It's Capitalism, Not Globalism

Although societies with mixed economies do indeed give many workingpeople a tolerable material quality of life, these societies are still essentially capitalistic; that is, their power structure is still one that features a capitalist ruling class, the subversion of democracy, and the economico-political disenfranchisement of working-class citizens. Mm-hmm, politically workers still find themselves reduced to subjects of the plutocratic powers that be, rather than being dignified citizens of genuine democracies; they're still gypped out of being empowered owners of the forces of production; still essentially wage slaves; still reduced to mere tools of capitalist exploiters; still subjected to commodification, to the commodification of their labor/creativity and the resulting alienation from their creative nature; still subjected to the reification of social relations, to a culture of reification in which they no longer connect with one another as human beings; in short, workingpeople still suffer from an existential state of affairs fundamentally characterized by disempowerment, depersonalization, and dehumanization. An existential state of affairs which they still obviously need to be liberated from if they're to know a more fully human form of life. Well, this would be an obvious need and imperative if so many of us weren't trapped in the sort of false consciousness fostered by capitalist societies.

 

I can relate to it. I just have learned through an economic curriculum that the intuitive beliefs we have about economies are often quite destructive if not ruinous. Socialism is absolutely ruinous. Varying degrees of socialism added to free market yields merely resistance to growth not full on blockade.

Economic solutions come from reason. Many greats have already done the heavy lifting by illuminating these axioms. We have only to look in the mirror as a society for disregarding them. You disregard hundreds of years of economic thought because you are unwilling to part ways with emotion to learn.

Sad state of affairs.

 

That would be the government granting of privilege part. I just said that. But thanks for repeating.

By the way, only a dunce thinks they will eliminate the corrupting effects of big government in any system that is implemented.

 

Lets start with the presumption that big government is inherently corruptive
The logival correlary would seem to be the big governments would self destruct and be replaced by superior forms of givernment.
Logically, these small governmental forms must prevail due to their inherent superiority

Yet observation does not provide de facto confirmation of the incontrovertable truth that small government is superior and will inherently replace ineffective big government structures. In fact, the reverse seems true. Large companies prevail over small ones... large countries have replaced innumerable small countries... empires have consistently prevailed over tribes

At some point, i thinkwe have to question our absolute faith in the incontrovertable premise that small is obviously superior to big

 

Heh heh heh. The asset-backed debt called a "home mortgage" was not very good for 3.5-4 million foreclosed homeowners.

 

Unfortunately, that answer amounts to blaming the victim. Too many people cannot just quit their clerk job at a grocery store, get trained for a job as an actuary, and build a new career. I changed careers 4 times, but I recognize that is not practical for everyone and that the problem is systemic.

Then given the size and staying power of large corporations, they will continue to gobble up and/or crush small competitors. So small businesses are doomed in your plan and you end up enabling and allowing the corporate march to monopoly.

And professional investors with knowledge and access would succeed while "mom-and-pop" investors would typically lose. Great plan.

You seem to think corporations obtain money from the public purchasing their stock.

Problems: a drug company like Pfeizer might have $10 million to spend on a team of top-notch attorneys (a pittance to them) while a person whose liver was destroyed giving them a death sentence may have $50,000 or nothing and no time for a lawsuit, --or a class action suit may, after years of litigation, provide a small measure of partial relief to injured patients while the attorneys get rich off them.

Prevention of injury is what is needed. A lawsuit after the damage is done is not an answer and I'm surprised anyone would need to point this out.

Yup. Again, after the fact. This is not an answer. It's an attempt to avoid creating a safe, healthful society in the name of "preserving freedom" for those who do such damage and such injury for profit. For them, lawsuits are factored-in as a cost of doing business and you prefer that to prevention of such things. This is a case of giving all to the top corporations and leaving the public to figure it out for themselves with the deck stacked against them. And that is exactly what, more and more, "we-the-people" are fighting. Your "solutions" are gifts to the top corporations and the top 1%.

 

It's Capitalism, Not Globalism

It sure did suck in the Chinese.

 

How would you or anyone know since we have never seen a settled, "finished" socialist society? You can't judge how a German Shepard behaves by watching a wolf hybrid.

 

this argument can be refuted by simple boolean logic. It could self destruct and be replaced by a king or a host of other worse options. Therefore your logical conclusion is false

 

And yet the overall, average direction is forward and upward.

 

Yes, they were idiots to take out loans they could never afford to pay

 

Ok well I guess you are thoroughly unaware of the various tricks and pressures and lies they were told by those who sold sub-prime mortgages.

For anyone with a measure of common sense the fact that there were so many cases of foreclosure would be sufficient evidence that blaming the victim is not appropriate, not even to mention the crooked tactics.

 

First we do not have a capitalist status quo we have a Neofascist status quo in which, truth be told, the government daily controls more and more parts of everyone's life. If we had actual capitalism, Washington Mutual wouldn't be dead, Pontiac and Dodge wouldn't be part of GM and Lincoln wouldn't be owned by Ford just to name a few.

2nd The difference between Neofascism and socialism is that under true socialism the state controls the major means of production as in Britain until Margaret Thatcher. This eventually fails unless savage repression is in place simply because every body know who to blame when things run of the rails as they eventually always do no matter what economic system is in play. Under Neofascism there remains the appearance of private ownership but in reality such ownership carries markedly little freedom of action since virtually every thing corporate managers do is hemmed in on every side by increasingly vague and increasingly limiting legislation. So that in the end the CEO is just another state employee though better paid than most whose primary job description is to make sure the bureaucrats receive the proper paper work on time and only secondarily to turn a profit for the shareholders and the government as well.

 

Ok so you have absolutely no idea at all what socialism is. This has been dealt with in this thread and others with well documented authority. Apparently you either haven't read it or you're incapable of learning the reality about this subject.

See also the thread "Refuting the Standard Arguments Against Communism and for Capitalism" - http://www.politicalforum.com/polit...d-arguments-against-communism-capitalism.html

 

A result of malinvestment. The Fed does need to be eradicated and fractional banking reserves should be set to 100%. In this way, people would not be misled by artificial interest rates.

In our inflationary economy, those at the end of a credit run are usually casualties. It is akin to a ponzi scheme.

But before we get too far, central and fractional reserve banking are NOT requirements for capitalism...not in the least. We can thank the original goldsmiths of London for inventing fractional lending.

 

Oh my, here you go again with the usual conservative preoccupation with the government, failing to discern that the chief badness of the government is that it's (as Marx pointed out quite some time ago) the executive committee of the ruling class. The abolition of a ruling class is the ultimate remedy that we should be focused on. And of course this requires the abolition of a system such as capitalism, which inherently makes for economic inequality, the disempowerment of workers, and therefore the existence of a grossly economically and politically overempowered capitalist class that uses the state as an instrument of its hegemony in a systematically oppressive fashion.

 

^ SUMMARY: Government to seize all money and resources - and allot it equally to all people of the world, for which every American adult should receive a government check each year for $7000 as their sole income for working at the job ordered by the government.
www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/10/07/average_earnings_worldwide/

 

Well, one might more plausibly summarize your ideology as one that advocates a form of economy and society in which a private plutocratic class controls most of the wealth and political power, and the rest of humanity suffers the consequences of its disempowerment.

 

One, they couldn't afford those homes at zero percent or even negative rates. Two, the banks should have gone down with their bad business deals. Three, the gogernment sanctioned FED created the bubble and the Clinton Whitehouse passed Gramm leech bliley that allowed the derivatives market that propagated the bubble. Four, Clinton, Rubin and Greenspan chopped Brooksley Born, the chairman of the CFTC when she tried to put a stop to the out of control derivatives trading in 1999. Five Bush and Obama saved the banks and allowed them to be more powerful and unstable than before they bankrupted themselves. Six, the FED has poured trillions into these banks while the average guy has been cheated out of trillions in interest due to zero percent intrresto rates for eight years running. Yes, your big loveable corporatist government has screwed the citizens in every way imaginable and the simpletons still think free markets have caused their problems.

Dumb asses lost homes they should have never purchased in the first place. Of course you will claim that they weren't smart enough to know better, then you'll tell me how they are smart enough to vote

 

1. If we do not have a workforce of flexible, intelligent people that can accumulate new skills in a short period of time...then we simply don't have a productive workforce for productivity relies on these characteristics. There is no replacement for education and development of skill - this is not optional to sustaining oneself. It is not the fault of the firm that the worker is inept. If the worker does not take responsibility for his or her skill level, do you think the government should? The moment the government provides a safety net for this type of individual, you give their future expectations of productivity the kiss of death for any productivity they would have provided died the moment they recieve the subsidy. The answer for your own fate lies within your own heart and mind.

Should the person who does not, can not, or cares not to adapt to a changing world share the spoils of someone who does apply this effort? If you are naturally unskilled, there are massive markets in terms of housing, food, clothing, and even healthcare that would cater to your limited income and limited ability to improve your station in life. How would you reconcile the differences in motivation, talent, and work ethic of mankind in any other way than to allow all to get what they earn?


On corporations - I worked for the largest software company in the world and the largest bank in the world. I would say both were competitive, but neither were any where close to being invincible. Corporations suffer from a lack of innovation which according to the Innovator's Dilemma is intrinsic to large orgs. Innovators are a constant threat to large corp marketshare.


Mom and pop investors would not have any less or more advantage in a limited information environment due to the symmetry of information axiom of economics. You may not subscribe to this axiom, but it states that as soon as public information is revealed, the competitive advantage it yields erodes to zero...immediately. Based on this identity, mom and pops would fare no better and no worse. Perhaps more insider trading would occur...if so, raise the punishments. Insider trading is not something to trifle even today, double the jail time and you would true fool to dare try it.


Corporations do recieve money from the public whenever they issue debt or stock.


Lawsuits are a deterrent and thus a preventative measure. I can tell you from experience, the climate of sexual harassment lawsuit in corporate America is such that no one dares play with it. If you compared worklife of today to the 60's and 70's, it is night and day...would you not say that is due primarily for sexual harassment lawsuits? There is no law that says you can not ask a woman to wear a shorter skirt to work. This statement itself would be protected by freedom of speech. The only way the United States punishes for this is through lawsuit. Our litigious environment curtails many behaviors ranging from sexual harassment to workplace safety.

The market is probably the most underestimated force of nature in the world. It is capable of delivering the same results most people seek from the government in less time and less money spent and more people satisfied.

 

Any fellow Walking Dead fans out there? Well, to describe the fundamental reality of the capitalist order in the bluntest terms possible, the capitalist ruling class is Negan decreeing that its members own the means of production, that they owns us, in the sense of commodifying and owning our labor; and that we all work for them, provide for them; that they will expropriate most of the value that our labor creates and just allow us to keep enough to keep going and producing. Of course the capitalist system has a bit more sophistication going for it, to add insult to injury we’re indoctrinated with ideology, beliefs that disguise its harsh and unjust reality, that dupe us into thinking that capitalists controlling the means of production and owning our labor is a legitimate and normal state of affairs; that we’re free because we’re at liberty to choose whether we’ll be exploited by capitalist A or capitalist B, because we’re mere wage slaves rather that chattel slaves, because the whip used by our capitalist masters to motivate and control us is a wage rather than a literal whip. But, of course, when workers attain an understanding of the truly unfree and unjust nature of their condition and begin to call for the destruction of the capitalist status quo, or when the overseas victims of the imperialism practiced by our capitalist overlords attempt to fight back, well, then Lucille, in the form of law enforcement and its nightsticks and guns, or the weaponry and waterboards of the military and CIA come out and head-bash, terrorize, and murder us into submission. Thus and so does the capitalist ruling class victimize the rest of humanity, and maintain its parasitical and plutocratic position in the economico-political hierarchy of capitalist society. Yes, behold the dispiteous true character of the capitalist system.

 

Einstein predicted what two or three outcomes of physics that he never observed: black holes, white holes, and something else I'm not a physicist. I may not even have the first two right. Stephen Hawking predicted Hawking radiation which I think was just proven to be observed...again not a physicist.

Anyways, my point is that through sheer critical thinking alone we can discover truth. We have our ideas and propositions challenged by our peers and torn to shreds if possible. What's left is consensus.
Modern economics was born in 1776 with Adam Smith's publishing of the Wealth of Nations. We have had many individuals contribute to the science over the years even the god father of socialism. Sure economics is not a hard science like chemistry or physics, but this has not prevented us from discovering certain axioms that hold absolutely.

Economics just has the dubious distinction of being so closely related to politics that in my opinion, it is nearly impossible to discuss without bias. But when you do stand back, and examine economies with a mathematical and or the reasoning eye, certain intuitive thoughts can be discovered as false and even quite destructive. Other seemingly counterintuitive ideas rise, awkwardly, as the most efficient.

If you read a book like Freakonomics, the author relates several stories of the counterintuitive and intuitive revealing economic insights that an economist could predict but perhaps a layperson would be confounded by.

I will just provide a link to one of the more shocking arguments Levitt makes about the relationship between abortion and crime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect

 

But over the long run...
Sometimes the replacement should be a small government option
And every time that happens
That option will flourish because it is superior
. better options should prevail, right?
So why are there not more examples of the superiority of small government

Survival of the fittest
And the fittest is small government?

 

Governments are not living beings. They are not governed by darwinian principles.

 

Will you agree that the allegedly intrinsincly superior form of government ( small government) is so rare as to be nearly non existent... and that oppressive and-or large government is pervasive despite the fact that such forms of government are inherently doomed to failure