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Capitalist individualism will ultimately fail too. Nothing lasts forever.

toasterlovin 10y ago
Care to elaborate? Most of these cults/communes don't make it past the first decade. The longest lasting ones rarely make it past a century. So far "capitalist individualism" seems to have a better track record than that.
- rbanffy 10y ago
  Capitalism, when not regulated, tends to increase inequality. This will, eventually, lead to instability and a societal reset.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    We've tried almost entirely unregulated capitalism. Inequality increased, but only up to a point. It didn't increase without bound.
  - toasterlovin 10y ago
    Capitalism doesn't need to be perfect in order to be a better system for organizing a society than communism.
    - rbanffy 10y ago
      OTOH, communism doesn't need to be perfect to be better than unregulated capitalism.
- zbyte64 10y ago
  Before that we had other systems that lasted just as long. Mercantilism had a good run for 3 centuries.
wyager 10y ago
As long as there is resource scarcity and property rights, capitalism is a stable proposition. I think you'll find some physical issues with eliminating resource scarcity, and I'd rather not give up my right to own things.
edblarney 10y ago
"Capitalist individualism will ultimately fail too." Capitalism has already been around forever :) It just wasn't until Adam Smith that we had a word for it, or could describe it. Outside of Imperial power - which by the way always represented a tiny portion of state power (the King had a nice castle, and theoretically absolute power - but the taxes raised were pretty small part of GDP, also, if you didn't live directly near the king, he couldn't exactly bother you. Also remember up until Napoleon - if a King wanted to invade somewhere, he could hardly conscript, usually he had to pay armies of mercenaries). So even in ancient times - regular trade was the basis for most economies.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  >Capitalism has already been around forever :) Only if you define it in a way which is so loose as to be tautological. There have been a wide variety of resource allocation mechanisms throughout history, and it wasn't until relatively recently that any of them could really be described as "Capitalism".
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    Not literally forever but you could describe ships bought by private money for private profit by merchants in ancient Rome as capitalism. Capitalism is, fundamentally, the private ownership of the means for production with the owners receiving the fruits of that production directly and the workers being compensated by that owner, and the capitalists using their excess profits to create more means of production. I'm not sure how you could define capitalism such that it includes everything we describe as capitalist in the modern world while excluding Roman merchants. Until recently capitalism has been a small fraction of production but it's existed much longer.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    "There have been a wide variety of resource allocation mechanisms throughout history" If you have currency, banking, credit, merchants raising capital, private property protections, rule of law, labour at some cost - towards projects ... then it's basically capitalism. The Romans had all of that to lesser or greater degree. There are no examples of centrally planned economies working out on any scale. Communism is a completely dead idea, it's an effete academic concept only. That game is over.

Care to elaborate? Most of these cults/communes don't make it past the first decade. The longest lasting ones rarely make it past a century. So far "capitalist individualism" seems to have a better track record than that.

rbanffy 10y ago
Capitalism, when not regulated, tends to increase inequality. This will, eventually, lead to instability and a societal reset.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  We've tried almost entirely unregulated capitalism. Inequality increased, but only up to a point. It didn't increase without bound.
- toasterlovin 10y ago
  Capitalism doesn't need to be perfect in order to be a better system for organizing a society than communism.
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    OTOH, communism doesn't need to be perfect to be better than unregulated capitalism.
zbyte64 10y ago
Before that we had other systems that lasted just as long. Mercantilism had a good run for 3 centuries.

wyager 10y ago

As long as there is resource scarcity and property rights, capitalism is a stable proposition. I think you'll find some physical issues with eliminating resource scarcity, and I'd rather not give up my right to own things.

edblarney 10y ago

"Capitalist individualism will ultimately fail too." Capitalism has already been around forever :) It just wasn't until Adam Smith that we had a word for it, or could describe it. Outside of Imperial power - which by the way always represented a tiny portion of state power (the King had a nice castle, and theoretically absolute power - but the taxes raised were pretty small part of GDP, also, if you didn't live directly near the king, he couldn't exactly bother you. Also remember up until Napoleon - if a King wanted to invade somewhere, he could hardly conscript, usually he had to pay armies of mercenaries). So even in ancient times - regular trade was the basis for most economies.

aninhumer 10y ago
>Capitalism has already been around forever :) Only if you define it in a way which is so loose as to be tautological. There have been a wide variety of resource allocation mechanisms throughout history, and it wasn't until relatively recently that any of them could really be described as "Capitalism".
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Not literally forever but you could describe ships bought by private money for private profit by merchants in ancient Rome as capitalism. Capitalism is, fundamentally, the private ownership of the means for production with the owners receiving the fruits of that production directly and the workers being compensated by that owner, and the capitalists using their excess profits to create more means of production. I'm not sure how you could define capitalism such that it includes everything we describe as capitalist in the modern world while excluding Roman merchants. Until recently capitalism has been a small fraction of production but it's existed much longer.
- edblarney 10y ago
  "There have been a wide variety of resource allocation mechanisms throughout history" If you have currency, banking, credit, merchants raising capital, private property protections, rule of law, labour at some cost - towards projects ... then it's basically capitalism. The Romans had all of that to lesser or greater degree. There are no examples of centrally planned economies working out on any scale. Communism is a completely dead idea, it's an effete academic concept only. That game is over.