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This most certainly is not about regulations.
It is about corrupted people who do not follow regulations.
System is not corrupted, people are.
Originally posted by mdiinican
Capitalism has worked well enough for hundreds of years.
You'd have to be terribly naive, or convinced that the world is going to end if you think the capitalist system won't weather this depression as it's weathered dozens of others. America might lose some influence, but it's just one country in a world full of them.
Originally posted by pai mei
The value of the wages in an enterprise is always just a fraction of the cost of the finished product. That is for all factories and hotels and whatever across the planet. What does that mean ? It means people will never be able to buy all that is produced. All the money go to the business owner. But how many finished products do they buy ?
Solution : credit. But now they turned off the money fountain (intentionally - people did not lose their jobs, then stopped buying ,it was the other way around). So people buy only what they really need, or not even that. And the system collapses. Very simple. There is not a shortage of products.
Capitalism, and the "economic need" are pyramid schemes. To satisfy the real needs it is enough for 10 % of the workforce to work. We could invent a system with no money, where people work let's say 8 years in agriculture, healthcare, schools and some light industry producing some stuff like clothing. Then they are changed by others. The rest of the time they do nothing and are provided with all these things for free. That does not mean they are forced to live only with those things.
Want more ? Gather people who want the same and do it. Improve your life beyond what you are provided, anyway you like.
Money or credit will be BANNED, and that means we will never end up where we are now - working not because we need what we produce , but because we need money, and we have to have something "TO DO" to get them otherwise it does not fits into the crazy philosophy of "life is hard work".
People will do things only if they want to have them as an extra beyond the basics.
When they stop wanting them they stop working. Simple. Not like the death trap of the current system : "look nobody buys what I produce, what will I do ?". Nothing. As I said to cover real needs there is no need for 100% of the workforce to work.
In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear.
Originally posted by pai mei
"When we are not working we are using resources". Do you believe yourself ? Have you seen the movies from the above post ? 90% of what is bought in USA is in the garbage in 6 months, that is our "great work". And needs to be that way, then new things need to be bought, else this crazy system collapses. We destroy the planet just to have something to do.
So : you work 8 years, then you are free. Nobody makes you do or not do anything, you can work if you want.
"Miserable life" ? "mediocre products" ? Yes I know you like having slaves work for you now. Maybe they hate their jobs but what do you care, you are comfortable.
Don't want my system ? Go and find a slave master, that is a slave himself to some money creator, and work for him. Alone and fighting all the others for survival or for a bigger TV, while others don't have enough to eat - and nobody needs them or their "work". You can have your capitalist territory and look with envy at the crazy people next door that do nothing all day, just work in their garden for pleasure or travel or sit with their friends or whatever. And have no money and need no money.
In developed countries 3% of the workforce work in agriculture and they have more than enough food. Add more for education and health and you get kind of 20% the max. 1/5 of the work time of let's say 40 years is 8 years. More than enough.
The disappearance of money is very important for a real civilized society to form. There will be no more crime - nothing to steal. Steal what ? Food which is free for everybody ?
The only reason for organized crime will remain slavery. I am sure most rich people of today would hate my system. Not having anyone to do stuff for them, and having no means to lure people or to force people to work for them.
Today is very simple to have a slave cook your food, clean your house and so on if you have money. His survival depends on it.
"It's his fault, he should have gotten a better education, and then a better job" some say. Yes sure. Maybe he did not have the chance.
And who will do all the dirty or repetitive and boring jobs if everybody will be a manager ?
Capitalism and today;s society is based on slavery, without the threat to their survival there would be no people for those jobs.
This life is more than survival,
People want to be part of something , and seek a group to belong to.
They would work for that group for "free" if allowed to.
Originally posted by aaa2500
Capitalism CAN work, but only if it is well regulated. Capitalism without regulation will end up having a single monopoly.
Originally posted by Blue_Jay33
We have returned to the time of nobility and serfs, and it was slowly done right under our very noses.
"We are the most unequal industrialized country in terms of income and wealth," said Edward N. Wolff, an economics professor at New York University, "and we're growing more unequal faster than the other industrialized countries." In coming months, he will publish two papers that compare patterns of wealth in Western countries...
...Margaret Weir, a senior fellow in government studies at the Brookings Institution, called the higher concentration of incomes and wealth "quite divisive," especially in a country where the political system requires so much campaign money.
"It tilts the political system toward those who have more resources," she said, adding that financial extremes also undermined the "sense of community and commonality of purpose."...
WASHINGTON - New studies on the growing concentration of American wealth and income challenge a cherished part of the country's self-image: They show that rather than being an egalitarian society, the United States has become the most economically stratified of industrial nations.
By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.
Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.
Originally posted by SailorinAZ
Western morals and ethics are based on judeo christian thought. i.e. The 10 commandments. What would you base your morals and ethics from without a god and what would be your incentive? Actions without consequences. Do you really think the world was a better place before Jesus Christ? Orgies, animal and human sacrifice, ritualistic cannibalism. Do you really think so called indigenous peoples were somehow enlightened and didn't brutally kill and make war with each other?
Everything you said about being fat, lazy, spoiled, materialism, not living simply is due to removal of god from the picture.
Instant gratification ,actions without consequences and greed.
Socialism is not superior and it has never worked.
Why do thousands of Cubans risk their lives every year in an attempt to reach America? It seems so simple, and in fact it is. This life is a survival of the fittest, it is human nature, and as long as humans are involved in the equation, Socialism will never work.
The old adage, give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, teach him to fish, he will eat for a lifetime is very pertinent to this discussion. If the government constantly gives men fish, why would they buy their own pole and bait a hook? The answer, they will not.
more people died in the name of their gods then any other cause