8 ms·

Are You Ready to Consider That Capitalism Is the Real Problem?

44 points by Fripplebubby 9y ago

karmellad 9y ago
What about neoliberalism
BFatts 9y ago
Everyone complains about capitalism. Is there an actual solution? Is there an alternative that benefits the community as much as Socialism does? And then, what do we do with the crap parts of Socialism? Do we just TRY it and hope it works? There's never been a real plan set forth other than "Capitalism sucks!" or "Capitalism is the root of all our problems!" How do we solve for it? Then... how do we get people to buy into it on a global scale without it falling apart under the weight of social discussions?
- Elhana 9y ago
  Neither is actually bad. Problem is always in people.
- skilesare 9y ago
  Http://Catallax.info Giving it the old college try.
- jandrese 9y ago
  The experiments you're looking for are the socialist democracies of northern Europe. Look at the Netherlands for an example.
LyndsySimon 9y ago
This article reads to me like a long list of problems caused by government and blamed on capitalism. I'm biased though - I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and I've spent orders of magnitude more time considering these sorts of questions than the vast majority of people who are not so politically involved.
- smt88 9y ago
  Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you has spent less time considering these sorts of questions than you have? As a counterpoint, I'd suggest the thousands of political-science, economic, and philosophy scholars who all disagree with you (as do the vast majority of humans who have ever lived and appreciate the social contract). You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong, but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have.
  - pzone 9y ago
    Overall you make a good point. In the context of this article, I tend to think the OP comment has thought about it harder than the author. These articles like "Down with capitalism, didn't you hear 51% of millennials don't like it! And what about that fire in london?" are invariably written by radical left-wing disciplines where the authors have no evidence of deep understanding of the issues - here anthropology.
    - smt88 9y ago
      This article is not scholarly or deep. I'm not sure we could (or should) expect more, given its medium. It's a pop-politics article, so I found the scope to be appropriate. I also felt the implied intent was to inspire people to read deeper dives written elsewhere. As for "radical left-wing," I don't disagree with the terminology. But I do disagree with the implication that the radical left-wing is a niche in the US. I'd say that it's quite mainstream, which you yourself support by suggesting that it's popular among Millenials (almost half the US population). The author of the article also suggests that radical left-wing ideas are now mainstream, and I'd propose that that's the whole point. These ideas have become mainstream, so let's start calling them what they are: socialist ideas.
  - LyndsySimon 9y ago
    > Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you has spent less time considering these sorts of questions than you have? Of course not, that's why I qualified that statement; to be clear that I was speaking about the general public, not those who hold a contrary worldview that merely disagree with me. > You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong I actually don't think it's a matter of "correct" or "incorrect" so much as one of values. I value individual liberty over all else, while others are more utilitarian in their approach. > but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have. Of course not - that's why I enjoy talking about political and economics. One or both of the people involved are likely to learn something in the process :)
cmahler7 9y ago
Socialists/Communists not satisfied with 200 million+ deaths, must want to hit an even 1 billion. Blows my mind people can even be calling for socialism while we have a real time implosion going on in Venezuela right now. It's ending like every other socialist regime in history, cannibalism, famine, riots, and murder. Meanwhile one of the United State's biggest problem is obesity due to being so prosperous. Actually I'm not surprised, just look up Yuri Bezmenov's talk on ideological subversion he foretold everything 30+ years ago
- smt88 9y ago
  You mention Venezuela, but what about India? France, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Finland, and Denmark are all arguably socialist -- certain much more so than the US. Any economic system fails when practiced by corrupt or incompetent governments. There are many failed capitalist states, too. Edit: if you want to talk about scaling, China and India are debatably doing well (or at least improving rapidly), and both countries have 1.3B people. China had an interesting idea with special economic zones: let people opt out of socialism if they want to, but stay within the country and get basic protections.
  - pzone 9y ago
    None of those countries are communist. They have large social welfare states, and tax rates that might push 50%, but essentially rely on the free market for most economic decisionmaking. In many ways China is closer to pure capitalism than most countries on the planet. The vestiges of "socialism" primarily live on in their authoritarian government, restrictive social policies, financial repression and massive state-owned-enterprises. China is slowly moving away from the latter two as their massive problems are uncovered.
    - smt88 9y ago
      I wasn't talking about communism. > authoritarian government, restrictive social policies, financial repression and massive state-owned-enterprises None of these are key tenets of socialism as the article formulates it. As I've said elsewhere, historical socialism is not the socialism anyone is advocating. No one is suggesting Stalinism.
jandrese 9y ago
Every system has problems. Capitalism is the best we have found at managing resources at scale. The problem of course is that wealth tends to create wealth, which causes wealth to accumulate at the top. This leads to a completely distorted economy, civil unrest, and eventually a crash. The usual solution is to task a government with making sure that wealth is taken from the top and reinjected at the bottom to keep the system from crashing. It's an ugly hack, but it's the only thing that has worked. The big problem with this is that wealth also tends to accumulate political power which weakens this check on capitalism. There's no easy solution, but the first place to start would be strengthening campaign finance rules and conflict of interest rules. The legislators should never be cozy with industry. In fact the heads of industry should be angry with government pretty much all of the time, if they are not then the government is probably not doing its job. Apple should be on a massive propaganda campaign about how cruel and unfair it is that all of the world governments are taking away their profits and giving them (indirectly) to poor people. They should be crying about how greedy governments have stolen like three quarters of a trillion dollars from them. Hedge fund managers should be angry about how the government is always there when they make huge windfalls. It should seems super unfair what the government is doing, because what capitalism does to the poor is just as unfair.
- justforFranz 9y ago
  Oh, but business interests are always complaining. They face no price or consequence for griping. They set up TV networks to do 24 hour pissing & moaning, and they call it "news." What blows my mind is that the middle class and the poor who should know better, are simply to damned lazy to stand up for themselves. And many of them simply want a strongman to tell them what to do. That is, when they're not fantasizing that they'll be allowed into the club of the rich if they only provide enough fealty. It's a completely warped populace.
justforFranz 9y ago
I think the deeper problem is that labor has no pricing power. Capitalism works for more people when people who earn a salary can buy things that increase real demand for companies. But workers are strapped for money, and have no real political assistance or prospects for a better future. Earning a living is increasingly a sucker's game. Unfortunately, America's political system doesn't allow for a nuanced solution that gently puts the brakes on rampant globalization. Instead, talking heads who only play for ALL THE MARBLES see this as an either/or situation. I believe in the inevitability of globalization. The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we need to get there next week? Can we get there just a tiny bit slower? Can we create an economic space where people not living on space station Elysium (the 2013 movie) can have a life not defined by exasperating financial anxiety?
- maxerickson 9y ago
  You can have capitalism and globalization without having policy that favors capital over labor. The problem we have is that people consider existing policy agnostic.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Aren't unions the way to give labor pricing power? Of course the problem with Unions is that they are a big Prisoners Dilemma game. You need everybody in the union or the people outside of it undercut the whole system. Globalism makes it extremely difficult to maintain unions without significant government support. Can you imagine a scenario where every textile worker in the world was a member of a union? How horrible would it be if they couldn't be kept as wage slaves and paid pennies per hour out in Bangladesh? Your clothes would cost more for sure.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  but, it's more than that because true competitive capitalism would allow prices to come down, but technology companies designing system that don't pass wealth on to consumers. google advertising costs a fortune who pays for it in higher prices? why do companies need to keep upgrading excel?
erikb 9y ago
Everybody knows that capitalism has problem. The trick is figuring out what the next better bad system would be. And as far as I can see the richest, smartest and most powerful people are currenlty all thinking hard exactly about that question. So far nobody has found the answer, but suggestions are welcome.
- smt88 9y ago
  No one has a concrete answer, but capitalism could work better if the market were freer -- and by "freer" I don't mean less regulated. I mean that people have more freedom to make choices. For example, we don't currently have a free labor market because it's extremely expensive (in terms of time and money) for a low-wage worker to find a new job. Those people are trapped. If we had a better safety net for people at the bottom, the labor market could be more competitive. Another example is lacking knowledge. The market could (and should) stop buying products that harm them, but sometimes the only party who knows the product is harmful is the producer. Cigarettes were an example for a long time because the tobacco companies buried their own research. The government now forces health disclosures on cigarettes, which makes the market work like it's supposed to. There are tons of examples where a "socialist" policy actually leads to more personal freedom, more efficient markets, and less need for government intervention into individuals' decisions. (I would include universal basic income as a social policy, but it's actually not! It's supposed by both libertarians and socialists. It might be the "next better bad" adjustment to our current system.)
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    The problem is if you're priced out of decent healthcare and/or education options it really doesn't matter how much extra spending money you got.
    - smt88 9y ago
      If you're arguing that health care and education should be free, then I agree with you. If I were running a society, my goal would be an even playing field. Everyone has the same access to health care, education, and any other opportunity that affects their happiness. Beyond that, they would have the choice to pursue whatever they wanted. My society could not exist now, nor could it exist in the past. Miserable, oppressed people were required to support everyone else (e.g. coal miners). We're getting to a point in history where that may change. Robots might be able to do all the bad, boring, dangerous jobs. Basically Wall-E.
hprotagonist 9y ago
I'm pretty sympathetic to the ideals behind Distributism[0]. I just don't know, particularly, how to make it work usefully with sectors that benefit from economies of scale (like ISPs) [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
- Rotten194 9y ago
  You should look into various flavors of anarchism, like Syndicalism, that have tried to answer that question.
HoppedUpMenace 9y ago
There's a quip in the show "Archer" (forget exactly the words) where Mallory tells everyone something along the lines of "move up to my tax bracket and see if you keep spouting that socialist propaganda". I found it hilarious because it is true for many out there that if you suddenly find yourself moved from your minimum wage job with Obamacare insurance into a position of making a huge salary with legit benefits, you suddenly shift your position on the fairness of Capitalism and whether or not people are getting too much from the government and how they should do what you did to get ahead. Additionally, while it certainly appears that the richer get richer and it does nothing to help those that are struggling, you have to ask yourself whether or not you'd do anything different if it were you in the position of wealth and power to change how people earn money for the work they contribute. Then you'd have to wonder if people could truly come together and share everything under extreme government over site, but why wonder when there is decades of data to prove that it doesn't work?
- mcbruiser3 9y ago
  yes, people are always motivated by self interest, even for what seems like altruistic actions the underlying motivation is that it makes them feel good about themselves.
  - HoppedUpMenace 9y ago
    I'm sure there's a name for this but a modern day label could be the "Facebook Syndrome", where seemingly endless goals of altruism is at its core, motivated by self interest and feeling good about oneself, to the detriment of the people you profess to be helping.
    - mcbruiser3 9y ago
      I think it's called virtue signaling. and yeah, it's rampant on social media.
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    possibly or maybe there are actually a emotions called sympathy and empathy.
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
The big danger, IMO, is the sheer frustration that the modern social and economic system puts on the demographic mentioned (18-29 year olds). "Maybe we should start smashing stuff until things are better" is really unappealing when you have a meaningful job, a spouse and children, a house, or are otherwise invested into the system. And when you're frustrated enough to have a negative view of markets, well, the field is ripe for extraordinarily dangerous mass movements. Millennials are infantilized until later in life and, by and large, haven't been allowed to hold real responsibility until 22 or ever later. The affordability of passing gate-keeping milestones - such as owning a home, or getting a degree, or affording a stay-at-home wife and children - in terms of available opportunities has risen drastically. The divorce rate has risen tremendously, having an unprecedented rise in adults raised in broken homes. Like, congratulations Baby Boomers, you successfully made housing and education expensive enough that your loans and real estate let you retire off the proceeds of people working to pay off their crushing debt. That just means a generation of angry single men in their twenties working pointless jobs, living with their parents, and frustrated with their inability to fulfill their social needs. If you're not scared of creating this demographic, you haven't studied history and psychology.
rsrsrs86 9y ago
Consider that vast amounts of capital come from pension funds that invest in companies which have a duty to provide returns to shareholders. Would pension fund stakeholders agree on having lower pensions when they get old so that current workers earn more? Economics is far more complicated than altruism supposes.
random42_ 9y ago
I wonder how much of it is the system's fault and how much is human nature's fault. Regardless of the system, there is always a group that will want more, be it money and/or power. Many of the problems cited in this article wouldn't be a problem if not for pure self interest and lack of empathy for the society as a whole. The JP Morgan reaction to the attempt of raising wages is the perfect example for that.

44 points by Fripplebubby 9y ago

What about neoliberalism

Everyone complains about capitalism. Is there an actual solution? Is there an alternative that benefits the community as much as Socialism does? And then, what do we do with the crap parts of Socialism? Do we just TRY it and hope it works? There's never been a real plan set forth other than "Capitalism sucks!" or "Capitalism is the root of all our problems!" How do we solve for it? Then... how do we get people to buy into it on a global scale without it falling apart under the weight of social discussions?

Elhana 9y ago
Neither is actually bad. Problem is always in people.
skilesare 9y ago
Http://Catallax.info Giving it the old college try.
jandrese 9y ago
The experiments you're looking for are the socialist democracies of northern Europe. Look at the Netherlands for an example.

LyndsySimon 9y ago

This article reads to me like a long list of problems caused by government and blamed on capitalism. I'm biased though - I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and I've spent orders of magnitude more time considering these sorts of questions than the vast majority of people who are not so politically involved.

smt88 9y ago
Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you has spent less time considering these sorts of questions than you have? As a counterpoint, I'd suggest the thousands of political-science, economic, and philosophy scholars who all disagree with you (as do the vast majority of humans who have ever lived and appreciate the social contract). You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong, but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have.
- pzone 9y ago
  Overall you make a good point. In the context of this article, I tend to think the OP comment has thought about it harder than the author. These articles like "Down with capitalism, didn't you hear 51% of millennials don't like it! And what about that fire in london?" are invariably written by radical left-wing disciplines where the authors have no evidence of deep understanding of the issues - here anthropology.
  - smt88 9y ago
    This article is not scholarly or deep. I'm not sure we could (or should) expect more, given its medium. It's a pop-politics article, so I found the scope to be appropriate. I also felt the implied intent was to inspire people to read deeper dives written elsewhere. As for "radical left-wing," I don't disagree with the terminology. But I do disagree with the implication that the radical left-wing is a niche in the US. I'd say that it's quite mainstream, which you yourself support by suggesting that it's popular among Millenials (almost half the US population). The author of the article also suggests that radical left-wing ideas are now mainstream, and I'd propose that that's the whole point. These ideas have become mainstream, so let's start calling them what they are: socialist ideas.
- LyndsySimon 9y ago
  > Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you has spent less time considering these sorts of questions than you have? Of course not, that's why I qualified that statement; to be clear that I was speaking about the general public, not those who hold a contrary worldview that merely disagree with me. > You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong I actually don't think it's a matter of "correct" or "incorrect" so much as one of values. I value individual liberty over all else, while others are more utilitarian in their approach. > but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have. Of course not - that's why I enjoy talking about political and economics. One or both of the people involved are likely to learn something in the process :)

cmahler7 9y ago

Socialists/Communists not satisfied with 200 million+ deaths, must want to hit an even 1 billion. Blows my mind people can even be calling for socialism while we have a real time implosion going on in Venezuela right now. It's ending like every other socialist regime in history, cannibalism, famine, riots, and murder. Meanwhile one of the United State's biggest problem is obesity due to being so prosperous. Actually I'm not surprised, just look up Yuri Bezmenov's talk on ideological subversion he foretold everything 30+ years ago

smt88 9y ago
You mention Venezuela, but what about India? France, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Finland, and Denmark are all arguably socialist -- certain much more so than the US. Any economic system fails when practiced by corrupt or incompetent governments. There are many failed capitalist states, too. Edit: if you want to talk about scaling, China and India are debatably doing well (or at least improving rapidly), and both countries have 1.3B people. China had an interesting idea with special economic zones: let people opt out of socialism if they want to, but stay within the country and get basic protections.
- pzone 9y ago
  None of those countries are communist. They have large social welfare states, and tax rates that might push 50%, but essentially rely on the free market for most economic decisionmaking. In many ways China is closer to pure capitalism than most countries on the planet. The vestiges of "socialism" primarily live on in their authoritarian government, restrictive social policies, financial repression and massive state-owned-enterprises. China is slowly moving away from the latter two as their massive problems are uncovered.
  - smt88 9y ago
    I wasn't talking about communism. > authoritarian government, restrictive social policies, financial repression and massive state-owned-enterprises None of these are key tenets of socialism as the article formulates it. As I've said elsewhere, historical socialism is not the socialism anyone is advocating. No one is suggesting Stalinism.

jandrese 9y ago

Every system has problems. Capitalism is the best we have found at managing resources at scale. The problem of course is that wealth tends to create wealth, which causes wealth to accumulate at the top. This leads to a completely distorted economy, civil unrest, and eventually a crash. The usual solution is to task a government with making sure that wealth is taken from the top and reinjected at the bottom to keep the system from crashing. It's an ugly hack, but it's the only thing that has worked. The big problem with this is that wealth also tends to accumulate political power which weakens this check on capitalism. There's no easy solution, but the first place to start would be strengthening campaign finance rules and conflict of interest rules. The legislators should never be cozy with industry. In fact the heads of industry should be angry with government pretty much all of the time, if they are not then the government is probably not doing its job. Apple should be on a massive propaganda campaign about how cruel and unfair it is that all of the world governments are taking away their profits and giving them (indirectly) to poor people. They should be crying about how greedy governments have stolen like three quarters of a trillion dollars from them. Hedge fund managers should be angry about how the government is always there when they make huge windfalls. It should seems super unfair what the government is doing, because what capitalism does to the poor is just as unfair.

justforFranz 9y ago
Oh, but business interests are always complaining. They face no price or consequence for griping. They set up TV networks to do 24 hour pissing & moaning, and they call it "news." What blows my mind is that the middle class and the poor who should know better, are simply to damned lazy to stand up for themselves. And many of them simply want a strongman to tell them what to do. That is, when they're not fantasizing that they'll be allowed into the club of the rich if they only provide enough fealty. It's a completely warped populace.

justforFranz 9y ago

I think the deeper problem is that labor has no pricing power. Capitalism works for more people when people who earn a salary can buy things that increase real demand for companies. But workers are strapped for money, and have no real political assistance or prospects for a better future. Earning a living is increasingly a sucker's game. Unfortunately, America's political system doesn't allow for a nuanced solution that gently puts the brakes on rampant globalization. Instead, talking heads who only play for ALL THE MARBLES see this as an either/or situation. I believe in the inevitability of globalization. The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we need to get there next week? Can we get there just a tiny bit slower? Can we create an economic space where people not living on space station Elysium (the 2013 movie) can have a life not defined by exasperating financial anxiety?

maxerickson 9y ago
You can have capitalism and globalization without having policy that favors capital over labor. The problem we have is that people consider existing policy agnostic.
jandrese 9y ago
Aren't unions the way to give labor pricing power? Of course the problem with Unions is that they are a big Prisoners Dilemma game. You need everybody in the union or the people outside of it undercut the whole system. Globalism makes it extremely difficult to maintain unions without significant government support. Can you imagine a scenario where every textile worker in the world was a member of a union? How horrible would it be if they couldn't be kept as wage slaves and paid pennies per hour out in Bangladesh? Your clothes would cost more for sure.
sharemywin 9y ago
but, it's more than that because true competitive capitalism would allow prices to come down, but technology companies designing system that don't pass wealth on to consumers. google advertising costs a fortune who pays for it in higher prices? why do companies need to keep upgrading excel?

erikb 9y ago

Everybody knows that capitalism has problem. The trick is figuring out what the next better bad system would be. And as far as I can see the richest, smartest and most powerful people are currenlty all thinking hard exactly about that question. So far nobody has found the answer, but suggestions are welcome.

smt88 9y ago
No one has a concrete answer, but capitalism could work better if the market were freer -- and by "freer" I don't mean less regulated. I mean that people have more freedom to make choices. For example, we don't currently have a free labor market because it's extremely expensive (in terms of time and money) for a low-wage worker to find a new job. Those people are trapped. If we had a better safety net for people at the bottom, the labor market could be more competitive. Another example is lacking knowledge. The market could (and should) stop buying products that harm them, but sometimes the only party who knows the product is harmful is the producer. Cigarettes were an example for a long time because the tobacco companies buried their own research. The government now forces health disclosures on cigarettes, which makes the market work like it's supposed to. There are tons of examples where a "socialist" policy actually leads to more personal freedom, more efficient markets, and less need for government intervention into individuals' decisions. (I would include universal basic income as a social policy, but it's actually not! It's supposed by both libertarians and socialists. It might be the "next better bad" adjustment to our current system.)
- sharemywin 9y ago
  The problem is if you're priced out of decent healthcare and/or education options it really doesn't matter how much extra spending money you got.
  - smt88 9y ago
    If you're arguing that health care and education should be free, then I agree with you. If I were running a society, my goal would be an even playing field. Everyone has the same access to health care, education, and any other opportunity that affects their happiness. Beyond that, they would have the choice to pursue whatever they wanted. My society could not exist now, nor could it exist in the past. Miserable, oppressed people were required to support everyone else (e.g. coal miners). We're getting to a point in history where that may change. Robots might be able to do all the bad, boring, dangerous jobs. Basically Wall-E.

hprotagonist 9y ago

I'm pretty sympathetic to the ideals behind Distributism[0]. I just don't know, particularly, how to make it work usefully with sectors that benefit from economies of scale (like ISPs) [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism

Rotten194 9y ago
You should look into various flavors of anarchism, like Syndicalism, that have tried to answer that question.

HoppedUpMenace 9y ago

There's a quip in the show "Archer" (forget exactly the words) where Mallory tells everyone something along the lines of "move up to my tax bracket and see if you keep spouting that socialist propaganda". I found it hilarious because it is true for many out there that if you suddenly find yourself moved from your minimum wage job with Obamacare insurance into a position of making a huge salary with legit benefits, you suddenly shift your position on the fairness of Capitalism and whether or not people are getting too much from the government and how they should do what you did to get ahead. Additionally, while it certainly appears that the richer get richer and it does nothing to help those that are struggling, you have to ask yourself whether or not you'd do anything different if it were you in the position of wealth and power to change how people earn money for the work they contribute. Then you'd have to wonder if people could truly come together and share everything under extreme government over site, but why wonder when there is decades of data to prove that it doesn't work?

mcbruiser3 9y ago
yes, people are always motivated by self interest, even for what seems like altruistic actions the underlying motivation is that it makes them feel good about themselves.
- HoppedUpMenace 9y ago
  I'm sure there's a name for this but a modern day label could be the "Facebook Syndrome", where seemingly endless goals of altruism is at its core, motivated by self interest and feeling good about oneself, to the detriment of the people you profess to be helping.
  - mcbruiser3 9y ago
    I think it's called virtue signaling. and yeah, it's rampant on social media.
- sharemywin 9y ago
  possibly or maybe there are actually a emotions called sympathy and empathy.

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

The big danger, IMO, is the sheer frustration that the modern social and economic system puts on the demographic mentioned (18-29 year olds). "Maybe we should start smashing stuff until things are better" is really unappealing when you have a meaningful job, a spouse and children, a house, or are otherwise invested into the system. And when you're frustrated enough to have a negative view of markets, well, the field is ripe for extraordinarily dangerous mass movements. Millennials are infantilized until later in life and, by and large, haven't been allowed to hold real responsibility until 22 or ever later. The affordability of passing gate-keeping milestones - such as owning a home, or getting a degree, or affording a stay-at-home wife and children - in terms of available opportunities has risen drastically. The divorce rate has risen tremendously, having an unprecedented rise in adults raised in broken homes. Like, congratulations Baby Boomers, you successfully made housing and education expensive enough that your loans and real estate let you retire off the proceeds of people working to pay off their crushing debt. That just means a generation of angry single men in their twenties working pointless jobs, living with their parents, and frustrated with their inability to fulfill their social needs. If you're not scared of creating this demographic, you haven't studied history and psychology.

rsrsrs86 9y ago

Consider that vast amounts of capital come from pension funds that invest in companies which have a duty to provide returns to shareholders. Would pension fund stakeholders agree on having lower pensions when they get old so that current workers earn more? Economics is far more complicated than altruism supposes.

random42_ 9y ago

I wonder how much of it is the system's fault and how much is human nature's fault. Regardless of the system, there is always a group that will want more, be it money and/or power. Many of the problems cited in this article wouldn't be a problem if not for pure self interest and lack of empathy for the society as a whole. The JP Morgan reaction to the attempt of raising wages is the perfect example for that.