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Many of us think that that freer markets do buoy up the poorer, I think Schumpeter put it well: >"Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money en
by nickff 6y ago
Many of us think that that freer markets do buoy up the poorer, I think Schumpeter put it well:
>"Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has money enough to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to a rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."
- thesz 6y agoI think it is a moot argument if you know the history of silk and nylon. Nylon stockings were on par and better than silk stockings until they pushed silk stockings out of market. Then they became what we know them today - wear once or twice and buy new.
- nickff 6y agoYou’re missing the point; Nylon stockings did not exist until capitalists invented and popularized them. Only the rich had silk stockings in 1900; now anyone can get a superior product!
- pietrovismara 6y agoIt's ridicolous to suggest that nylon stockings could have been invented only under capitalism. Plenty of inventions and discovery happened also under communism.
- emteycz 6y agoYeah, but only focusing on the largest of megaprojects, and even that failed horribly after some time. Products for the normal people were of horrendous quality and mostly no innovation happened.
- thesz 6y agoI think I should point your attention to the MIR (МИР, Машина для Инженерных Расчётов - Engineer's Computer) [1] and Setun [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIR_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIR_(computer) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun The first one had pretty much high level language programming circa 1965 (Elbrus came later and iAXP432 much later). The second one used ternary logic which is closer to exp(0) and is more efficient. The "products for people" innovation in USSR was to make sure that everyone has heated home - and heating was centralized in USSR (and now in Russia too), which made it much cheaper and affordable. It was in different direction and without pervasive advertising. PS Many inventions happened also before capitalism.
- nickff 6y agoInventions are one thing, but mass availability and affordability are another. I recall seeing an interview with Mikhail Gorbachev where he talked about how embarrassing it was that the Soviet Union could send men to space, but failed to produce pantyhose (of quality , in quantity).
- thesz 6y agoMikhail Gorbachev, as a person somewhat responsible for collapse of USSR, had an incentive to paint USSR in a certain light in his interview, wouldn't you agree? I grew in USSR (I was born in 1971 in Moscow) and I do not remember any scarcity of stockings.
- randmeerkat 6y agoWhat about the blue collar workers that are living in RVs in the Bay Area? Are they buying silk socks? I feel like capitalism is overly celebrated by those who benefit from it, to their detriment. The meritocracy is failing, capitalism is failing, and I’m concerned about will replace capitalism if we continue to brush off the harsh realities of its failings.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoOur perspective is that others are prevented from enjoying those same benefits by the regulatory interference that is ostensibly intended to help them. We don't see it as capitalism failing, but the regulatory state failing and capitalism being distorted thus. we are also concerned about capitalism's replacement. except we fear the continued suppression of market action to lead to authoritarian totalitarianism because the regulatory state appears to have been captured by oligarchs.
- randmeerkat 6y agoThank you for your honest perspective, I’ll spend some time contemplating it.
- Ar-Curunir 6y agoCapitalism requires the state to function. If you don’t have violent enforcement of property rights, how will capitalists make money?
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoViolence as a tool exclusive to the state is a social construct much like property and so I expect the norms surrounding private property to be maintained like other constructs, through intentioned participation.
- barry-cotter 6y ago> What about the blue collar workers that are living in RVs in the Bay Area? Not a failure of capitalism. If you make building more housing illegal the price of the existing stock will get bid up. Remember, Tokyo has grown 50% in population over the last two decades and rent and house prices have been basically flat throughout. Zoning makes housing expensive, not capitalism.
- asdfman123 6y agoYes, we've all heard that one before. I'm hardly anti-capitalist.
- amirkdv 6y agoThere are two separate issues here, and the distinction is often missed. It is one thing when commodification brings to the masses what was once accessible only to the rich. It is an entirely separate and independent thing to make the economy more egalitarian, and some would argue just. Capitalism seems to consistently do the former phenomenally well and make the latter catastrophically worse. I think that's why we keep having absurd arguments about "the poor having microwaves" while we live in a grotesquely unequal society.
- danielheath 6y agoOnce upon a time, free-market capitalism did the 'make egalitarian' part just fine. In the 1960s, the USA had a 91% marginal tax rate for the highest income bracket (91% of income over 200k went to the government). In 2019 it's 37%.
- Gibbon1 6y agoSomething I picked up that seems to have been dropped down the memory hole. Under Truman the US was running a hot consumer command economy from the end of WWII to the mid 50's. In some ways very much like China is doing now. Also mid 1980's to 2000 saw the depression era limits on accumulating wealth via pure capital machinations removed one by one. Were now in the reverse situation. from 1950. Where it was possible to make money producing consumer goods and impossible to make money via rent seeking. Now rent seeking is how you make money. And it's obvious looking at the government response to the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic this year that's being enforced via policy.
- asddubs 6y agoI think part of the problem is that money is a proxy for political power, causing a tendency for legislative devolution like you describe
- avereveard 6y agothere will always be some resource scarcity, and there's no egalitarian economy that resulted in increased availability of luxuries across the board, on the contrary, all attempts at egalitarianism just pushed the average luxury availability to the people down.