It's Capitalism, Not Globalism

says who, fox news, lol

 

Milton Friedman has it wrong on monetary policy. I will give you that, he made an incredible gaffe with his monetary theories. I would offer you Murray Rothbard as a comparable economist of the Friedman era.

 

Corporatism took the liability out of the hands of the rich, no longer could you sue the owners or blame the owner for the mistreatment of employees and customers, ect...

 

Then you haven't been paying attention to what has been said in this and other threads.

Let me repeat a few points so you won't have that objection,

1. Capitalism requires continuing growth of market share, profits, production, consumption, and earnings. There is a limit to how much can be consumed.

2. This continuing expansion depends on credit. This means a continuing expansion of the money supply is necessary and that also means a growing national debt.

3. When downturns occur with their attendant oversupply and crash in demand and resulting high unemployment, the population is harmed economically. Yet the corporation still need and demand profits. So those profits are generated by strategies like cutting production, employment, buying up competitors to reduce total overhead, increasing prices or reducing product size while maintaining prices, pressing for tax cuts, and off-shoring to reduce taxes.

4. In the effort to grow profits, corporations press government to reduce certain regulations and thereby further privatize profits while socializing risks. Damage to the environment increases. And since the truth is that we, as residents of planet earth, are entirely dependent upon the health of our environment for our own health and wellbeing, the capitalist mouthpieces work to belittle environmentalists to reduce resistance to capitalist polluting and destruction.

5. In their need to direct as much of our financial resources to themselves, the capitalists and their captive government constantly work to reduce and divert benefits and "entitlements" and their value from the people to themselves.
Example 1: unions benefitted workers and capitalists have succeeded in reducing unions and membership from about 25% of the workforce to about 7%.
Example 2. We never hear the end of their efforts to shrink or eliminate or privatize Social Security and turn it over to Wall Street.
Example 3. They have succeeded in converting most of employer-funded pensions to mostly-employee-funded IRAs, 401k plans, 403b plans, etc.

6. As time passes and recessions reoccur, overall we see recessions becoming more severe and more protracted. More and more we find that capitalism can no longer solve major problems it creates. It can only provide a temporary "band-aid" and often even that is harmful to the public good. Examples: Healthcare. Crime and incarceration. Education and college debt. Climate Change. Progressive reduction of democracy thru money in politics. Growing income inequality. Immigration problems.

It's just a bit shocking that you would say you know nothing of these things.

 

Personal attacks seem to be important in your strategy.

 

1. capitalism does not require anything but freedom. Thus your assertion that it requires this growth is just your assertion. An untrue one. If an economy consisted of just 5 self sufficient farmers that didn't trade with each other but did respect each others property...they would all be capitalists and not worried a bit about growth.

2. while the current credit based economy does depend on continual expansions of the money supply, this is American and central bank capitalism. Capitalism does not need a central bank to exist. You would be right in suggesting that the folks privy to the central bank's actions benefit perpetually from this. Capitalism would flourish if the Fed tied the money supply to gold and set the reserve rate to 100%...this would effectively shut down the so called 'loaner class'.

3. actions that corporations take that are legal and consensual, lead to efficiency. Efficiency benefits all in an economy not just the producer. The producer gets you your goods cheaper and faster to make you happy.

The only way you can argue against capitalism is to completely ignore the consumer, consent, and efficiency.

 

You chose to perceive it as personal and as an attack. There was no intent for that. If you have had your feelings hurt, I apologize. The intention was to illustrate this is very common and something that many many people get tripped up on including myself prior to my economic education.

If one were to go through life perceiving that everyone who suggested they made a mistake as attacking them...well...

 

That's little more than a bumper sticker slogan, and false.

We have what we have and that is what we must deal with, but this problem is not only ours, but a problem now in just about every capitalist economy. So what "could be" is a theory and not anything we can address at this point.

More empty theory. We have what we have.

Actually I argued as I did, covering reality in addition to any theories I may have mentioned. Your "requirements" are ludicrous.

 

Well, the freedom, the license of capitalists to practice their exploiting, expropriating, plundering, disempowering-of-everyone-else, subversive-of-democracy MO, that is.

 

Well that answer sure was hard to predict.
FOX shills for the finance kings, just like Hillary

 

The source of potential enlightenment (if you can comprehend it):

Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, in various formats (including audio) and free for the taking.

Socialism An Economic and Sociological Analysis is another good one.

 

Only made possible by government granted privilege.
Central control of currency is a key to this. But Marx knew that, and so do you.
He knew there'd be plenty of little tools running around claiming that vast goverment interventions into markets and monopolozation of currency creation enforced by legal tender laws is equal to capitalism. Congrats on the good job

 

Edit ....

 

1. Requirements of capitalism = freedom. Show us any citable text arguing anything else... Or lay out any logical argument disputing such. Everything you think capitalism needs is probably an assumption by you or anyone you formed this idea from. Capitalism needs nothing but freedom. Capitalism is a result of what one or more individuals does with their time and freedom. If you have nothing else in your environment, you have time - every choice you make is an economic calculation where you reject your other opportunities to exploit just one. Whatever benefit or detriment you sow is the return on the investment of your time. You have just capitalized. And all you needed was freedom to choose what is in your own best interest. This is the purest, most basic definition of capitalism and it includes NO requirements other than the ability to chose ie freedom.

2. The United States was on the gold standard. We practiced capitalism with a fixed money supply. The federal government committed a crime against its citizens when it forced the country to turnover its gold.

3. You declare 'my' requirements are ludicrous. Ludicrous describes something that is 'obviously' absurd which implies this thing is unreasonable. If it is unreasonable, you should easily be able to clarify the logical flaw through...reason. You have not done so. People that fight economic doctrine can't fight it with logic. Because it was formed with logic. They have to resort to all other form of rhetorical tactic. But they never can use logic. For if you could use logic to undue any economic doctrine or axiom, there would be a medal waiting for you with your name on it in Oslo, Norway.

 

So, it appears you've little knowledge of economics. Interesting, but not surprising.

 

Congrats. You have succeeded in reducing capitalism to a dogma. And like all dogmas, this one is wrong too. You say freedom. Do you advocate child labor be legal? Do you advocate an end to minimum wages? How about eminent domain rights to take private property? Do you like anti-trust laws? Do you think businesses should be required by law to correctly report earnings and financials? Should the sale of drugs be regulated? In fact, how do you evaluate the public safety and wellbeing in the debate over regulations?

I can't argue that point!

I absolutely did. You said "The only way you can argue against capitalism is to completely ignore the consumer, consent, and efficiency."
I argued against capitalism BY NOTING its effects on consumers.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmmm. Again, no facts; no substantial argument; no evidence. . . . Just a personal attack. -which means you can't come up with an actual argument.

 

I have to tip my cap to you for these questions. These questions do force you to consider the logic and consequences of your positions. I will say this, a couple such as ant-trust and corporate reporting deserve their own threads.

Child labor legal? No.
End of minimum wage? Yes.
Eminent Domain? End it. If the property owner doesn't want to sell, no forcing.
Anti-trust? So long as businesses don't do things that are illegal: lie, cheat, or steal...then, anything they do to compete to earn market share is fine from an economic perspective. If they lie, cheat, steal, or otherwise harm, then they should be punished.
Businesses report earnings and financials? This needs its own thread. I'll just say for now, companies should not be compelled to disclose.
Sale of drugs regulated? As long as courts function properly, regulation would happen organically.

You speak of consumers to argue against capitalism? As consumers in the US, we have access to greater comforts, destinations, food, wine, technology, health, any most anything else you can think of than the greatest pharoahs, emperors, and monarchs of history. I remember this quote from a few years back, there is more information in one New York Times than peasants of feudal times were expected to come across in their lifetimes. Even the poorest among us can afford a newspaper.

Capitalism has spoiled mankind to the point where we have an affliction denoting how good we have it...it's called 'consumerism.' Consumerism is literally the name they give the embarasment of riches that is capitalistic life.

 

Except that's not a fact. You think employers care about salary. They don't. They care about cost of employment. Either you take it all home, or some other people get a chunk. If they could give you the premium instead of administrating the health plan, they would. It's already factored into the price of your labor.

Ah yes, the world revolves around you. Should have figured. It's why you think strangers owe you a living.

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-3...pen-again-and-what-implications-would-it-have

You're welcome to run. It won't stop me from responding to your ridiculous assertions.

 

Thank you.

Then business would be free to pay a pittance when labor supplies are not very, very tight.

Surprising.

Then small businesses are not free to operate without such threats and harm from larger ones.

So investors are subject to misrepresentation and fraud if reports are not required to be accurate and truthful.

Then we would have inadequate testing and danger to the public and generic drugs could destroy a drug company that spent millions on R&D to develop a new drug.

Then my specific arguments are not worth refuting? If we die of pesticide poisoning at age 45 with two cars in the garage and a nice new refrigerator full of food, I guess we lived a good life, eh?

 

Your opinion.

A typical right wing personal attack. No good argument? I made an error. We were talking about whether there was a time when you could get 2-3% over inflation in the bank, and when mortgages were below about 10%. My house was actually bought in the late 70s and the numbers were as I stated.

Great! Finish off with a good personal attack! Nice right winger!!!

 

And how did Americans get all this opulence and comfort? Well, when the Great Depression broke the Average America debt was 25% of income. When the recent recession of 2008 broke it was 125% of income. That's how we got it. And the dangers of so much debt have been all to clearly seen and documented since then.

 

For argument's sake, there are different types of debt, some of it is good.

Asset backed debt is good - house or business. Credit card debt is terrible.

Student loans are good. Wonder how much of that increase in debt is asset backed or student loan in nature.

 

News flash to the OP Communism doesn't work.

But, I do agree that pure capitialism is just as bad. That's why most successful economies are a mixture of both, capitalism, with certain regulations to protect workers, consumers, and ensure the market stays competitive.

 

1. If the market rate for labor is a pittance, then if you are the labor, you would be prudent to find a new labor market or go back to train a new skill. If market wages are low, that is sending the entire society a clear message that the hotel has no vacancies, the ship is full, the show is sold out, it's a seller's market...in other words, go somewhere else.

There many industries that can't find enough good people: IT, Finance, Engineering, Statistics, Nursing (last I checked), Physical Therapy, Actuaries. For some reason, we as Americans prefer not to be flexible and adapt to the job market...we would rather legislate our fortunes.

3. Small businesses should have equal protection under the law. If a large business does anything such as lie, cheat or steal, then we should punish the large business. But any marketing tactic, business promotion, or business strategy that does not violate regular laws should be allowed. If the small business can't compete, then they lose. I do not believe government should decide winners and losers...that is the responsibility of consumers.

4. I don't think it would happen like that - investors would simply need to do significant due diligence. Corporations would release financials when they felt like raising money. Information and risk are related. Investors are going to invest more in the company that shares more data as the unknown recedes, risk does as well. Therefore, I think you would see an environment where the corporation puts as much effort as it wants into reporting for the purpose of raising capital and can invest more of its resources into its operational efficiency. Sarbanes-Oxley and the SEC put enormous pressure on firms for reporting purposes which could otherwise be redirected to productivity.

5. If courts functioned properly, lawsuit and liability risk would provide all the motivation necessary to take the necessary precautions to ensure a safe product hit the market. So long as liability and lawsuits are present, no one would rationally release bad product. The market would be capable to provide further protections such as clinical trial businesses and clinical trial clearinghouses that would release trial information for purchase.

6. If you died of food poisoning at 45, your family would be advised to sue for financial damages and prosecute criminal negligence charges as well. If someone harmed you, they should be made to pay the consequences.

 

What you and your free-marketarian ideological kin apparently don't grok is that the distortions of capitalism, its deviations from the free-marketarian's idealized image of it, are not mere avoidable and fixable accidents; rather, they're the inexorable outworkings of the capitalist system's inbuilt and irremediable tendencies, foibles, and contradictions.