Why Capitalism Fails

reply to post by ANOK


No not everyone can be successful. For those in need there is the good spirit of the people. For those who do nothing to succeed, well, you get out of life what you put in. Life isn't fair and that's just how it is. Government can't control that.

[edit on 14-7-2010 by projectvxn]

reply to post by mnemeth1


The problem with unregulated capitalism is that if there is a way to make money, somebody will try it, regardless of what it is. Here are some examples.
...
I heard a song by the Beatles on the radio the other day and knew it would be a hit. So I burned it onto my own album and now I'm selling it at the music stores for a cheaper price than the original. Oh no, I'm violating copyright, boo hoo. Who's gonna stop me? "Copyright" is just a government term, after all. The police could stop me and bring me to court... but that would require a legal proceeding to find out who came up with the music license. Since our new economic system involves keeping the government completely out of business affairs, I'm free to make as much money off the Beatles as I want. I guess the other distributor's only other option is to physically attack me, but I'm ready for 'em. And anyway, the BAD kind of violence only comes from socialism.
...
I'm the CEO of a company and I've been a member of a high-class Yacht Club for the past six years. I really want to upgrade my yacht so I can win the next race, but I need about a million dollars to do it. Since this is a "truly capitalist free market" economy, I dare not lower the wages of my employees, lest they leave the company for someone who pays more. That's ok... I'll just take it out of their retirement funds and buy back some of their black-box stock options, so they won't realize what happened until about six years from now. By then it won't matter if they quit because I'll be rich enough to replace them, thanks to the sponsors I'll be wooing at the yacht race! Good thing there aren't any government watchdogs behind my back!
...
I'm a middle-class worker at a textile manufacturer and my boss is looking to expand. We discovered that if we shift production to Burma we can get children working in the factories for chump change. Sending your child to work increases your family's profit, and this is a poverty-stricken area, so many Burmese families are eager to oblige. We've been producing at twice the rate for almost half the cost of our competitors since we expanded, and we're drawing up plans for another factory... plus those guys in Myanmar are letting us use any extra cargo space on our planes for human trafficking, which is a healthy bonus. Sorry, what? Another injured child at the plant? Nooo... no, we don't have any injuries at our factory. What did you say your name was? Have a nice day.
...

Do you see where I'm going with this?

reply to post by Magnus47


Theft is not capitalism.

Your examples are ridiculous.

If its not voluntary, its not capitalism.

And child labor was solved by capitalism, not child labor laws.

People sent their kids to work because the economy was not productive enough to allow them to stay home. Only when an economy becomes productive can a society afford to send its kids to school rather than the workshop.

Do you think parents back then wanted their kids working in a sweatshop?

They had no choice.

It wasn't until capitalism improved the economy enough to provide excess wealth that kids were taken out of the workplace.


[edit on 14-7-2010 by mnemeth1]

reply to post by mnemeth1


Someone offered Somalia as a good example of what happens when there is less government and you pointed out someone who has used it's lack of regulations to his advantage and as such a good example of how things are better with less government. I scratched beneath the surface to show that there are some pretty bad things going on and now your gonna say that all the bad parts of the situation are because of government?

You just don't understand that your idea of people living peacefully under anarchy is not very realistic. You could nay say all you want but the truth is that without law and order you end up with the strong gaining control over the weak and therefore government. It has always happened and will keep happening until people evolve, whatever that means.

reply to post by Magnus47


Yes, people commit crimes, and very little can realistically be done to prevent crime short of violating core tenets of ones civil and individual rights. But we should have people to enforce the right of all parties involved. in the case of fraud, restitution to the victim should be paid and those involved jailed, it's that simple. You don't need a two thousand page bill to enforce fraud, you need a two thousand page bill to hide fraud.

reply to post by daskakik


ITS NOT FLIPPING ANARCHY

YOU GOT THREE

COUNT THEM

THREE

GOVERNMENTS INVOLVED IN INSURGENT ACTIVITIES

reply to post by mnemeth1


Theft is profitable. Without government regulation, who's going to stop a corporation from committing theft? You??

reply to post by Magnus47


Your example of pension theft is so utterly ridiculous I don't even know where to begin.

First off the workers would strike immeidately putting the company out of business.

But lets say the guy didn't care.

Dozens? Hundreds? of armed workers would storm that guys house.

But lets say they are peaceful.

Do you think they might hire a private security agency to arrest that guy and take their property back?

Do you think they might haul him before a private arbitration court and demand compensation?

Or do you think they will just sit back and take it like sheep?

reply to post by projectvxn


I am sorry for what happened, it is indeed disturbing.
But what they endured is not communism, it is only corruption.
I lived in soviet russia and people owned land, in fact people owned many more things, they woke up to capitalism. And now many miss their golden prison

reply to post by projectvxn


If you want to propose that we cut out pork-barrel spending from our government's bills, that's great, I'm with you 100%. What I'm talking about is the proposed lack of ANY government interaction with the private economy at all, a complete "laissez-faire" system if you will, which I am suggesting is a very bad idea.

You guys,

This conversation is totally bunk anyway. Why is everyone getting so hyped up about hypotheticals that have 0 chance of occurring?

Everyone has already acknowledged I believe that there is no perfect situation. Now everything else is left to your opinion.

I guess you could say that about a lot of conversations on here. Although this one seems pretty foolish to me.

Originally posted by Primordial
Does someone, whether it be an individual, government or society, deserve to take the fruits of someones life while their children do not?

Ok, very non condescendingly, does someone deserve to take the fruits of your life away in terms of your education? Titles? Physical fitness? Intellectual ability? or should these things transfer to your children?

Some of them, by nature, are impossible to transfer. Ie; the fruits of your exercise program, or your mental contents. It is simply impossible to transfer these "fruits of your life" to you children. They die with you. Its natural. We all know it. In some countries, your title DID transfer to your children. If you managed to subdue a kingdom, you could pass it on to your heirs. (In others, it didnt) Laws had to be put in place to allow that sort of transfer, and here, in America, we decided against it, using the same Scottish Enlightenment reasoning that led to Darwin, and Smiths works.

From one of the influential thinkers and writers of the time of the founding of this nation, Thomas Paine;

www.ushistory.org...

To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ASS FOR A LION.

Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honors than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honors could have no power to give away the right of posterity, and though they might say "We choose you for our head," they could not without manifest injustice to their children say "that your children and your children's children shall reign over ours forever." Because such an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most wise men in their private sentiments have ever treated hereditary right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils which when once established is not easily removed: many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the plunder of the rest.

The argument I make is simple. Not so simple is the understanding of free markets, and natural selection. If you know both, it is not hard at all. All of this thinking, about excellence rising through competition, and the evil of regulation, etc., are the result of the budding understanding of how natural selection works. It was not called that yet. Its the same idea. Clearly. The language they use, (if anyone cares to read them,) the mechanics they use, are just that. And none other.

All I am saying is, that, more is required to keep a market free then that which Adam Smith proposed. He didnt get it all right. And, he didnt build his system with the assumption of democracy either. (Nor did Plato.) To have the system actually work as intended you have to first recognize it for what it is, and secondly, make it mimic the thing it is intended to. Which means, it is necessary for there to be a periodic reset. (Generational reset in terms of property)

Our founders realized this, and had periodic elections. What they did not account for was that without the other type of reset, the political reset would not function as intended. This was a new concept at the time. Not fully elaborated, in its infancy. They missed something. It happens.

But clearly, they were well aware that in many areas, this reset had to happen, and they were aware of selective forces. If you allow the hereditary transfer of property in a society, you end up with the same non-efficient system economically that you get politically with hereditary monarchy or aristocracy. Its just not complicated. It simply is what it is. It circumvents the natural reset of physical death in biological systems, that keeps the competition moving freely one generation to the next. Each generation competing on their own, and each generation producing its own crop of winners and losers, rather than recycling endlessly the first ones.

Originally posted by Primordial
We already have the system, we just don't follow it. Corruption has ruined it. It's what we all bitch about daily on ATS.

We actually dont have that system. We have a partial version of that system that is being eroded further year by year. We got lucky when America was first founded, that people JUST HAPPENED TO BE on an equal footing, because of the newness of the continent to exploitation, the people who were here being roughly equal due to the roughness, etc. Our system worked so well for 100 or so years because we lucked into the circumstances we wanted to create, but didnt really know how to. Our description was not quite it, but because our circumstances were it, naturally, we did not notice the errors with our system as the initial imbalance took years to develop from a small shimmy to a violent wobble.

We do have corruption, but the system as initially laid out was just so slightly out of whack and that has led to the corruption, fostered it, necessitated it.

And yes, everyone knows there is corruption. And I hear all sorts of really stupid solutions, "lets revolt" or partisan solutions. And replace what with what? Noticing that my hand is hanging off is one thing. Figuring out what caused it, and how to prevent it happening again, and then reattaching it is another entirely.

We need to do more than see THAT we have a problem, we need to identify the root of it, and come up with a fix for it too. Just whining isnt helping us. Nor is knee jerk partisan finger pointing. This is a mechanical problem. It can be logically worked through, and solved. Neither party has the answer, because neither party can figure out why this really isnt working as intended. They are just assuming it is all the other guys fault when the truth is they are both at fault. They are holding an incomplete view of what the system needs to function as intended because the early developers did not have the elaborated theory of natural selection that we do. We actually could fix this. And make it work like the ideal is supposed to. It neednt be a pipe dream.

reply to post by GreenBicMan


Ask the residents of Zimbabwe what they thought the chances of a total economic collapse were prior to their government's "intervention"

Thought exercises are not pointless.

In fact they often prove points.

Originally posted by TheOracle
reply to post by projectvxn

 

I am sorry for what happened, it is indeed disturbing.
But what they endured is not communism, it is only corruption.
I lived in soviet russia and people owned land, in fact people owned many more things, they woke up to capitalism. And now many miss their golden prison

The entire point is you can't have communism without corruption and violence.

That is the point he is making.

Whoosh

reply to post by Magnus47


Look, I'm a Constitutionalist not an anarchist. I want Constitutional oversight. We cannot let law enforcement become law encroachment.

Originally posted by Magnus47
reply to post by projectvxn

 

If you want to propose that we cut out pork-barrel spending from our government's bills, that's great, I'm with you 100%. What I'm talking about is the proposed lack of ANY government interaction with the private economy at all, a complete "laissez-faire" system if you will, which I am suggesting is a very bad idea.

The residents of Somalia that aren't involved in government run militia groups say you are wrong.

reply to post by TheOracle


Russia misses a government that spent their wealth and prosperity on weapons and murder? This is the fate of the US, but among weapons and needless world policing we have an entitled culture.

Stalin murdered millions, so did many, many Soviet regimes.


Communist governments do what is necessary for the State. Well who is the state? If a general in the revolutionary forces needs my family's house, he will have it. If the government wants the money being made on your farm, they will take.

Fidel Castro is a rich man, and when you invest that much power into a governing body this is the crap you get. It works the same in any society that refuses to be vigilant, and refuses to acknowledge their natural rights.


[edit on 14-7-2010 by projectvxn]

reply to post by mnemeth1


How great were they doing before that?

But wait, I'm not getting caught in this trap of a thread. Enjoy

reply to post by mnemeth1


Of course it's not anarchy because anarchy is a pipedream. It doesn't exist and is impossible to achieve because as soon as they have a chance people form groups (gangs) to subdue others. This imposition is what we call government. That is the part that you have trouble with. You can't seem to see the forest for the trees or the government for the people in this case.

Originally posted by daskakik
reply to post by mnemeth1

 

Of course it's not anarchy because anarchy is a pipedream. It doesn't exist and is impossible to achieve because as soon as they have a chance people form groups (gangs) to subdue others. This imposition is what we call government. That is the part that you have trouble with. You can't seem to see the forest for the trees or the government for the people in this case.

I would say its not a pipe dream.

The westward expansion of America was conducted under anarchy.

There was no government, yet peace was maintained and contracts were honored.

A system of private law was established and communities self-organized private courts, security, and arbitration.

The crime rate of the "wild west" was far far below that of a modern city.