How does capitalism have a happy ending?

That is true, that is happening now. We have secretaries with Masters degrees and can hardly find work. However, I believe that this was caused by the bailouts in 2008 by George W. Bush, and the Stimulus package by President Barack Obama.(Both of these presidents are Progressive in their ideologies but differ because of Political parties) The only one that should have been considered to be bailed out was AIG, if they collapsed, it may have been an economic catastrophe, but I am not entirely certain if that would have been true. GM and the Auto companies should have collapsed instead of getting bail outs, that is how capitalism works, but the politicians wanted a spending spree and campaign money so that took our economy down the tank too. We have almost 17 trillion dollars in debt, our dollar is becoming worthless, and small businesses are not expanding, jobs are not being created as fast as they are being lost. This is because of Government intervention in the economics of the United States which is not a part of Capitalism. The window for employment is small and having a doctorate may only get you so far in this economy.

 

I believe simply solving simple poverty can have a happy ending for us in the US, by better enabling the pursuit of Happiness in our capital based political-economy.

 

Excuse me, here is an idea.

https://sites.google.com/site/informalculture/currency-abolition

 

Thank lord my father, you and a host of other people weren't running the show...

Lehman's collapse produced catastrophe for the market. You would have produced Doom with your views. And I know 17b of debt looks super scary. But do you know what 17b of debt actually means and not what you think it means?

 

I think you are mistaken. China didn't really get into destroying the air & water until they backed off of central planning. They kept a hybrid.. an oscar schindler type of business model, where certain ones, favored by the state, got fabulously wealthy on the backs of slave labor, with no concern to the environment or human freedom or individual worth. That is the statism part. They only had the illusion of 'free market' by letting some 'crony capitalists' run with their entrepreneurial ideas.

The default system, without govt meddling, is not some voluntary kumbaya hippie commune. Businessmen are cutthroat, & will exploit anyone they can for their own enrichment. That is the pattern of the industrial revolution, in both the new & old worlds. THAT is unregulated capitalism. It is just as oppressive to the worker as communism, which pretended to be a happy replacement for it.

The ideal is a govt dedicated to individual freedom, that does not allow the exploitation of the individual citizens. ..one that allows collective bargaining, & encourages entrepreneurs & free market competition. Crony capitalism & socialism do not do that. They mandate production, or use the force of govt to manipulate or predict the markets, which always brings more oppression to the worker.. the people actually doing the work. Socialists & progressives pretend to care for the proletariat, but all their agenda is against them. They keep them trapped in gulags of dependency & state centered workfare. They cannot compete with the connections that the govt cronies have, nor the policies that are stacked against them. Small business is killed by progressive socialism, while mega corporations supply the propaganda & the workers are still getting screwed.. just by a different boss. Instead of a greedy, uncaring capitalist, it is a greedy, uncaring socialist.

"Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true." ~Polish Proverb

 

Meant 17T

 

Ha my host of people haven't been in control of the presidency since the 80's with Reagan! Your host of people has had it since then! Bush's and Obama's plan for economic recovery is deficit spending which was first tried in the great depression by FDR and it failed. We are spending our way to the destruction of the US dollar, and the world is frightened. The world economy is backed by the US dollar and if it goes, we are hated and we will all be poor. I am no expert on the market, but i know well enough that 17 trillion dollars in debt, with much of it owed to China, is a bad thing. If China goes down, they are going to want their money from us. $54,000 per citizen to pay off the debt, that is outrageous.

How would my views cause doom when yours already has?

 

Do you even look at economic indicators? I know the Doom and Gloom internet economic cult likes to cry it is Armageddon Time. But it really isn't.

Not to mention your analysis is wildly different from reality. I would suggest you learn about secured debt, unsecured debt, etc.

 

Please explain how my views are different from reality.

 

They moved from the Soviet model of crony socialism to the US model of crony capitalism.

You are naive to think that the industrial revolution happened without crony capitalism. The entire history of industrialization is nothing but the crony capitalism of co-opted government. There is no great fortune from those times that did not come about without the collusion of government.

There is crony capitalism and crony socialism. They are little different as can be seen in China and Russia. Bakunin predicted it, saying that all the communists wanted to do was replace one oppressive dictatorship with another. For that he and his Anarchists were tossed from the Second International.

That said, it is a huge mistake to paint progressive socialism with the same broad brush as the crony regimes of Russia and China, which have become capitalist because that is where cronies can make the most for themselves. In the developed nations it is the progressive socialists whose pressure reined in the crony capitalism so that small businesses could thrive and a broad middle class arise. All along the way they have been in a continuous battle against crony capitalism, sometimes winning, often losing. Now someone like you comes along and blames progressive socialism for the current state of affairs when they are the only ones who have fought against crony capitalism for the past 100 year.

You think the progressive socialist's don't care?
Just let the crony capitalist take over and you will find out about who cares and who doesn't.

 

I'll take the capitalist, so far they have not been responsible for mass genocide like socialists, fascists and communists have.

Capitalism has its flaws and some regulation is necessary. However, over regulating companies and businesses can have very negative effects for the workers such as downsizing. Under regulation of business was the result of the industrial revolution. The economic freedom of the 1950's and deregulation by President Reagan in the 1980's, allowed for american business and the american people to prosper due to this. Our so called "crony" capitalism, has made the United States unique and prosperous since the foundation of our economy.

China is communist, that is what state capitalism is, even Lenin called his movement "State Capitalism". The state runs the market, AKA command system. Private people run the capitalist market and their success is determined by the demand of the consumer, AKA market system.

 

It was Reagan that started this mess. He ran bigger deficits than any President since by any realistic measure. Bush Sr. carried on in similar fashion. Clinton, with help from the GOP, managed to put the breaks on runaway spending for a short time handing Bush Jr. a near balanced budget.

In 8 years Bush turned a near balanced budget into 1.3 trillion in annual deficit spending. Obama took over a mess and has managed to reduce the deficit ... still a work in progress.

 

You do not know about IBM's involvement in the holocaust? Or the Irish potato famine? Even assuming the 'communist' states were really communist, capitalism has a lot of blood on it's hands.

 

Which is basically the same thing.. it is govt picking & choosing winners, based on relationship with those in power. It is 'oscar schindler' capitalism, where who you know, & connections mean more than competency, creativity, or ability.

You miss my point, or evade it. You claimed 'human cooperation' as the default human condition. I rebutted that claim with an observed view of cutthroat & exploitative human nature. So i don't get your claim that i am naive, when your argument does not address my point.

Crony capitalism is a result of progressive ideology. It is blending the govt with the private sector, where cronies get perks for their relationship with bureaucrats. The goals of progressive socialism use the same means as regular socialism. I have no reason to expect the results will be any different.

 

Haha that's rich. We had tremendous economic growth during the Reagan Administration! Then Bush senior messed it up, then Clinton tried liberal policies to fix it, didnt work and went conservative and he had a profit when leaving office. Obama has INCREASED the deficit since he has taken office! He called Bush Unpatriotic for having 5 trillion dollar addition to the debt, when he has raised it nearly 6 in his first 4 years!

 

Those communist states are the only way that communism can truly exist in reality. It does not work otherwise and even then it fails, Communism does not account for human behavior and requires everyone to have the same thinking mind...no individuality. According to the Jewish National Library "Certainly, the dynamics and context of IBM's alliance with Nazi Germany changed throughout the twelve-year Reich....Make no mistake. The Holocaust would still have occurred without IBM. To think otherwise is more than wrong. The Holocaust would have proceeded — and often did proceed — with simple bullets, death marches, and massacres based on pen and paper persecution." This was also IBM Germany. The Irish Potato Famine was caused by Absentee Land lords that were absent from the farmland and England making Ireland the Breadbasket of the Industrial revolution. With the prosperity in both nations, the population soared and when the lands failed, much of the population starved and Capitalism did not systematically murder those people. Even if I am wrong, Communism, Facism, and Socialism have millions more deaths than capitalism ever had if it had much at all.

 

I'll ignore all of the 'human nature' propaganda. People are empathetic beings not absurdly self-interested psychopaths. Most of human history was lived under primitive communism, and we've had various forays into more advanced instances - Anarchist Catalonia for example.The USSR was against human nature in the same way that other capitalist countries are - it is natural to react against wage labour, to want to have some control over your own life and place of work.

Without IBM's involvement the Holocaust would have been just another pogrom. I big one, granted, but not slaughter on an industrial scale. It would have been smaller by at least an order of magnitude. The countries of the world could have blockaded IBM Germany's supply and production routs but they chose not to. The punch cards and punch card machines provided by IBM were vital in organizing and carrying out the Holocaust. Every death camp had an IBM station. The Nazis needed an automated system to keep track of everyone, this was genocide on a scale only possible under industrial capitalism.

 

You forget that IBM Germany was under a Fascist government, right? IBM was giving those punch card machines out when the Nazis came into power. I never said businesses could not be corrupted, but capitalism itself has provided many with the opportunity to succeed. Humans look for whats best for themselves and their families, and if working with other humans is the answer, then so be it, but we are no longer as primitive as we once were. The ways to survive in life have changed and the way for people to thrive in life has as well. Even the Bible says no one is righteous or free of sin, but we must strive to be charitable and compassionate, not set up a giant government that punishes success in life like so many communist nations have. True communism cannot exist because humanity has a need to progress, and a want to be rewarded for doing well for what their hard work has accomplished. Freedom is the right for us to strive to be more than we can possibly imagine, and that our hard work will be rewarded.

 

What do you think caused the great famine in Ireland?
Ireland exported food to England the entire time that the Irish were dying like flies from starvation.
The colonization of the world in the 1800s was so driven by capitalism seeking markets that it was called the age of Merchantilism. Millions died.

The "economic freedom" you cite created an environmental catastrophe in the US that is still being cleaned up at huge expense to the economy. Regulations come in response to wrongdoing. If the US business community was not so craven there would be no need to regulate it so heavily, but since it has proven itself unable to behave responsibly over and over again, it deserves all the regulation it gets.

China is about as close to Lenin's ideas of "State Capitalism" as Goldman Sachs is these days.

There are market systems and then there are free markets. Do not be confused into thinking that every market system is a free market, especially where capitalism and cronyism are involved.

 

If you had cared enough to look at my other posts, i have already commented on the Great Irish Famine, you also realize that it was Economic and military Imperialism in the Progressive Era in the United states and Europe. I never said every market system is free market, but capitalism is a market system and is based on the Free market system which involves laissez faire (no government involvement). Cite the Environmental Catastrophe you speak of. State how Goldman Sachs (a private company) is similar to a totalitarian communist nation that exploits its citizenry.

 

[MENTION=64404]Defender of Freedom[/MENTION] definitely hadn't learn ANYTHING about history of his ancestors but too much ideology. How about you learn something like the Crusades, English Empire, American civil war etc?...

I had said in other site, let along the dogmas of socialism and communism, both of them have higher mental needs than capitalism. Capitalism is necessary for the foundation (being rich is comping with human nature), but for a long run it should lead to socialism(being relaxing and happy), then to communism.
Communism is more a Utopia dream though but it's the final destination of human development, when you think deeper about Maslow's hierarchy of what we human needs.

 

I think in these forums we talk past each other a lot, because of differing definitions. When an american talks about 'capitalism', most of the time, they mean free market capitalism, as was practiced in most of our history, especially before the federal reserve & the govt began to meddle with the markets & currency. Trying to compare american capitalism in the 1900s with english monarchies from the 18th or 19th centuries is not a valid comparison. There, you had clear statism in place, where the king was supreme.. capital was not, nor were there 'free' markets. So it's a bit of a stretch to blame the irish potato famine on american free market capitalism, when it was policies of the monarchy, in addition to some blight, which caused most of the suffering for the irish people. Now, were american capitalists happy to exploit the irish when they came to america? Yes they were. And, there were many injustices that took place in those times. But they were not because of the economic system, but they were standard operating procedure for the time. The industrial revolution was not a result of kumbaya utopian dreaming, but the drive of greedy tycoons & robber barons, who exploited the worker. The rise of socialism in that period did NOT help the worker, but just changed bosses. The proletariat were no better off under the czar than under the communist party bosses. It was not the system, but the free reign of the state, that enabled the exploitation. In america, unions & collective bargaining improved conditions & forced legislation providing safer, responsible working conditions. This is a valid role of govt, imo, to protect the little guy from being exploited by the big guy. It has a few flaws, but is lightyears better than anything else, including state run, stated centered control of all the markets, or 'socialism lite', which is basically 'oscar schindler' crony capitalism.

The flaws we see in the current capitalist model are because of statism, or central planners manipulating the currency & the markets. It is crony capitalism run amok, stifling competition, using the power of the state to promote the crony of the bureaucrat or politician.

 

That's the one thing the capitalists won't tell you, but it's true. How can you have rich if you don't have poor?

 

I have learned about those specific subjects, in fact they are some of my favorite to study. My ancestors immigrated from Germany and France in the 1850's. He ran a farm and lived out the American dream, my Great Grandfather was Cherokee and my great grandmother was half Cherokee. My beliefs are my own, and I know plenty about my history, the good and the bad. Do not question my knowledge of those subjects. You are only creating a distraction. You neglect the history of how communism, socialism, fascism, and totalitarianism have only brought destruction and tyranny to the world.

Communism, socialism, and fascism have destroyed many nations since their creation. It does not make any drive for innovation in technology. Millions upon millions have been systematically murdered because of it. It is a taker of freedom. Do you even know what 'Utopia' means? It is ancient Greek for 'No Place.' Capitalism has lasted much longer than either one of those economic systems and still provides people with the opportunity to succeed and gives them the freedom to choose how we can live them. It leaves the individual responsible for their actions, good or bad.

 

Capitalism is a market system that is not based on the free market. In capitalism concentrations of resources are used to control markets, to skew the playing field in the favour of concentrated capital. This requires extensive government interference in all markets. The idea of laissez faire is that the government concern itself only with the suppression of objections to any depredations that capitalist enterprise may visit upon the populace. In this aspect the government of China and Goldman Sachs are much the same.

Really, you have no idea of the history of the US environment?
By 1970 there were few major lakes and rivers in the US that were not so polluted that it was unsafe to swim in them, let alone drink the water. Many cities were so regularly inundated with unsafe air that sick and elderly people would die or become hospitalized so regularly that hospitals established protocols based on levels of air pollution. In 1969, as the Senate was debating the Clean Water Act, the Cuyahoga River caught fire and burned for hours, damaging three bridges.

It has been estimated that cleaning up the environmental damage of the past 150 years of unregulated industrialization has had an average cost 3-5% of GDP per year since 1970 and will continue to do so for another 50 years. If environmental regulations are not strictly enforced the expense of environmental cleanup will go on indefinitely. China is experiencing the same environmental catastrophe that the US faced 50 years ago. The unavoidable job of cleaning up the mess from their rush to industrialization will be even more expensive and prolonged, rising to as much as 10% of GDP over the next 50 years.