Outline of two systems

Perhaps I should expand on what I meant.

"Capitalism fails to account for human greed"
When I say capitalsim, I mean pure capitalism utterly unregulated. Back when bussinesses would fire people who missed a single day of work for any reason, payed them just enough to live on, gave no vacation days, etc. This will also be coupled with companies endlessly creating monopolies, all the things that make the market worse for the consumer as well as anyone wanting a shot at starting their own bussiness.
Its hard for me to look back on the industrial revolution days and say "well, I'm sure things will be just fine if we suddenly remove all government regulations."

-Bluesguy
That video was actually pretty good. That guy made one hell of an argument. I believe that socialism could work better than capitalism if absolutely everyone in society gave their 100%, sadly... They wont.

 

If you want to say that, it could be easily retorted that Communism worked for 25 million American Indians.

The pilgrims failed at everything until the Indians took pity and came and gave them food and helped them survive. And the capitalistic Europeans thanked them by burning their villages down.

 

System A weeds out the economically unfit.

System B doesn't do that ^^, but makes the prosperity of the economically fit, less.



Everyone, choose your position and fight to the death over it already, rather than argue on an internet forum about it.

 

"That guy"? You do know who he is?

Have another listen to a brilliant man speak about the concept of socialist equality which you seek.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMLjkt87ICo&feature=related"]Milton Friedman Schools Young Idealist - 2 (Stanford) - YouTube[/ame]

 

Well said! Excellent point.

I have always found it hilarious that people with more wealth than they even know what to do with should think it such a "crime" to be taxed. It is the whole of society that is providing the possibility of wealth.

 

Capitalism doesn't really create incentive. In fact, rarely in a capitalist society can people truly follow their calling. People say you can, but it seems more likely that you have to conform yourself to whatever the marketplace desires. If you are born poor, there is no guarantee that effort will lead to success. In fact, it seems like the nations with a high level of regulation and taxation also have a higher rate of social mobility. Of course, these nations aren't really socialist, they are heavily regulated capitalist societies with strongly advocated social rights. Most of the people in these countries would simply consider universal healthcare and education a function of democracy as well as an investment into the population. A well planned nation of healthy, educated people are going to survive better than a nation that devalues its workers and refuses potential based on inherited wealth.



And the success of either system depends more on natural resources and democracy than anything. Socialism and capitalism can both operate on an economically viable scale, if the resources are available for distribution. They just distribute them differently. Capitalism always ends up with a smaller and smaller minority controlling the wealth and socialism suffers from utopianism. Out of the two I would choose socialism with declared libertarian social rights and democracy.

 

Obviously. and this was caused by special interests/lobbyists advising political prostitutes where to intervene.

 

It is the only system that creates incentive.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKc6esIi0_U"]Milton Friedman - Poverty and Equality - YouTube[/ame]

 

Really? You're hanging your argument on that notion? lol

Okay - pretty simplistic. But ok.

Your point is?

 

How much wealth should a person be allowed to have?

 

I disagree. And Friedman is not very convincing in his argument here.

 

Well American indians are proof that a complex society lacking property rights can exist. And also that capitalism is not "human nature" or "natural" it is an ideological system entirely based in Western thought. There are viable alternatives, proivided there is a paradigm shift advocating such alternatives.

This contrasts your assertion that the pilgrims not being able to survive somehow disproves the possibility of communal living.

I suppose the point would be that the US capitalist system wouldn't have worked without stolen land and slave labor.

 

Enough to ensure the comfort, health and intellectual enlightenment of the whole.

 

Those systems have existed several times in very small-scale. They work fine when the group is tiny, but fail when the group gets larger.

The reason it works in small groups is accountability. People who abuse the system were cast out of the group. People who failed to contribute were cast out of the group. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing so it was difficult for anyone to abuse the system.

In a larger group, people easily abuse the system with impunity. People see others getting away with abuse, so they do the same. Eventually everything falls apart.

 

Naive nonsense. American wages are falling and there is no more social mobility. Everyone will be worse off - the system costs twice as much as the decent British system and still fails millions and millions. An insanity designed to give money to profiteers.

Rubbish - the system we - and most civilized countries have - is designed to favour not 'the poor' but everyone. Treatment in our hospitals is far superior to what it is in yours. You just hate the normal person and want him/her to die.

 

Wrong, the failed because they tried a socialist/communal system, they succeeded when the switched to private property and individual initiative for profit.

 

As much as they can create and earn. It's the bases of our Constitution and country, property rights.

Why would you give up your right to your property?

 

I could be wrong, but I think the point is that if people had gone with capitalism, the pilgrims would have died off pretty quick.

Exactly how good or bad that would have been for all of us, I don't think we can judge now.

 

If you're wrong, then the worst-case scenario is that people will do what they choose to do, rather than what an employer chooses for them to do, and what the employer wants done, won't get done.

 

They survived BECAUSE they did.

 

The natives feeding the pilgrims wasn't a case of communal living. It was charity. There is a difference.

The natives chose what to give and how much to give. They kept what they chose and shared a part of their excess. They didn't give the pilgrims an equal share and nothing was expected from the pilgrims. Charity like this has always been common in capitalist societies. Individuals have always willingly given a portion to those in need without any force being required.

Early America did have a communal society. Everything that each person produced was put in a communal cache and each person took from that cache as they needed. This society was plagued with underproduction and starvation. When the governor rewrote the compact and granted personal property rights, productivity grew rapidly and the colony became very prosperous.

Charity is not the same thing as communal society.

 

As far as I’m concerned, you can have any amount of wealth, just so long as that wealth was earned through production and not simply captured through ownership of privileges.

Long ago Adam Smith broke income into three distinct categories:
1) Wages: income from labor of mind and/or body.
2) Interest: income from capital/savings
3) Rent: income from ownership of privilege (mainly ownership of natural resources)

Income from 1 (wages) and 2 (interest) result in increased production of wealth. These types of incomes are earned and do not infringe on the rights of others. Income from 3 (rent) does not increase the production of wealth (that is why Adam Smith separated rent income from interest income). Rent income is always unearned by definition, it is captured via privileges which infringe on the rights of others. Rent transfers income from producers to the holders of privileges, thus decreasing the incentives to produce wealth. You can rightly say that incomes derived from rents are simply stolen from producers.

So to answer your question - You can rightly have all the wealth you earn through wages and interest, but you can rightly have none of the wealth you capture through rents. If your whole income is derived from rents, then your whole income should be taxed away from you…100% of it.

 

Yeah, I've read that bit of revisionist history. That so many people have been passing that story around on the internet that they now think it's true is a fascinating social phenomenon.

 

I didn't realize 25 million people in an intercontiental trading network is "small scale". It worked because people were more ethical. They believed in the earth, in the intrinsic benefit of preparing for coming generations and the greater good of their nation. They believed greed was wrong and gift giving was good.

As opposed to capitalism, where people who abuse the system the most are rewarded. And I am not talking about welfare scammers, I am talking about corporate crooks, financial opportunists, sociopaths. Capitalism exalts greed and thereby promotes the worst elements of the human character.

It promotes the most unethical elements of society while punishing hard work. It exploits the majority of the population who is held to a wage and rewards the small faction that holds the capital. Ethical behavior and capitalism are largely incompatible because profit is held above the common good and a quick profit for the individual is more important than stability and sustainability for society and future generations. People constantly claim it creates "incentive", but incentive to create what? The capitalist system requires commodity fetishism to remain productive, but denies people basic universal rights like education and medical care. And in the long run, capitalism will always crash again and again, it will suck the environment dry and the money made decades ago will be useless.

If you freely give people things according to their need and let them be free to fulfill their natural potential, they will not be abusing anything. You only think it is abuse because you consider it wrong to help those in need. You don't realize that the supposed "abuses" in the capitalist system are directly related to lack of opportunity and misguided potential which is a fundamental flaw of the system, and part of the reason that capitalism has crashed numerous times in this country, and the marketplace had to be revived with investment in the greater population whose natural worth is far greater than the abstraction that is money.

 

And I've heard the deniers trying to pretend otherwise.