Yes, and capitalism can work if it’s well regulated. And that means the people have to control the government, not the corporations or billionaires. Thats what’s very wrong in the USA now.
The entire fundamental goal of capitalism is to commodify any potential source of profit. That means something like a “well regulated government” which is a guaranteed negative profit engine will always be amongst the first things to be commodified.
The only way that “works” is if the government treats corporations and billionaires with a equal or greater level of contempt than they treat the government. At which point it is, by any reasonable definition, no longer capitalism.
I think this is just a larger cycle of history that has nothing specifically to do with capitalism.
In every society, there are levers of power. In ever society, access to the levels of power grants you more power. Eventually, every society is ruled by a few people who can trivially put their own interests ahead of the interests of everyone else. Eventually, doing so for long enough makes everyone (but the powerful worse off) and the society collapses, at which point the guillotines come out and society resets (best case scenario) or it enters a stable state of serfdom.
This has all happened before. This will all happen again.
that has nothing specifically to do with capitalism.
No. Capitalism is because we have learned some lessons from that long history of power struggles but we are currently stuck in a rut and have a good 50-100 years of knowing better but refusing to do anything about it, which itself is another larger cycle of history that we know better but refuse to do anything about.
Well, the idea is to use people’s greed to drive growth and progress. If the government can shape profit forces to drive life quality improvements of the population, then it can work. This basically boils down to taxing bad shit, or making certain practices illegal. People will always try to game the system and find holes, and the government needs to constantly watch for this and plug the. Then competition within those rules can lead to positive outcomes.
The government doesn’t need to treat corporations or billionaires with contempt, it just needs to ignore their wants and prioritize on the people.
I understand the idea, I’m saying the idea is inherently contradictory and stupid.
The government doesn’t need to treat corporations or billionaires with contempt, it just needs to ignore their wants
A corporation only exists as a legal fiction. A corporation can not exist if a state “ignores their wants” because the state is the one granting the desire for the corporation to exist in the first place! Billionaires function similarly via the concept of private property but that one is a bit more roundabout.
They exist because the state intrinsically cares deeply because “billionaires” have every incentive to ensure the state does so. The state “ignoring their wants” does not come close to matching the incentives of the “billionaires” and as such the Nash equilibrium will ALWAYS favor the “billionaires” without equal, or greater, incentives for the state.
You set up a system based inherently on ‘winner takes all’ style conflict and are surprised when the most ruthless and least moral people end up winning?
Any system will break down when the most ruthless and least moral people take control. You could argue that a communist system is no longer a communist system when the ruthless take over, buts that’s just the same as saying a well regulated capitalist system gets fucked up when the ruthless take over. I know capitalism is based on competition and that maybe makes it particularly fragile in that respect, but the competition part also makes it efficient and with the right regulations i think it can be efficient in terms of things that are good for humanity.
The entire philosophy behind capitalism is to reward those that are the most ruthlessly greedy.
That is not true of communism, socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, etc.
To use a sports metaphor; sure a ‘win at any cost’ approach results in fiercer competition and yes a little bit of sportsmanship would make it so less people die. But sportsmanship is diametrically opposed to a win at any cost mentality.
Or the other way to look at it is that it rewards innovation tied with risk taking. It rewards efficiency, and catering to the desires of the population (via purchasing power). Without that, we might get stuck technologically and in other ways. Most other systems do not naturally promote innovation.
No, it encourages a very specific kind of risk assessment. One where those who are ahead are obsessively defensive, risk averse and obsessed with controlling and mitigating any possible risk because they understand that taking the smallest risk could result in an insurmountable setback. Meanwhile those behind aren’t taking reasonable or rational risks, they’re gambling out of desperation. It’s an ecosystem that stifles innovation without external influence.
catering to the desires of the population
Profit, by definition, is the differential between the product/service offered and the payment received. Not even in the most Any Rand reading of capitalism does the producer ‘cater’ to the consumer. The producer manipulates the consumer to their own benefit.
Most other systems do not naturally promote innovation.
Which systems and can you explain why not? Even I can admit capitalism does ‘promote innovation’ via desperate, near suicidal gambles that occasionally work out. That’s such an absurd statement! Even the most conservatist theocratic state naturally promotes innovation in many ways. It’s a matter of degrees, and capitalism is about as close to top of that list as the US is to any metric outside prisons and military.
I’ve seen innovators get some investment and build small businesses. They do this because they think they can create a new product that consumers will want. This is the catering to the public. It’s a risk as they put up their own money, time and effort. It’s not desperate, its a job, but they get to run it. If it works out, they end up with a stake in a worthwhile enterprise and they can get financial rewards. And society ends up with a new product or service. They needed capital investment to get things off the ground, and they had to convince someone with money to make that investment. The person fronting the startup costs gets some financial reward if it works out. So they are motivated to invest in development costs. If the company grows and grows and tries to overcharge, another startup should be able to get some of their business by being more efficient and not as greedy. It can work if the government can enforce rules against anti-competitive behaviors, and regulations about how to treat workers.
I think if donations to political parties were limited to a couple of hundred dollars per person and no corps or other funding allowed - or better yet, paid for only by a public fund based on the number of votes last cycle, then the system would have a chance. We’d need much more anti-corruption systems for politicians too. And this stuff would have to be constitutionally protected. The goal would be to make it so the politicians can only game for votes from the people. And Corp/capital owners could only game the system writhin the rules set by the government which is actually beholden to the people. People could innovate and take reasonable risks/work hard and be rewarded for that. Of course decent education is part of the equation too.
If you keep capitalism no amount of political donation/lobbying regulation will ever fix the problem. The problem being that having money affords you influence, even without donating directly to political parties, or by lobbying and legally bribing politicians with cushy jobs after they leave politics.
The goal would be to make it so the politicians can only game for votes from the people.
If we allow wealth to be amassed and concentrated in the hands of a few (who extracted that excess value from the workers who actually produced it), we hand control of the economy, and thus society to an unelected oligarchy.
If you control the wealth of a nation, including capital, you control the workers who are economically forced to work for you, as they lack enough money to compete with you.
When you control the capital, you decide what projects are invested in, you can influence elected bodies to bend over backwards for you with tax reductions (see, Amazon and basically getting cities to bid for them to locate parts of their business there).
And oh so much more that I am too inarticulate to make concise here.
You can’t regulate your way to capitalism working, since the profit motive will always work to undo them (see the fact that Anti-Trust is barely being enforced anymore in the US, and the rest of the world generally)
Yes, and capitalism can work if it’s well regulated. And that means the people have to control the government, not the corporations or billionaires. Thats what’s very wrong in the USA now.
The entire fundamental goal of capitalism is to commodify any potential source of profit. That means something like a “well regulated government” which is a guaranteed negative profit engine will always be amongst the first things to be commodified.
The only way that “works” is if the government treats corporations and billionaires with a equal or greater level of contempt than they treat the government. At which point it is, by any reasonable definition, no longer capitalism.
I think this is just a larger cycle of history that has nothing specifically to do with capitalism.
In every society, there are levers of power. In ever society, access to the levels of power grants you more power. Eventually, every society is ruled by a few people who can trivially put their own interests ahead of the interests of everyone else. Eventually, doing so for long enough makes everyone (but the powerful worse off) and the society collapses, at which point the guillotines come out and society resets (best case scenario) or it enters a stable state of serfdom.
This has all happened before. This will all happen again.
Yes.
No. Capitalism is because we have learned some lessons from that long history of power struggles but we are currently stuck in a rut and have a good 50-100 years of knowing better but refusing to do anything about it, which itself is another larger cycle of history that we know better but refuse to do anything about.
Can you explain how capitalism is in some way consciously well-intentioned, as you seem to be implying?
Well, the idea is to use people’s greed to drive growth and progress. If the government can shape profit forces to drive life quality improvements of the population, then it can work. This basically boils down to taxing bad shit, or making certain practices illegal. People will always try to game the system and find holes, and the government needs to constantly watch for this and plug the. Then competition within those rules can lead to positive outcomes.
The government doesn’t need to treat corporations or billionaires with contempt, it just needs to ignore their wants and prioritize on the people.
I understand the idea, I’m saying the idea is inherently contradictory and stupid.
A corporation only exists as a legal fiction. A corporation can not exist if a state “ignores their wants” because the state is the one granting the desire for the corporation to exist in the first place! Billionaires function similarly via the concept of private property but that one is a bit more roundabout.
They exist because the state intrinsically cares deeply because “billionaires” have every incentive to ensure the state does so. The state “ignoring their wants” does not come close to matching the incentives of the “billionaires” and as such the Nash equilibrium will ALWAYS favor the “billionaires” without equal, or greater, incentives for the state.
You set up a system based inherently on ‘winner takes all’ style conflict and are surprised when the most ruthless and least moral people end up winning?
Any system will break down when the most ruthless and least moral people take control. You could argue that a communist system is no longer a communist system when the ruthless take over, buts that’s just the same as saying a well regulated capitalist system gets fucked up when the ruthless take over. I know capitalism is based on competition and that maybe makes it particularly fragile in that respect, but the competition part also makes it efficient and with the right regulations i think it can be efficient in terms of things that are good for humanity.
The entire philosophy behind capitalism is to reward those that are the most ruthlessly greedy.
That is not true of communism, socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, etc.
To use a sports metaphor; sure a ‘win at any cost’ approach results in fiercer competition and yes a little bit of sportsmanship would make it so less people die. But sportsmanship is diametrically opposed to a win at any cost mentality.
Or the other way to look at it is that it rewards innovation tied with risk taking. It rewards efficiency, and catering to the desires of the population (via purchasing power). Without that, we might get stuck technologically and in other ways. Most other systems do not naturally promote innovation.
No, it encourages a very specific kind of risk assessment. One where those who are ahead are obsessively defensive, risk averse and obsessed with controlling and mitigating any possible risk because they understand that taking the smallest risk could result in an insurmountable setback. Meanwhile those behind aren’t taking reasonable or rational risks, they’re gambling out of desperation. It’s an ecosystem that stifles innovation without external influence.
Profit, by definition, is the differential between the product/service offered and the payment received. Not even in the most Any Rand reading of capitalism does the producer ‘cater’ to the consumer. The producer manipulates the consumer to their own benefit.
Which systems and can you explain why not? Even I can admit capitalism does ‘promote innovation’ via desperate, near suicidal gambles that occasionally work out. That’s such an absurd statement! Even the most conservatist theocratic state naturally promotes innovation in many ways. It’s a matter of degrees, and capitalism is about as close to top of that list as the US is to any metric outside prisons and military.
I’ve seen innovators get some investment and build small businesses. They do this because they think they can create a new product that consumers will want. This is the catering to the public. It’s a risk as they put up their own money, time and effort. It’s not desperate, its a job, but they get to run it. If it works out, they end up with a stake in a worthwhile enterprise and they can get financial rewards. And society ends up with a new product or service. They needed capital investment to get things off the ground, and they had to convince someone with money to make that investment. The person fronting the startup costs gets some financial reward if it works out. So they are motivated to invest in development costs. If the company grows and grows and tries to overcharge, another startup should be able to get some of their business by being more efficient and not as greedy. It can work if the government can enforce rules against anti-competitive behaviors, and regulations about how to treat workers.
FTFY.
I think we’re well past the idea that capitalism is the “end of history”. The profit motive is always gonna lead us back here.
I think if donations to political parties were limited to a couple of hundred dollars per person and no corps or other funding allowed - or better yet, paid for only by a public fund based on the number of votes last cycle, then the system would have a chance. We’d need much more anti-corruption systems for politicians too. And this stuff would have to be constitutionally protected. The goal would be to make it so the politicians can only game for votes from the people. And Corp/capital owners could only game the system writhin the rules set by the government which is actually beholden to the people. People could innovate and take reasonable risks/work hard and be rewarded for that. Of course decent education is part of the equation too.
If you keep capitalism no amount of political donation/lobbying regulation will ever fix the problem. The problem being that having money affords you influence, even without donating directly to political parties, or by lobbying and legally bribing politicians with cushy jobs after they leave politics.
If we allow wealth to be amassed and concentrated in the hands of a few (who extracted that excess value from the workers who actually produced it), we hand control of the economy, and thus society to an unelected oligarchy.
If you control the wealth of a nation, including capital, you control the workers who are economically forced to work for you, as they lack enough money to compete with you.
When you control the capital, you decide what projects are invested in, you can influence elected bodies to bend over backwards for you with tax reductions (see, Amazon and basically getting cities to bid for them to locate parts of their business there).
And oh so much more that I am too inarticulate to make concise here.
You can’t regulate your way to capitalism working, since the profit motive will always work to undo them (see the fact that Anti-Trust is barely being enforced anymore in the US, and the rest of the world generally)