The problem of Capitalism

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by stan1990, Mar 13, 2019.

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Do you agree that the main problem of Capitalism is of moral nature?

Poll closed Apr 12, 2019.
  1. Yes

    33.3%
  2. No

    50.0%
  3. Maybe

    16.7%
  1. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    So according to you, possession = ownership, since you said "we replaced the word possession with ownership".

    [Historically, presumably Londinium - founded AD43 - was the site of first land ownership in Britain].

    But you missed my point, which is: I think I am hearing your instincts, not your rationality (or informed thought).

    Ie, murder - over "tens of thousands of years" - in order to possess/own land, is irrational and is a manifestation of "the (instinctive) law of the jungle".
     
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2019
  2. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    You've must have watchef too many post-apocalyptic movies and television shows. Mad Max anyone?

    Your definition of feudalism is incorrect, if referring to millions of individuals owning land.

    Feudalism is when all the land is owned and/or controlled by nobelity, or in modern terms the ruling elite, i.e. government.

    Seems to me that is what you are endorsing.
     
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  3. Idahojunebug77

    Idahojunebug77 Well-Known Member

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    As you noted, we have, and are, creating methods to overcome the law of the jungle, U.N. resolutions (fwiw), land titles and deeds, and the fifth amendment of the US Constitution that recognizes the peoples right to own and keep their land. No person, not even governments, can take our land without just compensation. (As long as we pay our property taxes)

    Might is right is no longer the law of the jungle where the individuals right to possess and own land is concerned.
     
  4. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Murder is depriving the right to life of another human being. Owning land is in no way comparable. Land is no different than any other privately owned property.
     
  5. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Nope. Feudalism is what happens when landowning survives the demise of government. The initial number of landowners doesn't matter: landowning will concentrate in fewer and fewer hands. In the ancient Roman republic, individual landowning was widespread, as apologists for landowner privilege disingenuously claim is their preference. But over the centuries, the relentless economic logic of landowning gradually concentrated landownership in fewer and fewer hands, until by the time of Marcus Aurelius, just 2000 individuals owned 90% of the land in Italy, and the descendants of the small landowners were all landless serfs. The result, when Rome fell, was feudalism.
    Nope. Feudalism is private landowning that survives the demise of the government that conferred and secured ownership of the land. Feudalism is private landowners defending their landholdings themselves, without government help, and enslaving the landless through hereditary land use contracts. That's why it is so horrible: the entire surplus of production is absorbed by military spending, leaving nothing for productive investment. In the century after Rome fell, leaving Western Europe with widespread landowning but no government to administer possession and use of land, the population declined by 1/3. It was not because of contraception.
    You are using the word, "feudalism" incorrectly.
     
  6. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    More accurately, it is depriving a human being of life to which they have a right. Soldiers in war, murderers, etc., give up their right to life. Depriving someone of what they need to live, and which they would otherwise be at liberty to use to survive, is the same as depriving them of life to which they have a right -- i.e., it is murder. I already proved that to you by the example of the spring in the desert:

    "A man dying of thirst in the desert stumbles into an oasis fed by a natural spring. He stoops to drink from the pool nature provided when he hears a revolver being cocked behind his ear, and a quiet, menacing, sibilant voice intones, "Uh-uh. I know what you're thinkin'. 'Will he charge me six years' labor for a sip of water, or only five?' Well to tell the truth, in all this excitement, I haven't quite totaled up the rent myself. But bein' as it's 44 miles to the next water hole, which might as well be the other side of the world, and I'd as soon kick your sorry butt CLEAN OFF my land, you've got to ask yourself one question. 'Do I feel thirsty today?' Well, do ya, slave?"


    Remember? When Dirty Rahl forcibly prevents the thirsty man from drinking from the natural spring because he claims to own it, and the man consequently dies of thirst rather than submit to enslavement, Dirty Rahl has MURDERED him by doing nothing but own the land. By merely owning the land and exercising his property "right," he has literally committed murder. Purely as the landowner, he is indisputably a murderer. Landowning is in that case the same thing as murder. It is that simple. Moreover, such cases could be multiplied indefinitely, and have actually occurred throughout history. Notoriously, English landowners murdered millions of landless Irish peasants in the 19th century purely by owning the land and exercising their legal "right" to deprive the landless of it unless they met the landowners' extortion demands. Indian and Chinese landowners murdered billions over the centuries purely by owning the land. When it deprives the landless of their liberty rights to sustain themselves -- which is always -- landowning enslaves them. When they consequently die because they can't produce enough to support both themselves and the parasitic landowner, landowning has murdered them.
    It is not only comparable, not only similar, but effectively equivalent, as already proved to you multiple times and proved to you again, above.
    That is objectively false. Land was already there, with no help from its owner or any previous owner. Products of labor -- rightful property -- were not. You know this. Of course you do. You just have to contrive some way of not knowing it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.

    Ownership of land forcibly deprives others of their liberty rights to use what they would otherwise have been at liberty to use. Ownership of products of labor does not, as those products would not otherwise have existed. You can deny these facts, but you cannot dispute them.
     
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  7. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Note: "U.N. resolutions, land titles and deeds, and the fifth amendment of the US Constitution" are all articles of governance.

    From reading bringiton's posts, we can conclude that land ownership arises as societies become more technically advanced:
    eg communal possession of land amongst the Celtic tribes of Britain, with economies that operated on barter, were replaced by ownership of land by, eg, the person who employed labour to build and operate a flour mill on a specific piece of land in Londinium, under the money economy* of the Roman administration.

    However, it is difficult to refute bringiton's basic insight that land ownership is a deprivation of the liberty rights of others, given his examples.
    But given the connection of land to invention, personal labour and production by individuals, my solution is the provision of public housing at affordable rents by government, to compensate those whose use of land - and liberty rights - such as the thirsty man drinking water from a "privately owned" spring in the desert - is denied by private ownership.

    How does this relate to "murder over tens of thousands of years to own/possess land"? Well we know governance can fail in certain circumstances....then it's back to "the law of the jungle".

    That statement needs correction.

    "Might is right" is always the "law of the jungle".

    The "individual's 'right' to possess and own land" only exists under a stable government and rule of law. Obviously.

    *re the money economy: an insight of MMT is that money, like land ownership, is a function of governance, not as is often supposed, merely a more convenient alternative to a (non-money) barter system.
     
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2019
  8. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    This is worth the study:
    [​IMG]
     
  9. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Nonsense. A woefully inadequate, ideologically based description of economic collapse in one particular country is neither worth the study, nor sheds any light on enabling stable economic and political outcomes, in our own democracies.
     
  10. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Those that deny history are doomed to repeat it. There ARE parallels. Leftists always use the same format.
     
  11. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    It's totalitarianism, whether commie or capitalist.
     
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  12. AlphaMale

    AlphaMale Member

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    There Is absolutely nothing wrong with Capitalism it has given so many people a good life.
     
  13. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    You don’t have a right to property I own. I won’t let you have it. Comparing owning a human to owning land is retarded.
     
  14. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    I used the perfectly acceptable definition of feudalism. Feudalism was a system of government in Europe around the 9th-15th century where nobelity controlled the land, and allowed serfs to use that land for various activities including farming and mining. Usually it was owned by the king, and governed by Lord's on behalf of the king. It was based upon the belief of "The Divine Right of Kings". It was the basis of taxation as well, and the reason to justify punishment of poaching on the king's land with death.

    Please educate yourself before using terms without an valid relationship to their meaning, even in a metaphorical context such as you are attempting. Otherwise, it may back fire upon you, as I already demonstrated, by showing how Geoism/Georgism (or whatever the kids are calling it these days) is more like Feudal societies than any other.
     
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  15. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    And in any case, land ownership (title deeds, property law) is a function of governance.

    You are in effect claiming anarchy can work.
     
  16. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    I'm think I'm still hearing your instincts, not your rational mind or informed thought. Rights are conferred by government, not by you.
     
  17. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    The one that fits your delusional Anarchist narrative.

    The 'law of the jungle' in the form of instinct is always present; the informed intellect recognises the necessity for rule of law to sustain civilisation.

    Just make sure you support a subsidised public housing sector, for those unable to buy house and land.
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2019
  18. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Yes, like Trump saying in the UN: "globalists are past, patriots are now".

    Hence no need for an international rules based system.....
     
  19. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Thank you for that, rahl. I'm sure the uniform unresponsiveness, uninformativeness, obtuseness, disingenuousness and evasiveness of your "contributions" to this thread have convinced a lot of readers that you have no facts or logic to offer in defense of your views, and are indeed in the wrong.

    I have to confess to experiencing a certain guilty gratification when the opposition behaves despicably. It reassures me that I am right and on the side of good, and they are wrong and on the side of evil.
     
  20. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Please provide a dictionary citation.
    That's more the period of "high" European feudalism where state power re-entered the picture. European feudalism actually began in late Roman times with the decree that peasants could not leave the land their families were using.
    No; landowning hierarchies with kings at the top was a later development, when central states were re-emerging. Feudalism has been seen in numerous places and times, including Japan, China, India, various places in Africa and Latin America, Russia, and Southeast Asia. It also has more specific defining characteristics:
    1. An absence of government strong enough to secure exclusive land tenure and property rights, and landowners thus devoting surplus production to massive defensive fortifications (castles).
    2. Hereditary contracts of personal servitude in return for land use that effectively bind people to the land and its owner.
    3. Private land titles originally issued by former governments that can no longer secure them.
    4. Strict division of the population into social classes based mainly on landownership and occupation.
    Or any landowner's land. Landowners would routinely murder the landless who tried to exercise their rights to liberty.

    You showed no such thing, and you know it. See the four principal characteristics of feudalism, above. None of the four is remotely similar to the geoist system.
     
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  21. james M

    james M Banned

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    they were identical in terms of ROI. Do you have any more "profound" questions that a child could answer????????
     
  22. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Would you like to answer: why did the fact of slavery even arise, after the advent of the agricultural revolution? [Slavery did not exist in hunter-gatherer communities, only 'pecking orders' below the Shaman, or whatever].
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2019
  23. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    The decree issued by whom?
     
  24. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    Those landowners whose families over generations had managed - after the collapse of the central Roman authority - to assert local dominance via centres of power located behind castle walls with standing armies.
    The surplus production of the serfs farming the land outside the walls was converted into military expenditure.

    Come to think of it; similar to the present situation in our global world, where there is no central authority, only the 'vision' of the UNUDHR.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2019
  25. garry17

    garry17 Well-Known Member

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    Oh you forgot to clarify “when you get your house in order”


    Yeah, think we already covered that part, now you just want to shift the goals…

    What??? Do you even know what you’re saying??? Currency issuing governments are not constrained by anything of the sort…
    I am not equating production with value… As stated you simply demanding something for nothing.

    Something very odd here. Automation is taking over… it has been the claim since the industrial age and still most of the world continues to work, people continue to contribute. Really is selfish of you to decide automation is going to eventually take over so you going to stop now and demand the world owes you…
    What??? The way currency is valued is not determined by market demand because nations often flood the market with currency??? Really and you talk about being the consummate intelligence on money…

    I would suggest going back to high school economics course here, but I am not sure you’re old enough.
    No, the currency only has value if somebody wants it… has nothing to do with resources. That is why gold is the underpinning of any currency. Should the currency fail the gold still has universal value.
    LOL, buddy stop confusing government policy with economic principle.
    The stupid part of your comment is that clearly you still hung up on the corruption you want to place on the principle.
    Yeah, yeah, when you contribute to society you work on the barter system, not the principle system of universal value because you ideally believe that you don’t need what you cannot swap for…
    Of course in the real world…
    ideology noted, now back to reality ???
    desired, not a necessity… again nice misrepresentation there.
    No it isn’t the key to the debate. The key is your refusal to accept your own personal greed is skewing your ideals, while reality passes you by.

    HAHAHA, really??? Last time I looked the title of the thread was “The problem of Capitalism” Not “The problem of Communism”
    Again, just like every time I make a point on universal value, you try shift the goal to something you think you can understand.

    The point is pure and simply that there is a difference in individual, community and nationality value. Since your stupid enough to try suggest their isn’t here I would suggest your just being obtuse and move on.
    irrelevant clap trap. Take it to the part of the forum designed for it.



    Of course you cannot until you “have your own house in order” WE get it. You expect the rest of the world to act the way you demand while you refuse to act at all…
    and your still try to brow beat me while completely missing the point, way to go their buddy. OR is this a deliberate ploy to try wear people down??? Either way, clearly nothing to do with what was said.
    Is that self-reflection??? That what it appears to me here.
    Well that is very true. But also, in insular the capitalist model works well without regulation, but since it has to operate over large areas and even nations, to create universal value for fair and even distribution of products and services it is important to create level playing fields.
    Duh, that is what I said fool…
    Now really??? True, justice\rights are unique to humans with a sense of fairness. What makes them subjective is YOUR idea of what justice and rights you think you have…

    I love the fact you say it is not subjective yet it is… We both agree they are constructs, so at least you don’t have to complain about that.
    No, that is actually not true. I have never stated what is the correct form of capitalism, I just point out the hypocrisy of blaming the corruptions to pure capitalism YOU demand on it as being the problem OF the capitalistic model. I also point out the stupidity of trying to assert human traits on an economic principle. Such as the point that capitalism infringes on your rights to do anything… or it is morally right or wrong due to capitalism…

    So stop building your strawman, it isn’t working.

    Such an interesting concept you have there. Perhaps you could consider it in the aspect of how you’re dealing with my comments by deliberately misrepresenting the points and auguring logical fallacies for what purpose??? Would that the self-interest of competition to appear more intellectual than those you debate with???

    Yes, just imagine what progress could be made…
     

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