Is the profit motive essential to innovation?

It is bothersome to me how many Americans receiving public support have no requirement to trade some form of productivity for this support.

I'm also a realist and know this won't change so as a nation we have more welfare, more government, and less productivity, and while this will burden the private sector with higher taxes, as population growth continues to 400 million by 2050, the US IMO will be chasing it's tail with Ponzi schemes to pay for burgeoning government and the rest of the world will advance faster while the US chugs to 3rd class status...

 

How does that work with an official MInt at our disposal. Do you not believe it merely takes Money to make more Money under our form of Capitalism?

 

10 years ago I would have argued that this sort of pie in the sky idealism is the root of all evil... and point to American innovations since our inception that are pretty much responsible for the modern world.

Most of my time these days is spent developing open source software, because I have developed some things that pay my bills, which need an update every once in a while when there are upstream changes that require some form of change in the middle layer where I live.

I think the answer is somewhere in the middle. Our greatest innovations were usually funded by government and/or private industry. The guys at Xerox PARC were definitely drawing a paycheck, however their goal was not to bring products to market, but to influence the way in which technology moved forward for the benefit of society. This is on my mind because of the Jobs thread in this category. This is one long university video lecture given by Alan Kay in 1986 I think... that I assembled.

[video=youtube;0oonXT-gYjU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oonXT-gYjU[/video]
[video=youtube;y43fI7Dy04A]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y43fI7Dy04A[/video]
[video=youtube;5QJTsPQQCCc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QJTsPQQCCc[/video]
[video=youtube;2ZTz76_zdfk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZTz76_zdfk[/video]

1 and 2 highlight some very instrumental innovators who influenced what they did at PARC. 3 and 4 goes over the philosophy of learning that shaped everything they did, and why their work with kids was so instrumental to the technology they produced, which changed the world. It is remarkable to see that 5 year olds can inherently do differential equations, creating the best programming for generating geometrical shapes, and how at every stage of development as we gain logic and application of mathematic formulas, we become terrible at being able to program as well as the five year old. It is truly fascinating stuff (see video 4 at around 19:40 for that bit... but you shouldn't short change yourself... watch it all).

If you follow Alan Kay's talks and books throughout the years you see how absolutely depressed he is at what has grown... or rather hasn't grown... out of the great leap forward they produced in the 70s (see "The computer revolution hasn't happened yet" et al).

 

Very well Daniel, very well indeed, so long as we don't print more money that the current value of our total wealth.

No, I don't believe that. I believe that capital is very important, but capital alone does not produce wealth. The capital must be invested and production of goods and services made available for consumption such that profits are available to create more wealth. Fortunately we do have a capitalist system which creates more prosperity for the masses than any other economic system.

 

The point is that it is a Social contract not a Capital contract that enables us to have acquired and possess an official Mint.

 

Yet that is not the question you asked, which I answered correctly. The point is our social contract, which is our constitution, tells us how to go about it and it has nothing to do with socialism.

 

Yes, it does; it embodies all of the "means of production" for our form of Statism.

 

Wrong Daniel! You are ate up with the socialism stick, and you don't even know what socialism really is.

 

The problem lately is that we have printed more money than the current value of total wealth and, as a result, we have experienced vast amounts of money sloshing about the planet from market to market in a speculative quest to generate profits in a global economy inadequate to the demands of its currencies of exchange. The serial economic calamities that such vast movements of money have created worldwide are a signal that a significant disconnection between monetary capital and economic wealth has occurred. Flows of speculative capital have so distorted the markets that it has become increasingly difficult for markets to discern demand through the price mechanism. This has generated huge mal-investment and a vast waste of physical resources as producers respond to price signals by increasing production only to see prices crash when the speculative money moves elsewhere. The collapse of prices causes a massive loss in accumulated capital, which wipes out savings and brings the banking system to the point of collapse.

This is a regular and well known phenomenon in economies that do not have a mechanism to direct excess capital away from speculation. Many nations have a formal industrial policy with institutions to direct excess capital towards increasing the production of goods and services. Others do not and experience regular economic calamities of over investment. One problem today is that global trade treaties limit the ability of nations to control flows of money, greatly inhibiting their ability to preclude the over investment that leads to market bubbles and their subsequent collapse that reduces their economies and impedes their growth potential for a decade or more. The $Billion the money arbitragers and investment banks extract from these economies comes at the expense of millions whose chances for basic survival go from bad to impossible while those who are just a little better off have their savings stolen to pay off the bankers in London and New York who precipitated the crises in the first place by flooding the nation with more money than its economy could handle. They tried it in Argentina and South America beginning in the 1960s and by the1990s had perfected it. So they did it to Asia in the 1990s.

Then they did it in Ireland and Spain and Portugal and Greece. In the UK and US in the 2000s, they were more strategic, targeting loopholes in the regulations that allowed them to flood unregulated money into the mortgage markets. It has been estimated that the mortgage bubbles in the EU and US created by unregulated lending and the subsequent collapse of the housing markets destroyed 40-80% of the accumulated wealth of the middle class in those nations and increased the wealth of the top 10% by 40-100% depending on the nation. In other words, it was a vast transfer of wealth from the middle to the top, without even accounting for the bailouts, which will transfer the incomes of the middle class to the wealthy for decades to come in some nations.

 

You do not even understand what Marxism is. Marxism is a collection of theories for explaining how class societies work and evolve, much of his theories are still used today in professional settings. Marx popularized the word capitalism.

 

Socialism is an econo/government system by which the government owns production and distribution and makes all of the decisions relative to price and wealth. It is central planning to the nth degree, making government leaders making the choices for the people. Socialism requires the government to be dictatorial because the from the high achievers their ability to excel to low achievers according to their needs. No socialist system can exist for long because the high achievers get tired of supporting all of the dead beats. Taking care of the needy is acceptable, but taking care of dead beats is not and the high achievers will rebel and through to yoke of socialism off of their backs.

Social programs are the means by which capitalism takes care of the people who cannot care for themselves. Social programs are not socialism. All the complaints about the US government being socialist are superfluous.

 

I do not believe that 'dead beats' have ever been an issue in any social system so far. Do you have any evidence for this?

 

There is so much more to motivate a person other than industrial capitalism.

This argument may seem juvenile, but meh:

I'm a Star Trek fan. It shows a society where there is no currency and no capitalism. People are rewarded by merit, achievement, accomplishment and social and occupational rewards. I can see such a society existing -- not a commune that lacks hierarchy, but a society with social mobility in a stratified structure.

The idea that money is the only thing that motivates people is absurd. People are social. People seek praise, prestige, glory, honor and some even seek to help others.

 

You say so, but for the right wing in the US it is a sort of holy grail that all social programs are socialism. If anything, it is your definition that has become superfluous to the discussion of socialism.

 

Why do you support mandatory hierarchy? People have the right to enter into hierarchy if they find it a useful organizational principle, but they should have the option to leave it.

 

How do you think people had social mobility before there was a surplus of goods? Humanity seemed to survive for thousands of years with stratification, which included men and women elders who acquired prestige. Today, our 'elders' are dumped into old folk's homes.

 

The surplus is what enabled the stratification, thus stratification did not exist in pre feudal (hunter gatherer) society. The nobility could not have had a continual supply of grain to expropriate, or even have existed as a class in and of itself without peasants who would consistantly produce a surplus. There was no nobility in hunter-gatherer society because they would gather or hunt food only when it was immediately needed or wanted.

Elders were a justified hierarchy because they were useful to tribe members because of their experience and also had the consent of tribe members in their position. Elders had no police force to enforce their status.

 

Capitalism is the most anti-family force on the planet, followed by religion and government.
All of these are focused on the individual, and tear families apart, by design, because group bonds work counter to their goals.
Family is the force that Capitalists, Religion and Government fear most.

 

Before Capitalism, there wasn't enough wealth to fund socialism.

Poverty has been the result where socialism has been adopted fully.

Europe, being a society with share values, was able to balance capitalism and socialism. But, immigration brought in those with different values. Now socialism is being reduced.

 

Socialism is anti-family, not capitalism. When the government takes over the role of charity what do you think happens to families? No need to take care of Uncle so and so, the government will. Same goes for education, where they are now even talking about government feeding kids for dinner.

In Sweden parents routinely leave their babies out on the sidewalk while they eat and drink in cafes:

"She told police that she “found nothing wrong with the situation”, emphasizing that it was common practice for Swedish parents to leave young children unattended outside a restaurant."

A woman that was arrested in the U.S. for child neglect...

 

Socialism destroys wealth, it doesn't matter if it is applied universally or mixed with capitalism.

If you had two countries side by side and one had a pure capitalist system (under law of course) whereas the other was a mix of socialism and capitalism the former would create greater wealth and advance far more quickly technologically.

 

Capitalism rips families apart, it moves family members away to jobs in distant corners of the system and destroys the extended family.
And for good reason, extended families have more resiliency in labor struggles and are more supportive of unions.

In "Socialist" countries like France, workers get six weeks paid vacation at a minimum.
If they spend time with a company that can become 10 weeks or 12 weeks.
My cousin in Rome had 15 weeks paid vacation.
That's time spent as a family, that strengthens families.
Laws that forbid overtime, mean workers are home to have supper with the family.
Socialism is about implementing a vision of what a society values, and results in far more pro family situations than capitalism.
That's just the way it is...

 

People came from all over the world to make a living in the U.S. in the 1800s. There was no evidence of families being "ripped apart". Furthermore it was the wealth that capitalism created that allowed for more family time. In the agrarian 1800s children had to work six or seven days a week.

The socialism in France allows for more "family time" initially but over time it creates poverty and hardship. Look at what happened in Greece with their social programs. Families were torn apart, babies abandoned on streets and people rummaged through garbage to find food.

If you look at a list of countries and rate them by prosperity and innovation you'll find that those that practice more socialism are at the bottom of the list.

 

Yes, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are always at the bottom of every list.

Ooops, my mistake, I was holding the lists upside down.

 

That is because taxes are so high, that time off has more value than higher income (it is better to earn $20 / hour with 30% PTO - effectively $26 / hour, than earning $26 / hour).

Employers compete for employees based on what has value - if we valued time off, we would get it - we don't.