It's Capitalism, Not Globalism

Your complaints about capitalism are not about capitalism at all. The corrupted goverment officials have granted great privilege to select entities, and have created a system of corporatism/fascism.
This is made entirely possible by the size and scope of a very large government. No system can be created that will not be corrupted in the same way. Big government always leads to the same endpoint, the distribution of the people's wealth to a handful of people.

Oddly, this happens after a government assumes too much power, not before

 

The basic theoretical difference between capitalism and socialism is that socialism inhibits competition by destroying incentives to produce. Socialism is an economy that exists perpetually in a free rider problem.

If you share wealth or fruits of labor evenly, rather than allow the best producer to keep what they earn, you have an economy that simply will not motivate itself to produce.

Many examples throughout history prove the productivity of the concept of allowing the best to keep the most:
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1. The original British colonies. When the original British moved to America, they shared wealth equally. The result was the colonies simply stopped producing. Big healthy men were supposed to till land and share their work with others equally? Women were supposed to do domestic chores for others in equal effort as their own families? The result was pure confusion, frustration, and lack of motivation.

2. As soon as those colonies reverted to capitalism...well I think you know the history from that point forward.

Simply put, socialism kills motivation. Capitalism rewards motivation. You are free to imbue other qualities as you see fit to either: you might call capitalism seflish. You might call socialism fair. But you would never be able to claim socialism is more productive.

 

Theory, eh? Yup. Capitalist theory and based on a willful lack of accurate information.

See what I mean? You're right. And it's a good thing that socialism is not like that.

You don't know that, apparently, because you haven't described socialism. Instead, try explaining why a 60-year-old corporation, the Mondragon Corporation, which consists of about 300 co-ops and a total of 100,000 workers in 4 countries, doesn't have any problems with incentives or production. http://www.mondragon-corporation.com/

You really should stop spreading false information.

P.S. You seem to have missed my reply to you in post #165.

 

Except there are examples contrary to what you say
Standard oil and Carnegie steel created virtual monopolies without need for government power
Bill gates, warren buffet, the koch brothers.... none of these guys needed to leverage an over powerful government.

The current situation is that wealth is increasingly held in fewer hands. The economic difficulties of the large non wealthy mass is not because our government is over powerful and taking their money. The money is not by in large being governmentslly redistributed. If you cut all welfare and sicial security and food stamps an akl that stuff.... If you Eliminated 90% of regulations, cut the education dept, the energy dept, the ag department, and all that stuff. If you turned the country into the ideal that you concieve as a utopia... then what would be the result? Do ypu think we would stop outsourcing jobs? You think that suddenly it would be cost effective to smelt steel here, and build tv s here? Suddenly no one would want japanese or german cars? You think that hedge fund managers or big banks would not be so rich?

 

A few words on the most radical and enlightened alternative to capitalism. Communism is quite simply the form of economy and society that, to borrow from Milton Geiger, aims to “show us the height where man can be brother to his fellow man”, to “lead us to green pastures where there is enough for all, and where all are one in justice and tranquility”, which is preferable because such a form of economy and society will maximize the ability of all human beings to exercise their inalienable right to the pursuit and attainment of happiness; will optimize the ability of every man and woman to reach the highest levels of creative self-actualization and fulfillment possible, which is the true definition of satisfaction and happiness; will liberate our species to explore, to found new and richer aesthetic, artistic, intellectual, inner, humanistic realms.

Yes, authentic communism seeks to fulfill the humanistic imperative to bring into existence a form of life that’s expressly and superbly dedicated to the proposition that we all have an equal right to realize our fullest potential, our personal best. And moreover authentic communism recognizes that only a socioeconomic system geared for all men and women to be brothers and sisters to each other, to optimize the creative interrelationality and interdependence of life, and to guarantee freedom from want and freedom from insecurity, to promote justice and the peace that justice makes possible; that is, only a form of social organization that sincerely and equally respects and empowers all of its members, and brings them together in mutual respect and empowerment can actually provide the ideal environment for the growth of individual human beings, and for the victory and the most beautiful manifestation of their collective best.

This is the true egalitarianism of communism, by the way, not a simpleminded and homogenizing egalitarianism that glosses over our innate individual dissimilarities and imparities, but rather one which appreciates that although everyone’s personal best is different everyone’s right to achieve it is equal and fundamentally important. And which features the insight that, seemingly ironically, embracing interdependence, practicing mutual assistance, and collectively working for the common good, not giving license to egoistic individualism, is the ticket to a society full of self-realized individuals. The egalitarianism of communism thereby values and breeds diversity, not conformity or uniformity. And it raises the acme of human excellence, rather than bringing about a leveling and dumbing down of the species.

Well, this is the aspiration and mission of authentic communism, the creation of a revolutionary form of social and economic existence that operationalizes enlightened, not diversity-killing, egalitarianism and solidarity; that provides all of the material and social conditions that best enable us to ascend to the peak of virtue and talent; that explicitly devotes itself to humanistic values and strives to be radically predicated upon a commitment to helping every human being be all that he or she can be; and that will collectively elevate humankind to a higher plane of creative genius. Yes, the essence of communism is a humanistic morality, a genuinely moral drive for the betterment of human individuals and the human race. The popular idea that Marxism and communism are value-neutral, axiologically aseptic, that they have no truck whatsoever with morality, is a popular and an unfortunate misconception. In fact, communism is a humanism and a social ethic. Its ultimate aim is nothing less than a world of righteousness, in the fullest sense of the word. It staunchly rejects the sort of naive cynicism that would laugh such a goal out of court, and sets about getting there.

 

F*** that. I don't want those who do nothing to share in the benefits of those who do a lot. I don't want those who are menial laborers to earn the same rewards as those who are professionals. I don't want the stupid getting as much as the smart. Even if communism could deliver on its lofty goals, which it can't, I wouldn't want to be a part of it. Go read Atlas Shrugged again and see the reality of communism. Capitalism rewards effort. Communism rewards sloth. Guess which one wins, every single time. The ONLY way to make people work under a communist system is at the point of a gun. It's built into the system. No high-falutin' nonsense will change that reality.

 

After reviewing all of the evidence and argument you have laid out, I'm starting to see the flaws of capitalism. In light of Moondragon, it is obvious that socialistic organizations can succeed and flourish. Perhaps socialism is the enlightened way forward for the US.

 

I see, you suffer from a dominance and superiority-oriented cognitive style that much prefers a form of society in which the superior few are the only ones who get to optimize their experience of life, and everyone else is relegated to enduring a lousy socioeconomic lot that prevents them from attaining self-actualization and full happiness. Yes, we fundamentally disagree.

Yes, it's not at all surprising that you're an Ayn Rand fan.

No, capitalism is not actually an authentic meritocracy. Rather, it's a system in which economic and political power is monopolized by mediocre inheritors of wealth, such as Mr. Trump; and by "self-made" individuals whose superiority is usually limited to a quite narrow range of aptitudes and abilities, and simply to superior aggressiveness, i.e. individuals who lack an all-around superior excellence, who certainly do not exemplify ἀρετή. Mm-hmm, as Mr. Trump makes quite distressingly evident, it's a system that's fundamentally structured for the hegemony of capitalists, not for the rule of the best and brightest among us.

Also, it's a bit naive to think that a genuine meritocracy would be the most just and humane form of society, actually it would turn out to produce a herrenmoral state of affairs in which a minority of superior individuals would be elevated to a privileged and hegemonic status that would be rationalized as fair and legitimate because it was "earned", but that would still be quite unjust and cruel, as it would entail the diminishment of the status, freedom, and well-being of everyone else rather than help those of lesser merit and talent actualize the full potential of their lives and enjoy self-fulfillment. That is, it would be another form of aristocracy, it would certainly not be a system geared to do justice to, to promote the realization of the self-creative potential of every human being, rather it would merely function to reward with prestige and power those individuals who outshine their neighbors.

And, of course, it wouldn't remain an authentic meritocracy for long, either. Well, once individuals of superior ability were elevated to the top of the economico-political pecking order, well, they would promptly begin to rig the system, and it would very soon cease to be true to its flawed meritocratic ethic. In other words, not only would a true meritocracy not make for a just socioeconomic state of affairs, it would be impossible to preserve, it would be swiftly subverted by its chosen few and prove to be entirely unviable in the real world.

Communism, authentic communism, on the other hand, doesn't actually reward "sloth" or mediocrity, rather it would be based upon the principle of From each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her need, and this would both promote excellence, promote everyone making the best contribution to the common good that s/he is capable of, and it also would preclude the bestowal of preferential treatment and overempowerment on a superior few which would be the moral failing and undoing of a meritocracy.

This betrays a very cynical turn of mind, a naively cynical view of human nature. Human beings can indeed be quite effectively motivated by community spirit and the drive for creative self-expression and self-actualization. And, I might point out that under capitalism it's that whip called a wage that's used to motivate wage slaves to toil and mind their capitalist masters. Not exactly a lovely state of affairs.

 

WHOA! (shocked!) I take that as a sincere comment. That puts you head and shoulders above most of us here on this and other forums. It's a rare thing for people to actually change their mind like that.

 

It is corporate fascism. In context, "oligarchs" refers to the rich and powerful elites who control the media, press, economy and government.

 

There's nothing wrong with regulated capitalism.

There will always be a crowd that wants to run things, and it crops up in every economic system. The problem with globalism is that there will only be one such dominant crowd, and there will be no way to escape from it.

 

-until there is. --Until it has all run its course.

It cannot last forever. Growth cannot go on forever. And today, on the 24-hour clock called "capitalism", it's about 11:59 PM.

 

IMO there is nothing wrong with growth as long as monopoly is not prevalent. Where there is competition among many, growth can always occur.

 

So you think it can go on growing forever? Really? How much growth can there be after the top 0.01% owns everything? The top 1% already owns more than the bottom half of the entire world's population.

 

Well, right now we have a monopoly by the 0.01%. That needs to be remedied by leveling the playing field, and possibly a bit of corrective taxation.

If you have a group of kids playing marbles, the total number of marbles involved can remain the same, but individual players can vary in the amount of marbles they win from game to game. There can be growth without an overall increase.

 

Well I'm proudly pro-globalisation, but it seems like you're rejecting one irrelevant division - national borders - and replacing it with another: class. For all the morally-toned "rise up and revolt" rhetoric, you don't seem to be providing any concrete analysis of a) what the socioeconomic problems inherent to capitalism are or b) why they're caused by the "capitalist elite." It's not even clear what you mean when you talk about the capitalist elite; do you mean the bourgeoisie, or do you mean the rich? The two are quite different.

In essence, the question I would have for anyone who wants to spur on class struggle is this: how exactly are the interests of the "elite" diametrically opposed to those of the "masses", and what do the terms in quotations even mean in a concrete sense? No empty moral language allowed.

 

Since the Robber Baron days, the wealth and degree of control by the top 1% have increased through boom and bust. Their share of income and of wealth have steadily increased.

The monopoly of the Robber Barrons was diminished by FDR's policies but he was helped in it by a very popular Communist Party, Socialist Party, and numerous militant unions. The 1% and their lackeys have managed to eliminate most of that worker solidarity. And now the top 1% have rebuilt their power and wealth and took all they could from us after we made their success possible, and have now abandoned us for very cheap labor in other undeveloped countries. And they're not coming back. It's time for us to stop waiting and hoping for them to fix our troubles. It's up to us. We are the solution if there is to be one. We must organize, work out our differences, and push forward with our own solutions.

 

Look dude capitalism is the only way to create motivation and innovation, where is the incentive otherwise. However the media industrial complex uses the majority of peoples hate for the system to move the majority 99% into increased regulation, tax, wealth redistribution, and one way thinking, while the elites break the rules. If you support Trump your a racist, sound familiar. No I just want to have a logical conversation about policy, but you are trashed. If you only want decreased regulation, you are a republican who hates women (pro life), blacks (Obama is a deomocrat), gays (no same sex marriage), want a controlled immigration policy where immigrants don't suck our benefits (you hate immigrants, we are a country built on immigrants, they are hard workers). This division is all planned, wake up. We have a real opportunity here to get an outsider that can make the capitalist system fair again, and if you think he can't, you are naive. The executive branch of the government can write an executive order for just about anything, that is why the elites are so scared of someone like Trump.
The media industrial complex is a powerful tool that can trick people into almost anything
for example more guns per capita means less fatality, deaths, and crime. But guns kill people they are bad, just spam that (*)(*)(*)(*) on the TV every night, their goes your 2nd amendment. Cars kill atleast 20 times more than guns do each year, cars are bad, sound stupid? Self driving cars are coming folks, increased insurance bills, cars are dangerous, save money and get a self driving car controlled by the government yay.
Global Warming creates a lot of pollution, correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, there is no evidence that C02 warms the earth, it goes through cycles all the time! Lets decrease consumption by taxing fuels, meaning ill just take your money but not work to make cars more efficient. yay, so easy! Oh (*)(*)(*)(*) the world is getting colder, oh its climate change now, lets just spam more storms on the news to make it look like things are getting worse, storms are at all time lows!! Oh I don't believe global warming is fake, you are stupid, why would they lie....well that is the WORST rationality for an argument, but it works so so so so well!!

 

"Communism, authentic communism, on the other hand, doesn't actually reward "sloth" or mediocrity, rather it would be based upon the principle of From each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her need[.]"

Explain exactly how that doesn't reward sloth and mediocrity, not to mention the ability to pop out millions of kids while not contributing to society in any way whatsoever. And if you DARE to suggest that some people at the top in your utopia should get more than a welfare mother with 16 kids, then you have already abandoned your lofty principles. Same goes for forcibly sterilizing such an irresponsible woman.

I read a story years ago, perhaps one of you remembers the title, about a dinner party a woman gave with half a dozen lefties and a businessman, and the lefties argued all night long about the problems of the world and how to fix them, while the businessman sat quietly and said nothing. The woman noticed and kept him until the rest of the crowd had left so she could hear what he thought on the subject. She said (as nearly as I can remember), "I suppose you think you know what's wrong with the world." He responded, "I don't THINK I know, I KNOW I know." So she asked him for his opinion. "The problem with the world," he said, "is there aren't enough smart people in it." He went on to explain how the smart people of the world think there are no problems that can't be solved by cleverness, but that what they don't realize is that most of the world is too dumb to carry out their clever solutions. He said business runs into this problem daily, seeking the best and the brightest, but having to make do with the dull and the average. So their solutions inevitably have to be geared so that the least smart employee can carry out the functions of business. So BESIDES the fact that communism can only work in a world where all humans are martyrs willing to work without their rewards being tied to their efforts, it can only work in a world where everyone is smart. And that's not the real world.

"So you think it can go on growing forever? Really? How much growth can there be after the top 0.01% owns everything? The top 1% already owns more than the bottom half of the entire world's population."

You're confusing a snapshot with a movie reel. Consider these two articles, one showing the income mobility among quintiles in the US in just a seven year period (https://www.aei.org/publication/tra...-over-time-shows-significant-income-mobility/), and one showing the number and sources of billionaires in the world (http://www.businessinsider.com/richest-people-in-the-world-2015-4). In the first article, there's a chart showing that a full 34% of those in the top 20% of the population by income level had fallen out of it just seven years later. Meanwhile, only 56% of those in the bottom quintile in 2000 were still in it seven years later. Extrapolate that over a 76 year life expectancy. In the second article, more of a chart than an essay, of the 1,826 billionaires in the world in 2015, 1,191 were self-made, or 65%. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the idea that there's a fixed population of the top 1%, is it? Plus a surprisingly high percentage of billionaires today earned their money in the software market, which has only existed since the 1980s. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the idea that there's a limit to growth, is it?

 

You're claim to be talking of communism yet your imagined scenarios would require state machinery.

Why worry about communism when it's probably 500 years off at best?

 

Another reason why a meritocracy would not be such an equity and fair play-oriented, such an ethically rational, upstanding, and prototypical form of society is that it mistakenly presupposes the ontological and moral soundness and legitimacy of egoistic individualism, of a state of affairs that features individuals individualistically seeking and claiming to merit more prosperity and power than their neighbors. But egoism is far from being the true-to-the-nature-of-existence and morally sensible credo that its adherents assume it to be. Consequently thinking in terms of everyone being an absolute individual, a private island unto him/herself produces plenty of existentially and morally detrimental results. Not the least of which is that it doesn’t actually make for genuine well-being or happiness. The explanation is quite simple, genuine well-being involves syncing and squaring our way of living with the objective nature of reality, and the fundamental reality of reality is interrelationality, not loneness. The good and self-actualization that individuals naturally desire is therefore actually an interpersonal proposition, is achieved socially not separately. That is, we create ourselves and our successfulness in an interactive, intersubjective fashion, not as isolated individuals. Life, and the good life, are a product of a cooperative and communal effort, not a manifestation of and reward for individual merit.

This is all simply a synthetic a priori truth, a truism that is both demonstrably factual and intuited to be universally and necessarily undeniable. And the upshot for the idea of meritocracy is that the egoism that underlies belief in its rightness is seriously faulty and unworkable as a life ethic. It’s simply not consistent with the intercreative ontology of existence; with the insight that we in fact actualize our success and ourselves conjointly, that we are not stand-alone entities who individually earn or fail to earn wealth and well-being. Well, without autonomous parties who by themselves create, and who independently deserve the good things of life, the notion of meritocracy doesn’t really make any sense any more. And, moreover, the egoism at the core of the concept of meritocracy simply isn’t at all conducive to authentic happiness. Human beings don’t actually get to a truly and deeply happy place by going it alone, rather they make their joy and prosperity collaboratively and synergistically. So then, embracing synergism, not the egoism implicit in the theory of meritocracy, is the way to go if we wish to create a way of life that jibes with the modus operandi of existence, that actually works, and that helps one to achieve the goal of personal fulfillment and happiness. And what alternative vision and form of society is all about embracing synergism? Yes, if you guessed that I’m going to say communism then you indeed guessed correctly. Communism = synergism, after all; the synergism which makes possible the self-actualization and human flourishing that humanism recognizes to be the meaning of a human life.

- - - Updated - - -

By the way, I might point out that the seductiveness of the idea of meritocracy is often its appeal to the moralistic, superiority/dominance-oriented streak in us. Well, it seems that it would simply be a system in which individuals would be rewarded for the moral superiority that having a strong work ethic supposedly reflects. But a system and government of, by, and for the superior, a polity run by a dominant class never turns out to be very kindly, or geared to help everyone attain excellence. Rather, aristocracy, and a meritocracy would merely be an allegedly sensible form of aristocracy, is always a form of sociopolitical organization in which merit, status, privilege, and power are monopolized by elites. Yes, the moralistic and superiority-oriented cognitive style that would be given expression in a meritocracy would potentially produce and rationalize a seriously anti-democratic form of life.

 

Does naive cynicism perhaps sound like a contradiction in terms? It’s not, really. Cynicism is not always the product of a sharply skeptical mind, it can also often be the product of simplistic and bigoted thinking.

(Also, dear xwsmithx, please peruse the post immediately above)

 

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=478748&p=1066710367#post1066710367

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=478748&p=1066709659#post1066709659

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=478748&p=1066714462#post1066714462

 

And of course the capitalist system inherently preordains the dictatorship of corporate and financial elites. This is not a mere accident, it's the inexorable outworking of the nature of the beast. And of course the chief badness of actually-existing globalism is that it's essentially the globalization of the dictatorship of our corporate and financial elites, the evolution of a worldwide system that functions to visit their hegemony on the other peoples of the planet. That is, actually-existing globalism is all about inflicting neoliberalism and neocolonialism on the rest of humankind, it's a movement making for universal plutocratic tyranny, and it's on these grounds that all decent human beings should oppose it, regardless of the infiltration of the anti-globalist camp by the nasty nonsense of nationalists and alt-rightists.

 

I like the personal motivation capitalism provides, but IMO it should not be allowed to chew up and destroy peoples' lives unnecessarily. I do believe workers should organize, but IMO the goal should be for a shorter work week for everyone, in order to allow more employment as mechanization comes in and requires fewer workers.

Additionally, the exploitation of extremely skilled workers by forcing them to work 70 or more hours a week so that employers can avoid hiring more people needs to be stopped.