Potential Alternatives to the Capitalist System

We make tons of waste selling things that people don't really need, or which are designed to break down, or which quickly become obsolete. Not to mention all the overproduction of food from the agribusiness that gets dumped both before and after it gets to market.

I think you're only considering production waste.

 

But we do not have Nazis overlords telling us what we need. We are free, we decide what we really need for ourselves. Make sense now?

 

But we have capitalism so if the Ford breaks down you buy the Chevy and if that breaks down you buy the Honda

 

but we have beautiful capitalism so if one guy pays to over produce food another competitor can not overproduce, save money, and put the fool who over produced out of business

 

Ted wrote:

<<<<China just switched to capitalism and eradicated 40% of the planets poverty. Liberals stand in the way of capitalism and thus stand for more and more poverty>>>>

You are still clinging to the old (soon to be out-moded) left-right paradigm!

Yes China (and Asia) did well until recently, partly at the cost of displacing American manufacturing, which is why many Americans (and Europeans) are angry about "free" trade - hence Sarah Palin's remarks, and what she intends to do about it!

But now China itself is running into trouble because the West, up to its eyes in debt, can't keep buying China's exports, resulting in the current dangerous economic downturn in China. Now the whole world is in danger of slipping back into recession or worse.

Meanwhile the IMF is sitting impotently on the side-lines, issuing its usual banal directives about the need for governements to increase growth and efficiencies, usually by decreasing workers wages and conditions.

Not at all what JM Keynes had in mind.

 

Has anyone come up with a viable alternative to capitalism?
All I seem to find are complaints, most of which are the result of government interference and socialist attempts to create equality where none exists being applied to our market system and growing welfare state economy.

 

Keynes was stupid. What did he have in mind that was not stupid???

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if soon to be outmoded why so afraid to tell us why you think that???????????

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6% growth is running into trouble????????????? Slow???????

 

Ted wrote:

<<<Keynes was stupid. What did he have in mind that was not stupid???>>>

*Mutually beneficial* trade between nations, as opposed to the present system so 'eloquently' described by Sarah Palin (with China in mind): WE WIN-YOU LOSE!. (BTW, care to shed a tear for Detroit and Pittsburgh?)

<<<if soon to be outmoded, why so afraid to tell us why you think that>>>

Not afraid to educate you.

The GFC was a classic example of an out-of- control private sector. Some very clever individuals, able to manipulate exotic derivatives (characterised by Warren Buffett as "financial instruments of mass destruction"), were able to syphon vast sums from the American and world economy, while millions of ordinary people were economically ruined. [Insanely, banks in the US were bulldozing perfectly good homes rather than allowing people to live in them).

Since the GFC, governments everywhere have been forced to intervene to save the financial system from total collapse, and the situation is still remarkably unstable, with Janet Yellin having to tiptoe around sharemarkets in her efforts to extricate the Fed from "quantitative easing" policies without causing mass panic and collapse in asset values. Meanwhile, government intervention was associated with a blowout in public debt, resulting in constraints on much needed public sector expenditures in many countries. The notorious process of "privatisation of the profits, socialisation of the losses".was much in evidence.

<<<6% growth (in China) is running into trouble???>>>

It is a problem for the 400 million people in China still living in poverty, given that many economists consider that the present debt levels in China are at dangerous levels.

And lets look at America:

<<<Before the mid-1970s, economic growth in the United States was associated with falling poverty rates. If that relationship had held, poverty would have been eradicated in the 1980s. The decoupling of rising growth and falling poverty, however, means that Americans are working longer and harder but becoming poorer and less economically secure.>>>

sourced from:

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/poverty/

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark".

 

of course it is mutually beneficial since all parties freely engage in it. Do you think people buy at Walmart because they dont benefit? Do you think our companies manufacture there because they don't benefit?

 

Totally illiterate!!! libgovt had 132 programs to get people into homes the republican free market said they could not afford!! Then libgovt Fed printed the money and Fan/Fred bought and guaranteed the mortgages to assure the crisis. Now do you understand?? Govt interference in the free market did not work in East Germany. Do you understand that??l

 

illiteracy and insanity. 6% growth is what will get the remaining 400 million out of poverty!!!!!!! OMG!!!!

 

sad but true but this is what you expect with more and more liberal interference in the economy. Red China and USSR failed. Do you know that?

 

Ted wrote:

<<<sad but true but this is what you expect with more and more liberal interference in the economy. Red China and USSR failed. Do you know that?>>>

That's a neat trick - blame 'liberal interference' in the economy for the ills, claim conservative policy for the successes. [Analogous to "privatisation of the profits, socialisation of the losses].

Last time I looked at 'capitalist' Russia, poverty levels were going through the roof

"Millions more Russians living in poverty as economic crisis bites", sourced from:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ns-living-in-poverty-as-economic-crisis-bites.

Brazil's relapse into recession? Surely 'successful' China is not more 'capitalist' than Brazil?

Speaking of "mutually bemeficial" trade: Is Sarah Palin 'conservative' or 'liberal' - we know her views on trade!

As for China, lets see how capitalism deals with the unfolding environmental/ pollution disaster there (fancy walking around wearing a gas mask?).

 

look again, Russia is not capitalist. 1+1=2 OMG!!!!

 

OMG!! Brazil is not capitalist:

“The problem is, from time immemorial, Brazil’s political leaders only see one way forward, the growth of the state,” said Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former leftist intellectual who sought to reduce the size of Brazil’s government while president from 1995 to 2002. “But you need another springboard for progress, that doesn’t exclude the state but that accepts markets. This just doesn’t sink in in Brazil.”

Today, the Leviathan is sick. Brasília is embroiled in a sprawling embezzlement scandal at the state oil company, Petróleo Brasileiro SA. Investigators say that politicians, oil executives and businessmen conspired for a decade to siphon billions of dollars from the firm, channeling money to Swiss accounts and the slush funds of major political parties.
In Brazil’s Congress, where six in 10 members now face some kind of criminal investigation, lawmakers in the lower house have voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, a leftist economist whom many blame for fostering corruption and ruining Brazil’s economy

http://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-giant-problem-1461359723

 

Ted quoted:

<<<<"In Brazil&#8217;s Congress, where six in 10 members now face some kind of criminal investigation, lawmakers in the lower house have voted to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, a leftist economist whom many blame for fostering corruption and ruining Brazil&#8217;s economy">>>>

Thanks for pointing to the article. (I won't suggest you are positing that only leftist economists are responsible for all the corruption in the world!)

Let's get back to the topic of this thread: potential alternatives to the capitalist system. Why would people be looking for alternatives? (A good rule is - if it ain't broke, don't fix it!).

By-passing your possible argument that capitalism has never existed in a supposed 'pure' form:

The fact is capitalism, and free market processes in general, require regulation or intervention by governments because capitalism is subject to periodic (sometimes spectacular) failures, called the "business cycle" (I await your outlining of the 'liberal' policies that caused the Great Depression).
[Note:the eventual solution to the Great Depression was clouded by the intervention of WW2].

In Marx's time, children were sent to work in coal mines, and denied an education. Similarly in the American South, the entire economy was based on slavery. Today, in an increasingly globalised world, we see that "free' trade policies result in the pauperisation of large sections of the population eg steel workers and car manufacturers in America; note the spectacular destruction and bankruptcy of Detroit, a once-grand American city built on formerly well-paid middle class jobs, requiring a bail-out, ie taxpayer support - by the government. These same devastating consequences of "free" trade can be seen in countries all around the world, hence the antipathy, eg, to the current US originated TTIP, even amongst some US politicians on both sides of politics.

In any case, the inequality which is a natural outcome of unregulated capitalism is growing again, as outlined in Thomas Picketty's book. [Inequality of itself is not necessarily a problem if no-one is living in poverty, but of course poverty is still wide-spread - and growing in some places, so this growing inequality is very much a politically destabilising force - note the political deadlock that exists in almost every country in the world.].

Keynes' policies for a new global financial system (presented at the the Bretton Woods conference in 1944) need to be revisited now more than ever. Actually, the ever increasing advance of technology is on the verge of rendering the old laws of supply and demand obsolete - laws which mean in effect, those without the means simply have to go without ie, starve or languish in poverty. For the first time in history it is physically possible to house, educate and enable participation in the economy of every citizen on the planet, in a sustainable manner. China has shown it's possible to build entire cities, plus infrastructure (eg high-speed rail) from scratch, in a decade, but of course that process is grinding to a halt in China because of falling terms of trade (as Chinese wages rise) and growing unserviceable regional debt in China.

Now we need a new IMF to issue (print) the currency that China - and the rest of the world - needs to enable eradication of poverty. Recall that spectacularly successful local experiment in money creation in a small town in Austria, during the Great Depression, ultimately failing, in a global trade environment, because of the age-old limitation of excess of demand over supply. Robots, automation and sustainable battery/renewable-energy technology will sweep aside those old limitations , if we adopt intelligent mangement at the IMF level, as opposed to unregulated "free market" processes, as a basis for a new world economy.

 

6% growth could just as easily result in an increase in the number of those in poverty.

 

if so why be so afraid to explain how????????What does your fear teach us??

 

China did not switch to capitalism. Capitalism by definition requires private ownership of land and capital, and land in China -- as in Hong Kong -- is all publicly owned. While it is still a dictatorship politically, China has a better economic system than capitalism -- specifically, geoism -- and the results prove it.

 

Russia is definitely capitalist, as land and capital have both been privatized.

 

don't need an illiterate to reinvent the wheel. Here are what the best experts books say:

"Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics"

"How China Became Capitalist"

In his new book titled Markets over Mao: The rise of private businesses in China, Lardy argues that even though SOEs still enjoy monopoly positions in some key sectors in China, such as energy and telecommunications, their role in the overall economy has diminished significantly over the years. Here are some of the facts he presents to back his thesis: in 2011, China’s state-controlled firms only accounted for about a quarter of the country’s industrial output; and their share in exports has dropped to about 11% today; in 2012, state firms were only responsible for about one-tenth of fixed investment in manufacturing. And in terms of employment, SOEs employed about 13% of China’s labor force in 2011, a dramatic decline compared with the 60% figure recorded in 1999.




U.S.'s Startup Myth; China's 'Ford Moment': Commentary Review ...
Jul 3, 2010... may have to go Communist. It's tempting to wonder which way China will go. ... So far, China has taken the first path, going more the way of capitalism than Communism. ... Krugman or Paulson: Who You Gonna Bet On? ...

www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-03/u-s-s-startup-my... - Similar

The Myth of Asia's Miracle
Paul Krugman* ... Communist growth rates were certainly impressive, but not magical. ..... unfair: one is weighing down the buoyant performance of Chinese capitalism with the leaden performance of Chinese socialism. ... Even a modest slowing in China's growth will change the geopolitical outlook substantially. ...

web.mit.edu/krugman/www/myth.html - Similar

 

That doesn't even relate to the definition of capitalism: private ownership of the means of production. Brazil is capitalist by definition -- and has the injustice, corruption and inequality to prove it.

Sounds like capitalism to me....

 

dear, injustice and corruption are not capitalist or socialist. Do you understand?

 

They are BOTH capitalist and socialist.

Do you understand?

 

Apologists for capitalism's failures claim the success of geoism is instead a success of capitalism (just as they claimed about HK).

Shocker!