8 ms·

Can Capitalism Be Redeemed?

19 points by juanplusjuan 10y ago

socialist_coder 10y ago
Any hope for US capitalism redeeming itself in the next 4 years went out the window with Bernie Sanders's campaign.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  The more power the government accretes over the market, the more potential there is for corrupt use of that power.
  - MawNicker 10y ago
    That's bullshit. The government at least owes you a song and dance about how it's working for you. Even if you're too poor to pay taxes. Corporations don't owe you anything. When the masses have been squeezed dry they will have nothing to protect themselves from the externalities of corporations. The failure of this government is that it no longer exists. It's a corporation now. Sort of an inter-corporate security/insurance firm. What we actually need is a working government. I can't believe we still have the electoral college. Has no one heard of instant runoff voting? Or what happened in 2000 with Nader and Gore. The problem isn't just government period. It's this pretension of one.
    - randiantech 10y ago
      Governments are the more dangerous, objectively speaking. All of them have the monopoly of army and public forces. Not a single corporation in the world could be equally dangerous just based on this.
      - MawNicker 10y ago
        Are you sure? There are some pretty scary private security firms. Do you actually know what they have? I hope government really does have a monopoly on force.
        randiantech 10y ago
        No private organization has committed crimes comparable to the ones committed by authoritarian governments. I could mention USSRs pogroms, concentration camps on Germany or summary executions in Cuba, to name a few.
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      > Has no one heard of instant runoff voting? Approval voting. You want approval voting. Range voting is actually better but approval voting is almost as good and is a lot simpler for people to understand, and both are better than IRV.
      - MawNicker 10y ago
        I agree that approval voting is simpler conceptually. I like that IRV lets me prioratize my vote. It's not that much more complicated. Counting the vote is a lot harder but the voters don't have to do that. If 60% prefer Gore to Bush and 90% of them prefer Nader to Gore then you don't get the "correct" result. You'd have Gore beating Nader with 60% vs 54% approval when 54% (the majority) of the population actually prefered Nader to Gore. They can't risk leaving Gore unapproved because then Bush might win. IRV solves this.
        AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        You're only getting that result by having 100% of the voters who prefer Nader to Gore approve of both while 100% of the voters who prefer Gore to Nader only approve of Gore. In which case approval voting does what it's supposed to do and gives the election to the candidate with the highest approval. Moreover, the problem you're trying to solve is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which is provably impossible to do. You could have a third of voters prefer each candidate but majorities prefer Nader to Gore, Gore to Bush and Bush to Nader.
        MawNicker 10y ago
        I see what you're saying about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. I don't think I was specific enough. You're right in the general case and IRV doesn't solve that problem. What I mean is that 54% could prefer Nader outright. But since they also prefer Gore to Bush they have to approve of Gore or else Bush may win. This causes Gore to have the highest approval even though he wasn't the majority's most desired candidate. It wouldn't fix the bias towards those expected to win.
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      There is actually quite a bit of government out there. I don't know exactly why it is the Legislature has all but collapsed, but that's not all of government. Thing is, w.r.t the economy, what can actually be done? The only thing I know of that isn't pretty disruptive is as higher inflation target - and we cannot maintain GDP growth to hit the one we have.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    The problem is there isn't a candidate running who is willing to do the right thing. The Republican Party hasn't been for small government in decades. They take your money and give it to defense contractors and banks, whereas the Democrats take your money and give it to insurance companies and banks. The Republicans eliminate regulations that protect people and competition from corporations while the Democrats enact regulations that protect corporations from people and competition. Nobody is doing the right thing. That's why the Republican voters nominated The Joker and the Democrats almost nominated Sanders. People are for someone who will shake things up. But the fact is nobody knows what Trump will actually do, so your choices this year are between "clearly bad" and "wait, what?"
- dcherman 10y ago
  What does that mean? Bernie is a socialist, not a capitalist. How would a Sanders campaign have redeemed US capitalism?
  - futuravenir 10y ago
    Firstly, Bernie is a Social Democrat. Secondly, Capitalism has gotten so much Crony in it that the inequality is hurting the capitalism. Bernie could have swung the scales towards infrastructure, unionism, and lowering inequality, which would put dollars in the pockets of the poor, which would in turn be spent directly into the economy.
    - esgoto 10y ago
      The same Bernie that now supports Hillary and is himself a part of the incredibly corrupt DNC?
      - socialist_coder 10y ago
        He doesn't support Hillary. He is supporting a non-Trump presidency. And how can you possibly say he is part of the DNC? Do you even follow US politics at all?
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      " Bernie could have swung the scales towards infrastructure, unionism, and lowering inequality, which would put dollars in the pockets of the poor, which would in turn be spent directly into the economy." That's a little bit of a stretch. Inequality is a problem mostly because: A) The benefits of globalism go to the 1%, then to the middle class in terms of cheaper prices, but the working class lose jobs. B) US has massive importation of low-skilled immigrants. They go right at the bottom. You don't need a 'messed up system' - if you just add poor people, you increase inequality. C) Bernie is an old-time socialist - he has no new ideas, really. I've heard him talk, he wants to massive increase wealth distribution and do it by taxing 'the rich'. This never works out, really. 'Infrastructure' is a cover - really, it's a wealth transfer exercise. Europe and Canada tried that in the 1960's it didn't go s well. The problem is really difficult, and it's exacerbated by the sheer size of the US, also there are no ethnic ties. Sweden is only the size of Los Angeles - and they are 'Swedes' an ethnic group with fraternal social order, a Monarchy, a State Church, common cultural identity. It's easier to 'redistribute' when the person getting the service is someone you know. The best kind of 'redistribution' is 'jobs'. Surely, increasing the minimum wage a little bit might work, and possibly having unions where none exist (Wallmart?), but strengthening already existing unions - particularly in the auto-sector and government is not going to help anyone - they are part of the problem. Auto workers and gov. workers are massively overcompensated relative to their private sector peers. Gov unions are one of the reasons government is so massively inefficient. If Bernie could fix that, that'd be great - but he's a politician, he's never had a normal job and wouldn't have a clue how to do it. I think moving towards empowering people, making sure they can participate in the global wealth creation is very important, but 1960's style socialism is not the answer.
WalterBright 10y ago
What the free market rules should be are fairly clear. When corporations influence government to favor those corporations and blunt competition, that is not a failure of the free market, it is a failure of the government.
- chongli 10y ago
  The very existence of corporations is owed to government intervention. Speaking of corporations within a "free market" is incoherent at that point.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    Not true, wealth accumulation is sure to happen in a free market due to random circumstances and just even minimal imperfections in knowledge. Government is not required. And a wealthy player would be a fool to not try to skew the rules in their favour. Nobody has proven yet that it is possible to prevent this problem even in a really long term.
- cassowary 10y ago
  But can you have free markets if corporations are permitted to influence the government? It seems impossible; humans will be influenced by those with whom they have contact. So the alternative is to prohibit corporations from lobbying government, but that would be tantamount to removing legal personality from corporations and it is questionable whether the result is a free market system. You would also need to remove the right of people to lobby on behalf of groups of other people, and it is questionable whether the resulting system is free at all, or in any ways desirable. The system that we have approaches free market capitalism as well as a liberal system can.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    You can never have a perfect free market, nothing that humans craft is ever perfect. But you can get pretty close. As I've posted here before, the software development industry is fairly close to a free market. Besides, just because we cannot reach perfection is not justification to run the other way. The government is run by people, and people are subject to imperfection, incompetence, and corruption. The more power added to that means the more temptation there is to use that power for personal agendas. Remember that county clerk who was using her government power to deny marriage licenses to gay couples?
ksec 10y ago
Slightly Off Topic: What is the term for a socialist that support free market? Or is that a contradiction?
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  'Democratic Socialism' and 'Social Democracy'. 'Democratic Socialism' is almost like communism: 'Social ownership of the means of production' - no real private enterprise, but not quite centrally planned. 'Social Democracy' is socialism + free markets/private enterprise, meaning socialization of some things (i.e. possibly healthcare) and government intervention for the 'wellbeing' of people. The former is basically far-far left wing, the later not quite as left ... is the political basis for most left wing parties in Europe, especially Scandinavian and somewhat continental as well. Canada's NDP party is basically Social Democracy. Bernie Sanders would probably be described as Social Democracy.
  - ksec 10y ago
    Thanks. May be next time I should describe myself as Social Democracy then. Most people hate socialist. Which I describe myself as being one. I am all for national healthcare and education. If it wasn't Obama I would not have known there are countries without healthcare. Same goes to education. Although tuition fees for university is debatable. I could not understand why even healthcare is on socilist side. May be capitalist should also get rid of Police, fireman etc these kind of public services? But I am all for free market with hopefully minimum restrictions. what exactly is left, what exactly is right?
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      " I am all for national healthcare and education. If it wasn't Obama I would not have known there are countries without healthcare." ? You must be living in a bubble if you did not know other countries had socialized medicine. In fact, almost all modern nations do. You should also be weary: I live in a country with socialized medicine, and it's not very good. If I pay a doctor to help my I go to jail. It's a paradox: America has the best healthcare, but it's very expensive, and not everyone has it. Most nations have 'parallel systems' and it works out ok, like Germany and the Netherlands.
awt 10y ago
Any system in which there is a monopoly on the creation of currency can hardly be called capitalism.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  There is no monopoly on the creation of currency in the US because it's not a business activity. The Fed, though technically privately owned, is effectively independent. Yes, it's basically insane that the Fed is not a nationalized entity, but at the same time ... not much would change if the government did nationalize it, I don't think, anyhow. The power structure and decision making process would be the same.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    The Fed is not technically privately owned. It derives its authority from Congress. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm When it makes a profit, it pays a little bit of it to member banks and the rest of it to the US Government. I guess there aren't really laws about scrip in the US, but taxpayers know which money they like.
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      You are misled. The Federal reserve is 'empowered to print money' by the Government, and is not really a profit-making entity - but it is privately owned. It's a small detail, but an important one. The banks of the USA each own shares in the Fed - it's privately owned. By the way - American citizens don't have full control over it. There is no 'audit' or open books. Ron Paul demanded a historical audit of the Fed - and they would only go back as far as 2004. I'm not a 'NWO conspiracist' - but the currency of the US is managed by private entities, under the oversight of Congress. If we could actually see what's on the books from 1913-2016 there would be many a skeleton.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        Its organization is specified by statute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act If the banks owned it, they could vote to take all the profits (instead of a small fraction). Let me know when that happens.
alistoriv 10y ago
The question is whether capitalism should be redeemed, no?
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  There's a big increase in the exponent of global GDP growth starting about the time of capitalism - 1790 or 1820 or so.
  - alistoriv 10y ago
    thank you that has nothing to do with my comment
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      Oh yeah it does.
      - alistoriv 10y ago
        No one can deny that there has been a great period of growth under capitalism, but it's also ridiculous to deny the fact that along with said growth there have also been many crises. That's what this article is about. So, the question that I originally posed was asking not whether GDPs are bigger now than they were in the Middle Ages, but whether or not we should move on from capitalism to something better. Your comment did absolutely nothing to answer that question.
        ArkyBeagle 10y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. Which "something better"? Does "something better" still contain all the salient characteristics of what we call capitalism such that we keep the advantages? We're pretty sure that many things are entangled here; it's not clear that we have the means to disentangle them I'll put up with a lot to see freedom from food insecurity, basic clean water and good abatement of public disease vectors. If we break the system in certain ways, we may lose the ability to do even that. Don't say this doesn't happen; look at some of the South American countries. I try to sidestep all the ideology by thinking that the things we don't like about the Rubric Currently Known as Capitalism probably involve the use of economic rents to enrich certain people and not enrich other people. If that tool works ( and I can't defend it beyond a rudimentary level, frankly ) then the things you're talking about that you don't like aren't actually part of capitalism. And i think we're really talking about "why is growth slow?" Well, good question but my biases lead me to think that this is a lot demographic and the rest is bad monetary policy grounded in a basic lack of understanding of things like the proper role of central banks and public debt. I don't know that if we had 4% {rN}GDP growth we'd even be talking about this. In that case, "replacing" capitalism might just make it worse.
dragonwriter 10y ago
No, we figured that out decades ago, which is why capitalism was generally abandoned in the developed world in favor of the modern mixed economy. "Capitalism" is now, though, used in at least three conflicting ways: (1) To refer to actual capitalism (the real system dominant in the developed world in the late 19th and early 20th century, described and named "capitalism" by its socialist critics), (2) To refer to modern mixed economies as opposed to forms further from capitalism, such as Leninism and its derivatives, (3) To refer to a utopian realization of Econ 101 ideal markets, whose adherents seen to believe is actually a plausible economics system rather than a useful simplification in the same way as a friction-free model in physics. The former, as mentioned above, cannot be redeemed, though a synthesis with other ideas is possible (and now dominant) that mitigates some of its worst elements. The second may be improvable while still recognizably remaining a form of the modern mixed economy. The third isn't realistic, much less redeemable.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  w.r.t 2), I think of the peak of that as roughly the time in which John Kenneth Galbraith wrote "The New Industrial State". We didn't exactly conspire to kill it, either - it sorta just happened.

19 points by juanplusjuan 10y ago

socialist_coder 10y ago

Any hope for US capitalism redeeming itself in the next 4 years went out the window with Bernie Sanders's campaign.

WalterBright 10y ago
The more power the government accretes over the market, the more potential there is for corrupt use of that power.
- MawNicker 10y ago
  That's bullshit. The government at least owes you a song and dance about how it's working for you. Even if you're too poor to pay taxes. Corporations don't owe you anything. When the masses have been squeezed dry they will have nothing to protect themselves from the externalities of corporations. The failure of this government is that it no longer exists. It's a corporation now. Sort of an inter-corporate security/insurance firm. What we actually need is a working government. I can't believe we still have the electoral college. Has no one heard of instant runoff voting? Or what happened in 2000 with Nader and Gore. The problem isn't just government period. It's this pretension of one.
  - randiantech 10y ago
    Governments are the more dangerous, objectively speaking. All of them have the monopoly of army and public forces. Not a single corporation in the world could be equally dangerous just based on this.
    - MawNicker 10y ago
      Are you sure? There are some pretty scary private security firms. Do you actually know what they have? I hope government really does have a monopoly on force.
      - randiantech 10y ago
        No private organization has committed crimes comparable to the ones committed by authoritarian governments. I could mention USSRs pogroms, concentration camps on Germany or summary executions in Cuba, to name a few.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > Has no one heard of instant runoff voting? Approval voting. You want approval voting. Range voting is actually better but approval voting is almost as good and is a lot simpler for people to understand, and both are better than IRV.
    - MawNicker 10y ago
      I agree that approval voting is simpler conceptually. I like that IRV lets me prioratize my vote. It's not that much more complicated. Counting the vote is a lot harder but the voters don't have to do that. If 60% prefer Gore to Bush and 90% of them prefer Nader to Gore then you don't get the "correct" result. You'd have Gore beating Nader with 60% vs 54% approval when 54% (the majority) of the population actually prefered Nader to Gore. They can't risk leaving Gore unapproved because then Bush might win. IRV solves this.
      - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
        You're only getting that result by having 100% of the voters who prefer Nader to Gore approve of both while 100% of the voters who prefer Gore to Nader only approve of Gore. In which case approval voting does what it's supposed to do and gives the election to the candidate with the highest approval. Moreover, the problem you're trying to solve is Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which is provably impossible to do. You could have a third of voters prefer each candidate but majorities prefer Nader to Gore, Gore to Bush and Bush to Nader.
        MawNicker 10y ago
        I see what you're saying about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. I don't think I was specific enough. You're right in the general case and IRV doesn't solve that problem. What I mean is that 54% could prefer Nader outright. But since they also prefer Gore to Bush they have to approve of Gore or else Bush may win. This causes Gore to have the highest approval even though he wasn't the majority's most desired candidate. It wouldn't fix the bias towards those expected to win.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    There is actually quite a bit of government out there. I don't know exactly why it is the Legislature has all but collapsed, but that's not all of government. Thing is, w.r.t the economy, what can actually be done? The only thing I know of that isn't pretty disruptive is as higher inflation target - and we cannot maintain GDP growth to hit the one we have.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  The problem is there isn't a candidate running who is willing to do the right thing. The Republican Party hasn't been for small government in decades. They take your money and give it to defense contractors and banks, whereas the Democrats take your money and give it to insurance companies and banks. The Republicans eliminate regulations that protect people and competition from corporations while the Democrats enact regulations that protect corporations from people and competition. Nobody is doing the right thing. That's why the Republican voters nominated The Joker and the Democrats almost nominated Sanders. People are for someone who will shake things up. But the fact is nobody knows what Trump will actually do, so your choices this year are between "clearly bad" and "wait, what?"
dcherman 10y ago
What does that mean? Bernie is a socialist, not a capitalist. How would a Sanders campaign have redeemed US capitalism?
- futuravenir 10y ago
  Firstly, Bernie is a Social Democrat. Secondly, Capitalism has gotten so much Crony in it that the inequality is hurting the capitalism. Bernie could have swung the scales towards infrastructure, unionism, and lowering inequality, which would put dollars in the pockets of the poor, which would in turn be spent directly into the economy.
  - esgoto 10y ago
    The same Bernie that now supports Hillary and is himself a part of the incredibly corrupt DNC?
    - socialist_coder 10y ago
      He doesn't support Hillary. He is supporting a non-Trump presidency. And how can you possibly say he is part of the DNC? Do you even follow US politics at all?
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    " Bernie could have swung the scales towards infrastructure, unionism, and lowering inequality, which would put dollars in the pockets of the poor, which would in turn be spent directly into the economy." That's a little bit of a stretch. Inequality is a problem mostly because: A) The benefits of globalism go to the 1%, then to the middle class in terms of cheaper prices, but the working class lose jobs. B) US has massive importation of low-skilled immigrants. They go right at the bottom. You don't need a 'messed up system' - if you just add poor people, you increase inequality. C) Bernie is an old-time socialist - he has no new ideas, really. I've heard him talk, he wants to massive increase wealth distribution and do it by taxing 'the rich'. This never works out, really. 'Infrastructure' is a cover - really, it's a wealth transfer exercise. Europe and Canada tried that in the 1960's it didn't go s well. The problem is really difficult, and it's exacerbated by the sheer size of the US, also there are no ethnic ties. Sweden is only the size of Los Angeles - and they are 'Swedes' an ethnic group with fraternal social order, a Monarchy, a State Church, common cultural identity. It's easier to 'redistribute' when the person getting the service is someone you know. The best kind of 'redistribution' is 'jobs'. Surely, increasing the minimum wage a little bit might work, and possibly having unions where none exist (Wallmart?), but strengthening already existing unions - particularly in the auto-sector and government is not going to help anyone - they are part of the problem. Auto workers and gov. workers are massively overcompensated relative to their private sector peers. Gov unions are one of the reasons government is so massively inefficient. If Bernie could fix that, that'd be great - but he's a politician, he's never had a normal job and wouldn't have a clue how to do it. I think moving towards empowering people, making sure they can participate in the global wealth creation is very important, but 1960's style socialism is not the answer.

WalterBright 10y ago

What the free market rules should be are fairly clear. When corporations influence government to favor those corporations and blunt competition, that is not a failure of the free market, it is a failure of the government.

chongli 10y ago
The very existence of corporations is owed to government intervention. Speaking of corporations within a "free market" is incoherent at that point.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Not true, wealth accumulation is sure to happen in a free market due to random circumstances and just even minimal imperfections in knowledge. Government is not required. And a wealthy player would be a fool to not try to skew the rules in their favour. Nobody has proven yet that it is possible to prevent this problem even in a really long term.
cassowary 10y ago
But can you have free markets if corporations are permitted to influence the government? It seems impossible; humans will be influenced by those with whom they have contact. So the alternative is to prohibit corporations from lobbying government, but that would be tantamount to removing legal personality from corporations and it is questionable whether the result is a free market system. You would also need to remove the right of people to lobby on behalf of groups of other people, and it is questionable whether the resulting system is free at all, or in any ways desirable. The system that we have approaches free market capitalism as well as a liberal system can.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  You can never have a perfect free market, nothing that humans craft is ever perfect. But you can get pretty close. As I've posted here before, the software development industry is fairly close to a free market. Besides, just because we cannot reach perfection is not justification to run the other way. The government is run by people, and people are subject to imperfection, incompetence, and corruption. The more power added to that means the more temptation there is to use that power for personal agendas. Remember that county clerk who was using her government power to deny marriage licenses to gay couples?

ksec 10y ago

Slightly Off Topic: What is the term for a socialist that support free market? Or is that a contradiction?

jomamaxx 10y ago
'Democratic Socialism' and 'Social Democracy'. 'Democratic Socialism' is almost like communism: 'Social ownership of the means of production' - no real private enterprise, but not quite centrally planned. 'Social Democracy' is socialism + free markets/private enterprise, meaning socialization of some things (i.e. possibly healthcare) and government intervention for the 'wellbeing' of people. The former is basically far-far left wing, the later not quite as left ... is the political basis for most left wing parties in Europe, especially Scandinavian and somewhat continental as well. Canada's NDP party is basically Social Democracy. Bernie Sanders would probably be described as Social Democracy.
- ksec 10y ago
  Thanks. May be next time I should describe myself as Social Democracy then. Most people hate socialist. Which I describe myself as being one. I am all for national healthcare and education. If it wasn't Obama I would not have known there are countries without healthcare. Same goes to education. Although tuition fees for university is debatable. I could not understand why even healthcare is on socilist side. May be capitalist should also get rid of Police, fireman etc these kind of public services? But I am all for free market with hopefully minimum restrictions. what exactly is left, what exactly is right?
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    " I am all for national healthcare and education. If it wasn't Obama I would not have known there are countries without healthcare." ? You must be living in a bubble if you did not know other countries had socialized medicine. In fact, almost all modern nations do. You should also be weary: I live in a country with socialized medicine, and it's not very good. If I pay a doctor to help my I go to jail. It's a paradox: America has the best healthcare, but it's very expensive, and not everyone has it. Most nations have 'parallel systems' and it works out ok, like Germany and the Netherlands.

awt 10y ago

Any system in which there is a monopoly on the creation of currency can hardly be called capitalism.

jomamaxx 10y ago
There is no monopoly on the creation of currency in the US because it's not a business activity. The Fed, though technically privately owned, is effectively independent. Yes, it's basically insane that the Fed is not a nationalized entity, but at the same time ... not much would change if the government did nationalize it, I don't think, anyhow. The power structure and decision making process would be the same.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The Fed is not technically privately owned. It derives its authority from Congress. https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/about_14986.htm When it makes a profit, it pays a little bit of it to member banks and the rest of it to the US Government. I guess there aren't really laws about scrip in the US, but taxpayers know which money they like.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    You are misled. The Federal reserve is 'empowered to print money' by the Government, and is not really a profit-making entity - but it is privately owned. It's a small detail, but an important one. The banks of the USA each own shares in the Fed - it's privately owned. By the way - American citizens don't have full control over it. There is no 'audit' or open books. Ron Paul demanded a historical audit of the Fed - and they would only go back as far as 2004. I'm not a 'NWO conspiracist' - but the currency of the US is managed by private entities, under the oversight of Congress. If we could actually see what's on the books from 1913-2016 there would be many a skeleton.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Its organization is specified by statute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_Act If the banks owned it, they could vote to take all the profits (instead of a small fraction). Let me know when that happens.

alistoriv 10y ago

The question is whether capitalism should be redeemed, no?

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
There's a big increase in the exponent of global GDP growth starting about the time of capitalism - 1790 or 1820 or so.
- alistoriv 10y ago
  thank you that has nothing to do with my comment
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    Oh yeah it does.
    - alistoriv 10y ago
      No one can deny that there has been a great period of growth under capitalism, but it's also ridiculous to deny the fact that along with said growth there have also been many crises. That's what this article is about. So, the question that I originally posed was asking not whether GDPs are bigger now than they were in the Middle Ages, but whether or not we should move on from capitalism to something better. Your comment did absolutely nothing to answer that question.
      - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. Which "something better"? Does "something better" still contain all the salient characteristics of what we call capitalism such that we keep the advantages? We're pretty sure that many things are entangled here; it's not clear that we have the means to disentangle them I'll put up with a lot to see freedom from food insecurity, basic clean water and good abatement of public disease vectors. If we break the system in certain ways, we may lose the ability to do even that. Don't say this doesn't happen; look at some of the South American countries. I try to sidestep all the ideology by thinking that the things we don't like about the Rubric Currently Known as Capitalism probably involve the use of economic rents to enrich certain people and not enrich other people. If that tool works ( and I can't defend it beyond a rudimentary level, frankly ) then the things you're talking about that you don't like aren't actually part of capitalism. And i think we're really talking about "why is growth slow?" Well, good question but my biases lead me to think that this is a lot demographic and the rest is bad monetary policy grounded in a basic lack of understanding of things like the proper role of central banks and public debt. I don't know that if we had 4% {rN}GDP growth we'd even be talking about this. In that case, "replacing" capitalism might just make it worse.

dragonwriter 10y ago

No, we figured that out decades ago, which is why capitalism was generally abandoned in the developed world in favor of the modern mixed economy. "Capitalism" is now, though, used in at least three conflicting ways: (1) To refer to actual capitalism (the real system dominant in the developed world in the late 19th and early 20th century, described and named "capitalism" by its socialist critics), (2) To refer to modern mixed economies as opposed to forms further from capitalism, such as Leninism and its derivatives, (3) To refer to a utopian realization of Econ 101 ideal markets, whose adherents seen to believe is actually a plausible economics system rather than a useful simplification in the same way as a friction-free model in physics. The former, as mentioned above, cannot be redeemed, though a synthesis with other ideas is possible (and now dominant) that mitigates some of its worst elements. The second may be improvable while still recognizably remaining a form of the modern mixed economy. The third isn't realistic, much less redeemable.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
w.r.t 2), I think of the peak of that as roughly the time in which John Kenneth Galbraith wrote "The New Industrial State". We didn't exactly conspire to kill it, either - it sorta just happened.