Why Capitalism Fails

Originally posted by ldyserenity

The real problem with normal capitalism is that it nearly works out well - if it was a clear disaster it would be changed. It is by far, the most likely path of the future. The privileged and stratified society, continuing indefinitely in one form or other, probably with some assistance to the poorest as a matter of conscience.

The statement that Capitalism is the "most likely path of the future" basically refutes the assertion that Capitalism has failed.

There's no such thing as a "perfect model" of Capitalism, or of Socialism, or of a Democratic Republic, for that matter. We do not live in a black-and-white world — our diversity of background and perception and thinking makes a black-and-white, yes-or-no, true-or-false, easily-defined existence impossible.

IF/THEN/GOTO only works for the most basic intelligence, on the order of a bacterium. Absolute values and perfection simply don't exist in our much more sophisticated (and some would say retarded) world of Human understanding.

Only in the perfect sense is Capitalism a failure. But, if Capitalism is a failure, then Socialism is a torture device, and a Democratic Republic is a vaudeville routine performed for the distraction and amusement of the masses.

All of which is true, by the way.

— Doc Velocity






[edit on 7/14/2010 by Doc Velocity]

It's really much easier than that. Capitalism is based on perpetual growth, which is inherently impossible in a limited resource existence. Capitalism is the biggest pyramid scheme going. Status quo is never acceptable, gains are required, the bottom line is More, Newer, Fastest, Slowest...always reaching for whatever extremes we think we Must Have thanks to brainwashing, but we sit on one planet that is already stressed from our overreaching system. Basically capitalism is like a cancer with growth coming at the ultimate expense of the host. Without access to other planets for more elbow room, more resources, more places to grow more customers, we are sprinting down a dead end and drinking energy drinks to go even faster

Originally posted by jaxnmarko
Basically capitalism is like a cancer with growth coming at the ultimate expense of the host.

Tell the truth.

Humanity is the cancer. Humanity depletes and distresses and exhausts the natural resources. Humanity does not contribute to the health of the ecosystem, particularly with our present morbidly bloated population of entitled beggars and entitled elite, throttling the worker — the real whipping boy of our civilization — as he trudges onward, robotically performing the menial tasks that need performing to sustain the arrogant elite and the covetous poor.

I pity the worker. But I also have Faith in the worker to cast off the shackles of socialism and crush the central government.

Perhaps Rick Moranis said it best:

During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!

— Doc Velocity




[edit on 7/14/2010 by Doc Velocity]

Why capitalism can never work

Originally posted by Enf0rc3rIn real life, if u work hard, u will make money.

If hard work was the only/best/easiest way to make money then the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Windsors etc. would be the ones doing all the hard work.

[edit on 14-7-2010 by whateverpedia]

Originally posted by Enf0rc3r
Difference here is that in real life u dont get a liberal professor failing you automatically. In real life, if u work hard, u will make money. Simple concept that has made America the power house it is today.

Thats not strictly true, for example take the modern day, no matter if you have studied for 3 years at university and got great grades it doesn't necessarily mean that you are guaranteed to get a job. When you do eventually find employment you have masses amounts of debt to pay back to the people that the OT is talking about.

In real life if you work hard and keep your head down you can survive there is a difference between surviving and succeeding IMHO.

Let me tell you what is "reality"... I had a physics professor (head of the department, in fact), back in 1980, who wasn't teaching physics, he was teaching politics. He was a big Liberal, and he was confrontational, challenging you as you walked into a room unprepared. In 1980, I was still politically confused, having a young, underdeveloped brain, so I tended to listen to these "authority figures" as I struggled to connect my neural wiring.

This professor told me, in no uncertain terms, that he would flunk me in a physics class if I didn't come around to drink at his political trough. Not just me, he told the whole class.

I know, it sounds crazy, but this sonofabitch was strong-arming a physics class. Well, we were all young and dumb and full of cum and we took his brashness with a shot of joviality. It was a "fun" class. I figured, What the fekk, I'm open to this "experience"

That's how humans are at that stage. Our fekking brains are wide open and we only have a few pertinent neural connections. At age 20, our neural wiring is dangling like dreadlocks all about us, awaiting our life experiences to plug in each neural pathway.

I passed the class, but not because I went hard Left.

Reason Number One, I was smart enough to grasp fringe theory, but Number Two was the golden reason... I went to a party off-campus and I accidentally walked in on this same physics prof sodomizing a student.

I shrugged. I passed.

And, baby, you better believe there's all kinds of "trade" going on all across the campus, the history dean is porking two or three ignorant but well-meaning college girls, the chemistry prof is probably peddling pharmaceuticals on the side, and the Phys Ed administrator is having a pot party Thursday night at the field house.

So much for the role models and idealism in our halls of learning.

— Doc Velocity

reply to post by mnemeth1
Suppose there was not much food left in the world and someone owned it all. That person then swaps a bag of apples for a starving mans home and all his belongings. You'd have to have a rather mercenary attitude in order to consider that a mutual benefit.I know the example's extreme, but I think the point's clear.

Look around you, big business isn't driven by a concern for fairness, it's driven by targets and profit and that's exactly why the world's the way it is.

There's nothing inherantly wrong with capitalism, but unfortuneately it rewards greed, so until mankind is without this self-serving motivation, it will ultimately favour bad people.

All the money has only ever been going in one direction and if you're lucky enough to snag a bit of it as it passes you by, then apparently you've succeeded in life.

I couldn't point to communism or socialism as a preference because I've seen no successful example of it, but what I do know is that this system is failing - right in front of us and right now.

This example has nothing to do with capitalism, nor has the western worlds economies - we have fascism.

Pointing the finger at capitalism is useless, the problem is not free markets - it is rigged markets.

reply to post by links234


Actually the great evil that was JP Morgan along with the Federal Government intervening to both actively suppress and confiscate his work after death was not his friend. Had the gov not intervened and the market allowed to work, we probably wouldn't be dealing with the environmental problems we deal with today, as result of his work. For a good account of this episode, i suggest reading Babylon's Banksters by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Originally posted by whateverpedia
If hard work was the only/best/easiest way to make money then the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Windsors etc. would be the ones doing all the hard work.

The Rothschilds and Vanderbilts, et cetera were the quintessential smart workers. They had the money to gather the smartest people around them and let them do the work, creating whole communities, creating jobs wherever they went.

I'm not quite clear on this perpetually fallacious contention that the wealthy are somehow toxic.

The wealthy necessarily create jobs. What else are they gonna do? Look, let's say I have a lot of money. What should I DO with it? Do I give it to Joe, sitting over there?

Okay, I paid him. Wow.

I paid Joe for just being alive.

I created a job. The transaction of money for services rendered.

The Vanderbilts have paid thousands of people to work for them for decades, thousands of families are dependent on the Vanderbilts to this very day.

So why do the wealthy get such a bad rap? They PROVIDE for the masses. They CARRY the masses. They pay 90% of all income taxes.



— Doc Velocity




[edit on 7/14/2010 by Doc Velocity]

reply to post by Doc Velocity


It sounds like you'd enjoy going back to a feudal system. Where the wealthy should be praised because they give us our jobs and pay for our mortgages and rent, which in some cases, go right back to them.

The wealthy may pay 90% of the income tax, but that's simply because they make so much more money! The top 10% of earners pay 85% of the income tax...not because they're taxed so much more, but because they make that much more!

From Forbes.com:

The 400 highest-earning taxpayers in the U.S. reported a record $105 billion in total adjusted gross income in 2006, but they paid just $18 billion in tax, new Internal Revenue Service figures show. That works out to an average federal income tax bite of 17%--the lowest rate paid by the richest 400 during the 15-year period covered by the IRS statistics.

Just to throw some more math from the article, that's an average annual income of $263,000,000 for 400 people.

There's nothing that bothers me more than the argument against the shackles of government on the people while ignoring the shackles of capitalist corporations in our everyday lives!

first, i'd like to point out that america isn't truly capitalist. capitalism is by no means perfect, but its the best system we've got. the thing keeping us down is the monetary system, not capitalism. our paper money is based on debt, every dollar you own is a dollar someone owes someone else. with this system, the more wealth you get, the poorer others become. if money was backed by gold, every penny you earned would have its own value.

would a totally free market work? no. people are too corrupt, and the masses are easily duped. but with well thought out restrictions, and every citizen doing their part by educating themselves, it can last for quite some time before a revolution is needed.

Originally posted by links234
reply to post by Doc Velocity

 

It sounds like you'd enjoy going back to a feudal system. Where the wealthy should be praised because they give us our jobs and pay for our mortgages and rent, which in some cases, go right back to them.

The wealthy may pay 90% of the income tax, but that's simply because they make so much more money! The top 10% of earners pay 85% of the income tax...not because they're taxed so much more, but because they make that much more!

From Forbes.com:

The 400 highest-earning taxpayers in the U.S. reported a record $105 billion in total adjusted gross income in 2006, but they paid just $18 billion in tax, new Internal Revenue Service figures show. That works out to an average federal income tax bite of 17%--the lowest rate paid by the richest 400 during the 15-year period covered by the IRS statistics.

Just to throw some more math from the article, that's an average annual income of $263,000,000 for 400 people.

There's nothing that bothers me more than the argument against the shackles of government on the people while ignoring the shackles of capitalist corporations in our everyday lives!

the doc is right. "a poor man has never given me a job".

i think you don't really hate capitalism, you hate corrupt officials and corporations. in the current system, the only reason money has value, is because there are people in debt. this means someone must own the debt the first person owes. if the dollar were backed by something tangible, what you earned would be actual wealth, not a piece of paper that says someone owes you "x" amount of work, and that you will trade those work hours for something else.

As has already been said multiple times, this is a biased and manipulated experiment called a real life example of capitalism, by an obviously uninformed professor. As for if capitalism has failed, capitalism hasn't failed under itself. It's all the colluding and lobbying and debt spending between government and corporations that has been misinterpreted as capitalism, that is failing.

reply to post by Doc Velocity


I wouldn't exactly be referring to the Rothschild's as an example of capitalism. If anything they are examples that socialists would use to tell people how horrible the current system is. When one family like the Rothschild's own all the media networks, central banks, and basically the governments of the world, we've reached a point where this isn't even Fascist economics, this is practically a world Monarchy. (If the conspiracies are accurate at all)

These families are given a bad rap, because they effectively control everything. They aren't family businesses, they are a powerful group of family members who want to force people into using their products, their money, their news, electing their politicians, their financial safety nets (welfare, social security unemployment, unions etc...), and their education. So they can achieve some kind of cartoonish world domination plan.

If this is capitalism, shoot me, because the above is a nightmare to navigate and become successful and the alternatives would kill my soul. The system needs to be torn down and ripped asunder, and replaced with Doc Velocity's Economic Darwinism, with government only using laws to prevent collusion, monopolies, punish fraud, and enforce false advertising laws.

On a side-note, Universities/Colleges have become these monstrous behemoths that have essentially made it impossible for anyone who doesn't go to college get a good salary based job. We have so many people going to college now, that they can't find a job after 4 years there! I don't see how others can't see this. You create a huge amount of debt to go to college to get paid crap wages for the first 10 years of your career, then get laid off because the company or schools can get someone else out of college for what they paid you and you still have this huge debt weighing on you without a way to pay it back. There's no winning! My Dad is going through this right now. He's spent a 100,000 dollars for all the schooling he's done just to be told he's overqualified for half the positions he applies for and his salary would cost too much for the rest! If you're a high school graduate, the careers you're limited to are fast-food, gas stations, and grocery store clerk. How do we fix this? How do we get back to making a healthy wage without becoming massively in debt? When did it become necessary to spend thousands of dollars on education to get a job, and if you didn't you are called stupid and are worth nothing to people socially and professionally?

I was reaslly intrigued by the title of this post and opened it excited to see that PERHAPS someone had unravelled the Capitalist code and could demonstrably prove that Capitalism cannot work. I was saddned and disappointed to read the OP to see that the example cited isn't even remotley close to capitalism, it is a prime example of fascism.

You see, in TRUE Capitalism, there would be no rationing of grades - it would be both unneccessary and CONTRARY to what Capitalism can provide a society. If every one of those students worked hard, there would be no reason why they ALL couldn't have received an "A". IN Socialism or Communism, the average grade would have been assigned everyone in the classroom, thus distributing the fruits of the collective labor to the group. In Fascism, one could view the professor as the "Government" and readily see that the professor has the ability to arbitrarily determine who fails and who succeeds and to what extent despite the effort f the students.

You see, this is why modern neo-capitalsim is failing, because it is not Capitalism at all - in fact, it is Fascism. The government creates an obstructive and burdensome business environment that does not ensure a level playing field for all competitors in a given marketplace. This is done through regulations, legislation, corporate loan guarantees, tax breaks etc... This creates an unfair advantage for some while crippling other worthy competitors.

The real question then becomes, How does THAT happen? Simply stated, through graft! Graft comes in the form of campaign contributions, promises of future employment etc... Large corporations with deep pockets can influence the regulatory and legislative practices of the government to ensure that the competitive climate is slanted in their favor. Worse yet is that these same large corporations can "Sponsor" and fund candidates who are already firmly behind creating a regulatory environment that would generally impede a competitive marketplace.

So, you see, your post OP is a non-sequitur... your conclusion is not related to your premise as they are completely different arguements. A fallacious argument is NEVER a sound argument!

Originally posted by Enf0rc3r
Difference here is that in real life u dont get a liberal professor failing you automatically. In real life, if u work hard, u will make money. Simple concept that has made America the power house it is today. The professor was a complete idiot, ad used a biased model of capitalism based on his political views to hammer home a point that some people aren't good enough in his world to succeed.

if you mean succeed in living at a bare minumum, you're right. american people in the past have lived in this type of society, where the wealthy have lived in grandour, while the regular people worked 10 to 12 hours a day just to put food in their mouths and have a place to sleep. if you do not belief that, then you need to do some reading of this country's history from a hundred years ago.
there are people that work hard now, at minimum wage, that live in squalid conditions...you just don't see it on the main stream media.
tell me how you would live working full time at the minimum wage of $7.65 an hour, that is gross wages before taxes, with no benefits, and no cost of living increases?
and if you think the wealthy that inherited that wealth, work hard...you are either one of them, or are being fooled into believeing that line of gargbage.

reply to post by Enf0rc3r


You replace every job everywhere with robots : then ?

"Capitalism is good" ? uh uh ... do you have a brain ?

reply to post by mnemeth1


no : you are wrong : education is also psychology if you destroy people happiness, and willl to live : then ? they work, or they can't have a job, they obey, they take medicine, and they commit suicide (violence against them)

or they use violence on other people.

[edit on 14-7-2010 by psychederic]

Capitalism is a big fail, 2 main flaws are:

1) Cyclical Consumption - The whole capitalistic system is inherent on people consuming yet our planet only has finite resources, we will run out if we don't stop and change to a better system in which we can intelligently manage our earths resources.

2) Technical Unemployment - The more laws, restrictions and taxes that come in the more employers will look at the easy way to reduce costs for their business and that is to hire/buy machines rather than humans to do the work, therefore humans will not have the purchasing power anymore to consume.

Some major flaws in capitalism and very unsustainable.