7 ms·

You know, collectively, we can do something about that… It’s a political decision in society to allow that added value to be sucked up by those who are already

You know, collectively, we can do something about that… It’s a political decision in society to allow that added value to be sucked up by those who are already wealthy.

mistrial9 4y ago
yes and no - each day it is game rules plus the ability to negotiate; elected officials come in all flavors
sheepdestroyer 4y ago
Isn't it too late for that now that the power imbalance afforded to Capital owners is so disproportionate? I think that's what transpired from Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
- stormbrew 4y ago
  History is long, and capitalism as we know it is only a couple centuries old (and that's being generous). It's easy to forget that there was a before because it's very common to frame even old economic systems in modern terms, but things changing is the only real constant. There'll be an after too.
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    How do you define capitalism, I’m curious, in this context? What was it 200 years ago that made it different from 400 years ago?
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      The industrial revolution and the beginnings of a global liberal trade order pretty substantially changed the shape of the world's economic system, even if sometimes people call predecessor systems like mercantilism a kind of capitalism. But if you want to extend the time horizon to 400 years (ie. to the beginning of the end of feudalism) that's still not that long in the grand scheme of things. That said I don't really know if I buy that we're in that system anymore either; I think history books will probably eventually recognize a shift starting around the collapse of Breton Woods and that we're currently in a long and increasingly painful transitionary period that we're in denial about to something we can't yet describe. But I Am Not An Economist (nor do I want to be one), so who knows.
      - ch4s3 4y ago
        Mercantilism definitely is NOT a kind of capitalism. Adam Smith and other thinkers during the Scottish Enlightenment were specifically arguing against mercantilism. The Cron Laws in England were even successfully repealed by on of Smith's students.
        stormbrew 4y ago
        I mean, I agree with you (I just said sometimes people call it that, not that it is that) but I don't think anything you said really contradicts it being a kind of capitalism. After all Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky disagreed literally violently with each other but Soviet Communism is still a label that contains all their efforts and systems.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        Right but they were fighting over the direction of a type of political economy that predated all of them. Smith and other original thinkers that framed capitalism did so in opposition to mercantilism. Capitalism was a reaction to. And in many ways criticism of mercantilism.
        dr_dshiv 4y ago
        Did Adam Smith invent capitalism? Did he advocate for capitalism? I still don’t really understand what we mean by capitalism
        ch4s3 4y ago
        He is often called the "Father of Capitalism", based on his two surviving works The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). He is also often referred to as a founder of modern economics. In this case what we mean by capitalism loosely is a system of private property, free/open trade, market based pricing mechanisms, economic decisions being made by individual actors, etc.
WalterBright 4y ago
You can buy stock in those companies and get your share of the profits.
- kbenson 4y ago
  On the one hand, the ability to usefully interact with the stock market is very limited for the majority of people, as they do not have the extra income to invest. It's very much a system in which the lower class do not get to meaningfully benefit from most the time. On the other hand, the companies will be made of people, expand by hiring new people, and pay these people with those profits, so much of the money will make it to people. Companies making lots of money is not a problem. Companies saving vast amounts of it in war chests is, IMO (depending on how they save it), as it's effectively removing it from the economy. I really hope Apple and Google's massive saving are stored by being reinvested in some way and aren't just entirely removed from the economy, because that would be a shame. I suppose even if they were just stored in a bank that would be used as capital for loans, so maybe it's not that bad.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    > Companies saving vast amounts of it in war chests is, IMO (depending on how they save it), as it's effectively removing it from the economy. Nobody saves money in Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. All the money is invested, all of it. Even money in a checking account is invested. (The banks invest it, that's why they offer free checking accounts. They're not a charity.) The majority of people do invest in the stock market. > the lower class is not the majority. Even so, brokers like Robinhood have made it easy for anyone with a phone to invest.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > Nobody saves money in Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. All the money is invested, all of it. Russian oligarchs invested vast amounts of money into super yahts and luzury London real estate, which sits empty 360 days a year. Is that productive investment?
prottog 4y ago
I would rather the value be sucked up by those who contribute towards creating it.

You know, collectively, we can do something about that… It’s a political decision in society to allow that added value to be sucked up by those who are already wealthy.

mistrial9 4y ago

yes and no - each day it is game rules plus the ability to negotiate; elected officials come in all flavors

sheepdestroyer 4y ago

Isn't it too late for that now that the power imbalance afforded to Capital owners is so disproportionate? I think that's what transpired from Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

stormbrew 4y ago
History is long, and capitalism as we know it is only a couple centuries old (and that's being generous). It's easy to forget that there was a before because it's very common to frame even old economic systems in modern terms, but things changing is the only real constant. There'll be an after too.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  How do you define capitalism, I’m curious, in this context? What was it 200 years ago that made it different from 400 years ago?
  - stormbrew 4y ago
    The industrial revolution and the beginnings of a global liberal trade order pretty substantially changed the shape of the world's economic system, even if sometimes people call predecessor systems like mercantilism a kind of capitalism. But if you want to extend the time horizon to 400 years (ie. to the beginning of the end of feudalism) that's still not that long in the grand scheme of things. That said I don't really know if I buy that we're in that system anymore either; I think history books will probably eventually recognize a shift starting around the collapse of Breton Woods and that we're currently in a long and increasingly painful transitionary period that we're in denial about to something we can't yet describe. But I Am Not An Economist (nor do I want to be one), so who knows.
    - ch4s3 4y ago
      Mercantilism definitely is NOT a kind of capitalism. Adam Smith and other thinkers during the Scottish Enlightenment were specifically arguing against mercantilism. The Cron Laws in England were even successfully repealed by on of Smith's students.
      - stormbrew 4y ago
        I mean, I agree with you (I just said sometimes people call it that, not that it is that) but I don't think anything you said really contradicts it being a kind of capitalism. After all Lenin and Stalin and Trotsky disagreed literally violently with each other but Soviet Communism is still a label that contains all their efforts and systems.
        ch4s3 4y ago
        Right but they were fighting over the direction of a type of political economy that predated all of them. Smith and other original thinkers that framed capitalism did so in opposition to mercantilism. Capitalism was a reaction to. And in many ways criticism of mercantilism.
        dr_dshiv 4y ago
        Did Adam Smith invent capitalism? Did he advocate for capitalism? I still don’t really understand what we mean by capitalism
        ch4s3 4y ago
        He is often called the "Father of Capitalism", based on his two surviving works The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). He is also often referred to as a founder of modern economics. In this case what we mean by capitalism loosely is a system of private property, free/open trade, market based pricing mechanisms, economic decisions being made by individual actors, etc.

WalterBright 4y ago

You can buy stock in those companies and get your share of the profits.

kbenson 4y ago
On the one hand, the ability to usefully interact with the stock market is very limited for the majority of people, as they do not have the extra income to invest. It's very much a system in which the lower class do not get to meaningfully benefit from most the time. On the other hand, the companies will be made of people, expand by hiring new people, and pay these people with those profits, so much of the money will make it to people. Companies making lots of money is not a problem. Companies saving vast amounts of it in war chests is, IMO (depending on how they save it), as it's effectively removing it from the economy. I really hope Apple and Google's massive saving are stored by being reinvested in some way and aren't just entirely removed from the economy, because that would be a shame. I suppose even if they were just stored in a bank that would be used as capital for loans, so maybe it's not that bad.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > Companies saving vast amounts of it in war chests is, IMO (depending on how they save it), as it's effectively removing it from the economy. Nobody saves money in Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. All the money is invested, all of it. Even money in a checking account is invested. (The banks invest it, that's why they offer free checking accounts. They're not a charity.) The majority of people do invest in the stock market. > the lower class is not the majority. Even so, brokers like Robinhood have made it easy for anyone with a phone to invest.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > Nobody saves money in Scrooge McDuck cash vaults. All the money is invested, all of it. Russian oligarchs invested vast amounts of money into super yahts and luzury London real estate, which sits empty 360 days a year. Is that productive investment?

prottog 4y ago

I would rather the value be sucked up by those who contribute towards creating it.