Orthogonal
Member
AL Gore invented the Internet. So there is that...
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Capitalism - Yay or Nay?
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AL Gore invented the Internet. So there is that...
Northeastmonk
Gold Member
I consider myself more of a consumer in the United States. I'm a consumer because I work to pay bills. I guess I could do that anywhere in the world, minus a few countries. When working takes up most of your life, all that is left is surviving hardships.
I consider myself a consumer and a customer before I think about Republican or Democrat. I feel so far removed from those ideas and beliefs because of who I am. A free economy or laissez-faire are important, but that's all you need, right? That's what's confusing to me. Why are dictators or other governments so strict about it? It boils down to either a free economy or some dictator at the end. Otherwise there's no real point. Go to whichever country or city that you can do well in and live out the rest of your life. I guess being satisfied or enjoying the pleasures of life is more important to me. That also boils down to money, so yea capitalism is great. I just don't see the point in everything that is suppose to be "great". I think I could live a better or worse life in a country that isn't downplayed by some poor government.
I consider myself a consumer and a customer before I think about Republican or Democrat. I feel so far removed from those ideas and beliefs because of who I am. A free economy or laissez-faire are important, but that's all you need, right? That's what's confusing to me. Why are dictators or other governments so strict about it? It boils down to either a free economy or some dictator at the end. Otherwise there's no real point. Go to whichever country or city that you can do well in and live out the rest of your life. I guess being satisfied or enjoying the pleasures of life is more important to me. That also boils down to money, so yea capitalism is great. I just don't see the point in everything that is suppose to be "great". I think I could live a better or worse life in a country that isn't downplayed by some poor government.
ugaboga232
Member
I think the government should develop drugs, it would be a lot cheaper. Pharma's incentives are not what the goal is for healthcare, its for profit. Sometimes it aligns, sometimes it doesnt (shkreli lol). I don't even think the private sector should go, i think the way the private sector is organized is very unhealthy and just isn't indicative of the actual role of the people due to the limitations of humanity (if all of the free market assumptions were true I think it would be a great system).
ChetWilson
Banned
Shrug, let it simmer a bit more. There's nothing heroic about making a profit. There's something heroic about saving people.
ugaboga232
Member
Bell labs was structured to do basic research and is a very unique example and I feel supports my point that profit motive distorts research (my old PI did work there before it was destroyed). IDK what's so special about google other than being big. Government research plays a big role. I speak more for the biotech/life sciences.
Free markets assume a lot of things which you and I both know are not true.
Like what?
The only thing a free market is is the ability to sell something to someone else for a price you agree upon. Where are the hidden assumptions there?
The biotech sector is mostly private capital and publically floated companies. Just because governments are their customers, doesn't mean they would be better off federalized.
Elfforkusu
Member
Biotech/life sciences is a tricky one, because the revolution has only just begun over the last two decades or so (and the health care system is so screwed up). But it depends if we're talking about federal control, or federal funding. I have no qualms with the latter -- that's one of the ways government can hamper the sociopathic tendency of the big companies to squelch any upstart innovation.
re: google, how many products of theirs do you use in your daily life. Email, search, maybe your phone...? But they're just the best example of the modern tech industry, which has basically excelled in spite of government rather than thanks to it.
Drugs cost money to both develop and manufacture. So as soon as PharmaFed® started developing its own brand of cancer treatment products or anti retro virals other companies would step in to compete with their own range of treatments. So what happens when your local municipal hospital is offered two cancer treatment drugs, one from GenCo pharma that's cheaper than the alternative from the big state owned pharma company? They're going to go with the cheaper option every time. This happens a lot in the pharmaceuticals industry with new cheap generics flooding the market.
There are far more pragmatic options at dealing with scumbags like Shkreli and co, such as a more vigorous and robust regulatory regime of the pharma sector than creating a SOE for drug development and production.
thehypocrite
Member
Who said it was?
Did I advocate for communism? Or Socialism? I just expressed my critiques of capitalism.
What's so special about Google? Oh nothing apart from the billions they've pumped into life sciences that you care a lot about......
www.theverge.com/2014/9/3/6102377/google-calico-cure-death-1-5-billion-research-abbvie
Big pharma and big, er data bastards! The lot.
ugaboga232
Member
I'm talking about the labor market (you know the important part of socialism vs capitalism, pretty much most of what marx talked about). We are not perfectly rational, we cannot wait forever for a paycheck, we cannot be in every state at once, we are very subject to misinformation and bad incentives.
prag16
Banned
There definitely isn't consensus on this. We may never know for sure. But it's right there in your post. The removal of that wall of separation made it a lot easier for fuckery to go on.
Convincing rebuttal.
Hazelhurst
Member
I concur.
ugaboga232
Member
I meant what was so innovative, there was yahoo/etc. around the same time. They are a huge company with fingers in a lot of pies but I wouldn't say they are a gamechanger in the sense that if google didn't exist that void would be filled to a large extent.
Some of Google's newest ventures include driverless cars, a cure for aging and full global internet coverage (using high altitude balloons).There's no way the public sector could do any of the above. The Govt has its own unique and important role to play in society, one where it provides for a healthy, open and transparent free marketplace where all businesses and individuals operate on a level playing field.
Giant Panda
Member
Well, for public companies that have shareholders, each individual shareholder only gets provided a small % of profit because they provide only a small % of capital. In companies with only one owner, they get a lot of profit because they provide more of the capital. They get paid because if they didn't, they would never have provided capital to the workers, and then the workers would be stuck making no or very little wages.
Second, you should really look up why rent functions the way it does. It is a basic and important fact of human nature. If landlords weren't given rent, they wouldn't let tenants use apartments. If landlords didn't make the money from rent, then the demand for housing would be lower and the apartment complexes might not be built in the first place.
I bet he's referring to "perfect competition".
What's the flavor of exploitation in communism? I assume you are talking about end game communism here, not 20th century socialist states.
Giant Panda
Member
I disagree with Smokeandmirrors' economics, but that is a good way to describe climate change denialism.
On that note, I wonder how the % of marxist economists compare to climate change denying scientists. Sadly one is soft science.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to get across. I pointed out that Google is actively involved in life sciences and poured billions of its own money into that field. So what if it's motive is profit, that's ultimately the same objective for the state as well, the last thing it wanting is an unhealthy populace unable to work and therefore not paying taxes.
At the end of the day everything is about money.
Giant Panda
Member
Well if "end game communism" is impossible, then striving for it will simply end up in "20th century communism" which were massively more exploitative.
None of which is assumed in a free market.
I mean i think evidence has proven that on balance people tend to make more positive than negative decisions, but no one is perfect and no one has perfect information. This includes the capital side as well as the labor side.
I also think people should be free to make sub-optimal market decisions, because some things are more important than money.
Elfforkusu
Member
Also, funding for aforementioned experimental research.
Also also (and this is where I think we're dropping the ball with our democracy), dangerous or simply unprofitable research. Nothing about the Apollo missions could've been done by the private sector. Think of the human lives at risk. Where's the ROI? But for a government, the benefits are enormous, just from an economic investment perspective.
I say we're dropping the ball (both the USG, and its citizens for not holding them accountable) because we should be doing manned missions to other planets (Mars) and spending lavish amounts of money on different roads of nuclear fusion research, desalinization methods, and all sorts of science and physics projects that private industry can only tackle at a snail's pace. Government could and should be funding all those things, holding open competitions, etc.
The US government is currently competing with SpaceX on who will build the rockets that will eventually take men to Mars. This isn't an open competition yet, but it's there to see for anyone willing to look down the road a bit.
Over the next 5-10 years, SpaceX is going to win (without being awarded any contract for it), and by a fucking lot. Maybe "two orders of magnitude" a lot. (talking cost here)
This assumes that end game communism isn't possible, and that we haven't learned anything from 20th century socialism and history would repeat itself. Those are two big assumptions.
Ah yes, the "no true Communist" argument that's now used whenever someone rightly points out the hellish existence of communist rule. It's ironic that the more communistic the society was the worse it got. Communist states that allowed certain levels of private enterprise were (relatively speaking) more prosperous (like East Germany) than others that kept everything under party rule, such as North Korea which remains one of the worst entities in the world.
It's truly regrettable that there are still Communist proponents in this day and age despite the ample evidence of Communism never, ever working.
Another problem with communism even in an ideal situation is while individuals can be really damn smart people as a whole tend to be pretty damn stupid. So I'm not sure the masses running everything would lead to anything but ruin.
The great thing about capitalism, is you don't need to ask an entire nation to take a risk. How about you start a private utopian communist enterprise to prove this social system for us. Because right now you're just begging the question, and putting the onus on us to prove that a utopian communism doesn't work.
It's quite clear we are arguing that the only forms we've ever seen pragmatically approached have failed miserably and lead to horrible labor exploitation and labor failures. Don't think for one second that the people who first championed it were incompetent. There are numerous challenges that require the direct control and limiting of humanity freedoms. Spend a significant amount of time around either resource limited computational sciences or economic sciences and you realize that you can't craft a model of communism that ushers in the labor utopia that people want.
Anyways our future is one of automation, where the utopian traits to strive for will be fair resource distribution.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
exactly. if there's one thing that needs to be universal among all view points is climate change and the threat it poses.
First I'd like to hear one communist or socialist propose a system for allocating production resources in the absence of price signals. Without that I am 100% confident in saying that communism will never ever work.
The labor theory of value doesn't tell you how many TVs you should build for the next year, even if it were an accurate economic theory(it isn't).
In many respects government has always acted as the trailblazer, the entity that pushes private enterprise to follow, whether it be the settlement of the new world/the West/etc or exploration of space. Apollo was clearly something the government could only have done and yet it was assisted by an army of private sector contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, Rockwell, North American Aviation, etc.. ), a private sector that would go on to be the 21st century pioneers of space exploration.
Many companies are now working on asteroid mining, lunar exploration and yes, Martian colonisation. Where the government goes industry follows. That should be government's primary mission, to provide the means for private industry to grow and thrive, but do so in a far and transparent way.
If we're talking SLS then yes, SpaceX is already beating NASA at it's own game. NASA shouldn't even need to be developing its own launchers to travel to Mars, the private sector has more than demonstrated that it can do so itself. Musk will probably land his own craft on Mars before SLS even gets out of LEO which will probably seal NASA's fate in regard to them ever having their own fleet of launchers ever again.
Nobody is proposing soviet style Leninist (or even Stalinist) type of communism.
I don't want to get into the semantic discussion of what is communism or what is socialism, because it's only a question of definition, but saying all socialist or communist ideas are bound to fail because there was a system that call itself with similar name makes as much sense as faulting all capitalist solutions because of the Great Bengal famine of 1770 (and for the record, the Bengal famine and the company rule of India in general has much more in common with modern capitalism than the USSR had with anything socialists or communists propose today, though again, that's a faulty line of arguments).
Now, you can argue that everything related to communism and socialism will inevitably lead to soviet style government, but that's a assertion that requires something to back it up.
thehypocrite
Member
It's like we cannot improve on the failures of capitalism towards something better. Somebody needs to make a profit as tha's "human nature".
People like to own their own shit. That's what caused communism to fail in the end.
Of course I can back it up, in every country that experimented with communism they ended up with hellish Soviet style totalitarian governments that imprisoned millions and caused nothing but poverty and misery. Now you'll probably retort in the same manner as everyone else when given such facts, "but, those weren't true communist societies". Well, sorry but, yes they fucking were! They were communist entities and they were abysmal failures that came crashing down in flames and the world is better off for their departure from this world.
The USSR was communist, North Korea is communist. China ISN'T communist though. They were smart and dumped that failed ideology and embraced capitalism. It's worked wonders for them.
No, but mandating state service for healthcare \ gambling \ running water \ electricity kind of is.
State monopolies are pretty much socialism.
thehypocrite
Member
Your posts reminds me of all the dictators in Latin America that killed millions and oppressed even more under a capitalist system and in many cases put there by the USA. That argument that you posted makes no sense.
Orthogonal
Member
How would you improve upon it?
RobotNinjaHornets
Banned
Define communist please.
Also Chile went heavily democratically socialist
Well, at least until there was a fucking CIA backed military coup that then followed neoliberal capitalist ideology
Good old capitalism
thehypocrite
Member
A professional legislature.
A government that doesn't elect their executives in a likability contest, more closed and manipulated than miss universe.
An election system where the state covers everything related to it and expels the industries that have formed and stops people with economical power from capturing the future winners.
Create community based participation in community building outside a political framework.
Remove for profits schools, healthcare (mental & physical), electricity, transportation. The companies in this sector can be private but their profits should go towards social solutions and programs.
Offer education for free.
more institutions & less political charades.
Empower individual self determination through basic income.
Implement a carbon tax.
death tax prior estate execution targeted towards redistribution.
Implement a global taxation system.
excise the business from politics by outlawing lobbyist and their ilk,
re-power democracy and public participation if you remove the perversions of the current system the population will shape a more effective & equal system.
among other things.
how about you?
Sorry for the late reply.
I'm not saying there were no socialist countries with the goal of communism, but to say there were "end goal" communist countries is ignorant of what communism is.
I don't see nationalization as proof for your claim. Nationalization isn't a goal, it's a method used to 1.) Develop a socialist country without foreign capitals taking your resources 2.) disperse counter-revolutionary and bourgeoisie elements in society. Nationalization is an interim, not a goal of communism, this would require the end goal of communism to include a form of government. Besides, if nationalization of industries somehow did make countries worse people could replace it. The road to communism isn't set in stone, people can learn from mistakes and find better alternatives. Some anarchists don't believe in socialist transitional phase at all, but their goal is still communism. Saying communism doesn't work because of how you perceive a (potentially optional) transitional phase effects a country is a big leap in logic.
We don't have evidence of communism working because we have never obtained it. As said before, there have been successes and failures in socialist states. You might not want to believe it, but places like the USSR did have high GDP growth and progressed the economy and living standards for most workers greatly. I, and any other proponent of communism will admit that there have been mistakes. Despite this, to say socialist states never worked is to ignore the evidence of when they did, and ignore the many complex influences that hindered them. What we do have evidence of is the broken nature of capitalism. Not moving towards an alternative of a system that is continuing to get worse as it progresses is what's regrettable. Generalizing and simplifying complex issues for "proof" that a changing system doesn't work is counter productive. I will however admit that socialism as we know it now will probably have to change as we learn more about it, and it will have to adapt to different times and countries.
I'm not saying there were no socialist countries with the goal of communism, but to say there were "end goal" communist countries is ignorant of what communism is.
I don't see nationalization as proof for your claim. Nationalization isn't a goal, it's a method used to 1.) Develop a socialist country without foreign capitals taking your resources 2.) disperse counter-revolutionary and bourgeoisie elements in society. Nationalization is an interim, not a goal of communism, this would require the end goal of communism to include a form of government. Besides, if nationalization of industries somehow did make countries worse people could replace it. The road to communism isn't set in stone, people can learn from mistakes and find better alternatives. Some anarchists don't believe in socialist transitional phase at all, but their goal is still communism. Saying communism doesn't work because of how you perceive a (potentially optional) transitional phase effects a country is a big leap in logic.
We don't have evidence of communism working because we have never obtained it. As said before, there have been successes and failures in socialist states. You might not want to believe it, but places like the USSR did have high GDP growth and progressed the economy and living standards for most workers greatly. I, and any other proponent of communism will admit that there have been mistakes. Despite this, to say socialist states never worked is to ignore the evidence of when they did, and ignore the many complex influences that hindered them. What we do have evidence of is the broken nature of capitalism. Not moving towards an alternative of a system that is continuing to get worse as it progresses is what's regrettable. Generalizing and simplifying complex issues for "proof" that a changing system doesn't work is counter productive. I will however admit that socialism as we know it now will probably have to change as we learn more about it, and it will have to adapt to different times and countries.
Orthogonal
Member
So basically a social-democracy command economy?
I have lots of idea's that I think would improve it, but I would be very presumptuous to think I knew how things should be ideally for every industry. No one knows what the best way is to run everything. No one is an expert in all fields. The best way to improve it would be to simply remove barriers and regulations. People are resourceful and have a knack at finding solutions to problems. It is possible to create peaceful solutions to social problems. Polyecentric solutions to meet the varied needs of people, not monocentric government dictates with a universal Agenda.
I realize that sounds "Utopian" or a copout, but it's not. We aren't ready for a philosophical revolution yet, but in time, I think people will be ready to reject the anachronistic authoritarian Nation-State of today.
Something tells me you are trying to judge communism, but you don't really know what communism is.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
this thread in a nut shell really.
Orthogonal
Member
I thought this was about Capitalism?
Damn the hate is strong in you. The reason (almost) every (European) communist state was soviet style communism is because it was the USSR itself or one of its satelitte states. Yugoslavia wasn't that bad and unaffiliated with the Soviets. I hear lots of people saying its not really better now (I live in what used to be it).
Well, it's if people here or pro or against capitalism. If someone is against capitalism then they probably have some sort of idea of an alternative/improvement that they would like, and that's how communism came into play. Either way, I won't be able to respond to the next post because I have to head out for now.
Yeah, I have basically given up on a normal discussion.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
well yes but people are getting what communism and socialism are completely wrong.
thehypocrite
Member
nah, we actually know that barriers & regulations exist to prevent exploitation in unequal relationships. In my proposal I didn't advocate for a monocentric government either. It's like you read what you want and not what I wrote.
If you read the last line I would just allow the economic activity to exist to serve a social purpose. That doesn't require government ownership of the factors of production, people are free to pursuit whatever they fancy.
I also didn't proposed this " social-democracy command economy", that looks to me like trying to force a label to a mutable & organic system.
Don't compare this argument to No True Scotsman. A communist state, as defined by Marx, has never existed. In fact most of those socialist states clearly actually rejected Marx's path. A revolution made no sense in an only partially Capitalist country like Russia. Capitalism is an important stage in Marx's analysis. There needs to be some stage at which Capital is accrued, so that the means of production are capable of producing more than subsistence.
On topic M-C-M Capitalism, everyone in this thread is throwing around the term without giving a good sense of what they mean, is clearly fundamentally ridiculous. There needs to be some sort of system ensuring at least some of the gains actually go into use somewhere.
Maybe a pedantic point, but I'd argue the EIC doesn't fit under most people's notion of Capitalism.
the-pi-guy
Member
I am probably wrong (please be gentle if I'm wrong), but this is from what I understand.
Capitalism:
"an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."
Without any regulations, monopolies can run rampant, workers rights are gone, most companies are only ever going to be interested in profit.
The government has stepped in, to improve many of these. There's an issue with wealth inequality.
Capitalism works best when there are some regulations. If there are none, then we could have an environment where things are monopolized. Companies sell products like oil, food at enormously inflated prices because they can. With enough competition, companies can't do this.
The other thing is that there are people that struggle to take care of their families, people that struggle to pay for taking care of their health.
If everything is privately owned, like healthcare, then these people want to make money.
In the US, we pay much more for healthcare than any of the European countries.
Europe utilizes capitalism much like we do. Where does the socialism come in?
This is the definition of socialism:
"any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism
None of the European countries are "socialist." Businesses aren't collectively or governmentally owned in Europe, except for certain small aspects. Plenty of businesses are owned privately in Europe, they are Capitalists just like we are.
Are those small aspects so fundamentally different from what we have in the US?
They really aren't.
Most roads are owned by the government and taken care of by the government. We could basically consider that a socialist expenditure.
Public schools are owned by the government and taken care of by the government. We could also consider those basically socialist expenditures.
There are tons of things that could be put under the socialist brand, mail, police force, every government agency, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc, etc.
The biggest difference is that in the US, healthcare (in general) is not covered under this wing. I don't understand why people are so against including it. A lot of people seem to imply that doing this means we lose freedoms. Someone even said they'd rather die than lose those freedoms. And a handful of people made it sound like robbery, literally saying that it's stealing with a gun pointed at them. I don't know who is pointing guns at these people, but for whatever reason people are vehemently against general health care being included in this.
Much of Europe and Canada has healthcare included under that brand, and it seems because of it, they are spending far less money on the matter.
Capitalism:
"an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."
Without any regulations, monopolies can run rampant, workers rights are gone, most companies are only ever going to be interested in profit.
The government has stepped in, to improve many of these. There's an issue with wealth inequality.
Capitalism works best when there are some regulations. If there are none, then we could have an environment where things are monopolized. Companies sell products like oil, food at enormously inflated prices because they can. With enough competition, companies can't do this.
The other thing is that there are people that struggle to take care of their families, people that struggle to pay for taking care of their health.
If everything is privately owned, like healthcare, then these people want to make money.
In the US, we pay much more for healthcare than any of the European countries.
Europe utilizes capitalism much like we do. Where does the socialism come in?
This is the definition of socialism:
"any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism
None of the European countries are "socialist." Businesses aren't collectively or governmentally owned in Europe, except for certain small aspects. Plenty of businesses are owned privately in Europe, they are Capitalists just like we are.
Are those small aspects so fundamentally different from what we have in the US?
They really aren't.
Most roads are owned by the government and taken care of by the government. We could basically consider that a socialist expenditure.
Public schools are owned by the government and taken care of by the government. We could also consider those basically socialist expenditures.
There are tons of things that could be put under the socialist brand, mail, police force, every government agency, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc, etc.
The biggest difference is that in the US, healthcare (in general) is not covered under this wing. I don't understand why people are so against including it. A lot of people seem to imply that doing this means we lose freedoms. Someone even said they'd rather die than lose those freedoms. And a handful of people made it sound like robbery, literally saying that it's stealing with a gun pointed at them. I don't know who is pointing guns at these people, but for whatever reason people are vehemently against general health care being included in this.
Much of Europe and Canada has healthcare included under that brand, and it seems because of it, they are spending far less money on the matter.
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