulators to prevent free market outcomes. Japan leads the way. Most of the rest of the G8 is catching up fast.

  • @onion Agree - and the prime function of a corporation is its own survival (just that this is never directly spoken about).

  • Even for dinosaurs the prime function was their own survival…

  • Dinosaurs = corporations :-)

  • all the social organizations after monarchism (found to be natural to human specie, and other predator animals that live in heard) is funded on one base only control of masses , do you thing that the kings and big powers of some time ago, just vanished get yourself a new par of eyes. They are smart though an they have studied very deeply the weaknesses of human nature. So they give us communism, democracy, capitalism, and all the ism's you wish for, its just an illusion, to get us to believe that our voice is important, for them it isn't. What differs from a man in year 1000 before Christ and the man today, i will tell you uselessness. We are not smarter, nor stronger, not wiser or have more values. All the opposite. Is this randomness??? NO, nature evolves, we aren't. So now a days that leads us to two options or we are so naif to get ourselves auto exterminated, (against nature itself) or someone has some wicked stuff in is head and is trying to kill us all. That's a scary though. So stop loosing time (very precious gift), there is not much to be done apart from freeing ourselves from the lies, and be happy as we can, on small things. All get to that (simple...)

  • None of the extreme systems work, capitalism & communism. They both work in theory, not in reality, apparently.

  • "So now a days that leads us to two options or we are so naif to get ourselves auto exterminated, (against nature itself) or someone has some wicked stuff in is head and is trying to kill us all. That's a scary though. So stop loosing time (very precious gift), there is not much to be done apart from freeing ourselves from the lies, and be happy as we can, on small things. All get to that (simple...)"

    Yep. Corruption keeps us safe. The idea that the wealth of few mega-powers is based on the well-being and consumption of goods by the masses is a good thing. It will use their own selfishness and love of money to ensure that they won't let society completely fail... or their wealth will fail as well. In this regard, capitalism works pretty well. Although it still needs to be kept in check, as to not let one corporation or entity rule all others... then we're just back to an oligarchy.

    So like I've said before... the key to a good capitalist country is to have it full of private businesses, not corporations. Allow businesses/companies to partner up for limited mutual benefits, but make it strictly illegal for them to buy and sell each other.

    @apriori "It's frustrating to hear well-meaning protestors who are fed up with the banksters shouting illiterate platitudes about "deregulation; the LAST thing the conglomerates want is "laissez faire" capitalism -- they'd actually have to compete and earn their money through mutual exchange! Why So much easier to have a bureaucrat rig the game for you instead. It was for these reasons that Ludwig von Mises rightly called corporations, "little lumps of socialism"."

    Yep exactly! Why compete in the marketplace... when you can just OWN the market place? This is why people have collective-socialized companies to thank for the camera product tiering... not capitalism. Red is Capitalism... Sony, Panasonic, and Canon are Collectivists (socialist-model entities operating and profiting from a capitalist market).

  • It's getting to full-blown classic totalitarianism. Wolin said that if in corporate totalitarianism cheap manufactured goods (to keep people silent) run out, it converts to classic totalitarianism. Look at PIPA, SOPA, NDAA, .. We're heading for a police state if we aren't there already.

  • Police state is almost completely likely, but thats not going to stop the destruction of the dollar, and as Vitaliy says, reduce our purchasing power below our threshold of "enough stuff" to keep us happy. I keep telling people this, but you better have some of your money in commodities like silver, liquor, guns/ ammo, land, and enough knowledge to know how to feed yourself.

    I'm not saying all of your money should be like this, but some is wise for sure. My question is what will happen to the internet and camera community during this time? I suspect the government will leave the internet on because its a way to control the population, but I don't know about the entertainment industries.

  • @liquidify

    There were people who laughed at me when I invested in gold about five years ago. They're not laughing now, but they still missed the point. It wasn't "investing", so much as conserving the value of the dollars I had on hand, at that time. Outside of collector's value for a particular coin, gold and silver are just an inverse reflection of the value of the dollar. My gold isn't worth more today -- it would just take more dollars to buy the same amount of gold as it took five years ago. I'm definitely putting more money into all types of commodities. Non-perishable food is a particularly good idea.

    Things are going to get bad, worse than most realize. The U.S. has $100 - $200 TRILLION (at that point, who's counting?) in unfunded liabilities that are due to start paying out in 2020 as the baby boomers enter retirement. This is a Rome-in-flames scenario, and it will almost certainly come to pass. A nation cannot print trillions of dollars for endless wars and welfare and expect to remain solvent.

    What will happen to us, the entertainers, the storytellers? We will do what art has always done: tell the truth.

  • Artist the first to get killed... JAJajajajajaj