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What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]
- boyadjian 6y agoWhat rules the world, are the law of physics. And they are the same, whatever political system you use.
- kingkawn 6y agoIt is.
- RocomRitmore 6y agoNo, it's not.
- activitypea 6y agobut really, it is
- nickthemagicman 6y agoIt is and it isn't.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- smegcicle 6y agocapitalism is a system for allocation of resources in a large economy. is there an alternative?
- gcb0 6y agoWhy is this the 10th item on the FP with only 3 points and posted 50min ago?
- evo_9 6y agoCapitalism when balanced is near perfect. Capitalism taken to its fullest extreme is greed out-of-control. This is where the US is right now.
- fallingfrog 6y agoWhat we are experiencing now is reversion to the norm. The post-ww2 period was a special moment when a lot of things lined up to produce a capitalism that was relatively egalitarian, but that was the result of the USA being the only intact industrial economy left, and owning the world reserve currency, and so on. It was never going to last, and it will never happen again. We’re already bringing back sweatshops and extreme inequality.
- iterativ 6y agoIn 1949 (just after WW2), Einstein wrote: "The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil." Einstein was not a sociologist, but it's an indication that about "egalitarian capitalism" is not exactly true.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI think it has to be acknowledged that this quote comes from an article titled "Why Socialism?" explaining why people should be socialist. It's not exactly intended as a neutral observation.
- fallingfrog 6y agoI did say “relatively”. As in relative to when 11 year olds were mining coal.. but you’re right, in absolute terms there’s no such thing as egalitarian capitalism, and even during the period I talked about it required 90% tax rates on the super wealthy.
- thrwway34 6y agoJudging that just several years ago Soviets managed to starve another million of their citizens, I'd say Einstein was utterly naive.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoTwo alternative viewpoints I have that are radically opposed: What if government regulations warp capitalism and give protectionism and favoritism to certain companies while excluding the rest and not allowing for the free market to work? What if unregulated capitalism has cannibalized itself and destroyed the free market by way of big fish eating up all of the small ones and now we're left with a bunch of huge corporations with outsized power and no threat from competition?
- baggy_trough 6y agoThere are certainly good and bad kinds of regulation.
- sudosysgen 6y agoWell, the synthesis is that capitalism is not just an economic system, and that in reality economics cannot be divorced from social and political spheres. Government regulations warping capitalism are in large part a consequence of capitalism. Think about it, is it ever possible to orchestrate a society where money buys you media, re-election campaigns, charity and favours, without those having the most money wielding the above-mentioned elements to ensure they keep having the most money. In other words, the social organization is a consequence of economic organization, which explains why it is impossible for a truly free market to ever exist. It's not possible either to completely get rid of government, because the State is necessary to uphold property.
- nickthemagicman 6y agoI've thought this before as well. Doesn't seem like there's a solution. If you think about it, human beings corrupt any system they're in.
- sudosysgen 6y agoI've tought about it as well, and came to a different conclusion, which is that class divides inevitably bring violence and collapse. I think if it would be possible to engineer a society where everyone's class interests would be more or less the same we wouldn't have such issues.
- lefrenchy 6y ago> Rather, she targets ‘economism’ - a particular set of economic theories and assumptions, plus a layer of incentives we’ve built atop them. Neither updating our theories to better match reality, nor redesigning the incentive structures that underlie economic outcomes require an exit from capitalism. While that may be true, I think the reason we got here is because Capitalism inherently incentivizes those types of theories, assumptions, and incentives. You can argue that an ethical Capitalism is possible sure, but that would require labor power and a strong state to prevent the erosion that we have seen in the last half decade.
- Barrin92 6y agoIt's not a productive word really because it almost poisons every discussion based on whether someone's broadly sympathetic to 'capitalism' or not. Even when people actually agree this can cause meaningless confusion. What I think is very valuable within our system is markets as a tool. There's no functioning replacement yet for allocating resources through something like a market at large scale. Even socialism sympathetic economists like Oscar Lange recognised this a long time ago. What's wrong with the status quo I think is markets as an ideology, confusing social ends or larger objectives with the outcomes markets or capital produce. There is too little coordination in society, too little forward thinking and planning at a high level. It shows in the covid pandemic into which we stumbled like fools despite knowing it would happen at some point, the way we're screwed every time a wildfire breaks out despite we know it'll happen. I think it's glorifying capitalism as a way of life rather than a tool that produces these failures.
- mathattack 6y agoIs such planning possible? Decentralized models work because centralized planning doesn’t. I concur with the aims. Solving pandemics, climate change and nuclear proliferation require a different toolset than what succeeded for reducing global poverty.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoIt is not like decentralized planning always work better. It depends on the task. What works in my opinion is iteration, feedback and experimentation. You don’t merely dogmatically state centralized or decentralized work better. Instead you experiment, iterate and refine. You learn from others.
- mathattack 6y agoCan centrally planned iteration and testing work better? I’m not trying to be dogmatic - I’m trying to look for a 3rd option beyond centralized and decentralized.
- philips 6y agoI can't listen to the podcast at the moment. But, along a similar theme Doughnut Economics tries to imagine adjustments that are required to traditional economic models from the 19th and 20th century that are required to keep the biosphere productive for humans. https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/ https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/ An idea that stuck with me is that markets are powerful tools that need to be embedded into other systems but arent self regulating systems all by themselves. It seems too often in debates on big problems the argument is simply we need a market solution not how is the system designed to best utilize a market.
- bjo590 6y ago> It seems too often in debates on big problems the argument is simply we need a market solution not how is the system designed to best utilize a market. "We need a market solution" is politician for private interests want to change laws so that they can expand their businesses.
- throwaway894345 6y agoWhile I agree, it’s kind of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Carbon taxes are also a market-based solution which aligns well with public interests, for example.
- dqv 6y agoI'm not far into it yet, but this isn't the first time that I've heard this thought from Zen practitioners - that the practitioner should not blame capitalism for their problems. It makes me want to look further into Zen to see what leads people to this line of thinking.
- freehunter 6y agoIt’s the same reason why libertarianism is so popular in Silicon Valley. Billionaires want and can afford complete freedom from the government. Including taxes, including regulations, including responsibility for the consequences of their actions. So they will seek out any teaching that (if corrupted far enough) will justify those desires and actions. But they’re just as happy to enforce all the things they hate on you, because their belief is a corruption of libertarianism. They don’t actually believe it, it’s just an excuse to not pay taxes. Like libertarianism, SV has a way of taking exactly what they want from Zen and leaving the rest of the beliefs lying in a pile behind them. The Zen teacher Les Kaye famously said about Steve Jobs that he understood “the art, not the heart” of Zen. If SV really cared about Zen, would we have unskippable ads? Would we have “like” buttons? Would we have auto-playing Netflix movies while you’re merely sitting still in a menu? They don’t care about Zen. They never have. What they care about is making themselves feel better about the horribly un-Zen-like things they inflict on their audiences. Zen is just a coping mechanism to stroke their ego a little more.
- herghost 6y agoFor Capitalism to work properly the government needs to be be empowered, and properly able, to enforce rules that prevent any one organisation from becoming so powerful that it corrupts and undermines the whole system. We don't have that today.
- phaus 6y agoIts important to prevent individual companies from doing it but its also important to prevent groups of companies and even entire industries from doing it.
- kaibee 6y agoIt really is this simple. Unfortunately simple isn't the same thing as easy.
- atlgator 6y agoThe Government is empowered. We know that because they have broken up companies in the past for that reason. The issue is Congress is not willing to do it (you can ponder the why for yourself). A solution may be to throw out the politicians before destroying our whole system.
- socialdemocrat 6y agoThat is one of the key ideas of social democracy, the belief that different economic powers in society must be balanced. Society is viewed as being made up of different interest groups who’s interests must be balanced in a fair and civilized manner.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- socialdemocrat 6y agoThe problem isn’t capitalism as such but the mindless worship of capitalism. The belief that more capitalism is always better than less. In particular in America capitalism has become a holy cow. If you suggest ideas from socialism you are labeled a dangerous radical and taken off the air. The so called “liberal media” are bastions of capitalism. One can only look at the scathing criticism and scare mongering about Bernie Sanders. When it comes to capitalism there is unfortunately a lot of pearl clutching. You are not say something negative about capitalism and positive about socialism in polite company.
- sbmassey 6y agoCapitalism's basic meaning is that the means of production are owned by private parties. Putting them under government ownership instead doesn't seem like the solution to anything, unless you are very sure that the government will follow your ideological beliefs, not be corrupted by its newfound direct power over peoples lives, and not get taken over by populists.
- umvi 6y ago> unless you are very sure that the government will follow your ideological beliefs And even if you are very sure, you have to be sure the future government will follow your idealogical beliefs as well - people die; power changes hands; social movements and political fads come and go...
- pathseeker 6y ago>Putting them under government ownership instead doesn't seem like the solution to anything, unless you are very sure that the government will follow your ideological beliefs, not be corrupted by its newfound direct power over peoples lives, and not get taken over by populists. Don't forget that you have to be sure the government has the perfect knowledge to price things correctly even it's otherwise a good government. This is actually the main reason that centralized planning is frowned upon by capitalists. Without competition to drive price discovery, the market ends up being super inefficient and people end up under-served or output resources don't collect enough input resources to sustain themselves.
- epistasis 6y agoOne problem with the term "capitalism" is that it means such different things to different people. For example, feudalism is not generally considered capitalism by those that are anti-capitalist, but feudalism was still private ownership of the means of production. Or, in the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders railed against capitalism, whereas Elizabeth Warren embraces the term, and they both had very similar policies. They were talking in different ways to appeal to different crowds that have different definitions of capitalism. And it creates tribal responses for some supporters.
- satisfaction 6y agoCapitalism is not the problem, the problem is that people continue to do business with companies that operate with disregard for the long term consequences of their business practices.
- losteric 6y agoIf humans are innately short-sighted and tribal/selfish creatures, any system of organization that assumes otherwise is problematic. That seems to be the case with capitalism. A society with a strong education system that perpetuates cultural values of long-term sustainability could get by with less explicit regulations, but I don't see us getting from here to there. And even if we got there, such a utopian capitalist society would be fragile and prone to corruption towards over-exploitation. Other systems are needed to maintain balance -taxes, political advertising regulations, labor laws, etc
- RocomRitmore 6y agoBig government is the problem. With a growing size of government, every conversation becomes a conversation about your life.