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This was a reply, but devolved into a dump of my current thoughts on economics. As I'm no economist it is likely muddled, naive, nonsense. The UK newspapers r

This was a reply, but devolved into a dump of my current thoughts on economics. As I'm no economist it is likely muddled, naive, nonsense. The UK newspapers regularly have articles about the increased use of food banks. I haven't looked into it at all so can't comment on details such as how much is genuine need versus playing the game, or the rate of increase, etc. Combined with wage deflation or stagnation, food inflation from devalued currency counteracts the expected low prices of low-scarcity. It seems that given how much people dick around with the systems, a low-scarcity economy is a theoretical concept, too simplistic to exist in a complex environment, buffeted by politicians, economists, bankers, etc. I have no economics education, so I'm likely talking rubbish, please correct. On the matter of capitalism, I've come to the conclusion that it is fundamentally corrupt. The entire thing is a capital feedback loop. Not in the self-regulating sense ascribed to free markets. The more capital you have, the more capital you are able to accrue. And capital is power. The old saying, the rich get richer, is not just the superficial, flippant comment it might appear, flung around in the pub - it describes a core characteristic of capitalism. The amassing of capital does enable progress with big projects, but at the cost of having a system with a blatant foundational design flaw. People talk about bubbles as if they're a flaw in the system, but they're not - they're a characteristic of capitalism, which would be better named bubblism. I'm not commenting on whether capitalism is good or bad, or the pros and cons, rather I guess I'm surprised at all the discussion of the peripheral issues, but not of the foundational design, syntax instead of architecture. I'm not suggesting there's a better alternative, again, just surprised that it seems, from my layperson point of view, that there are so many people doing so much around the elephant in the room. It's standing there dumping over and over, and people clean the floor, spray the air freshener, but never touch the elephant. Yes, there are people in favour of other systems - they've come up with little. Distilling capitalism to this feedback clumping flaw, and I consider such exponential imbalance in a deliberate system to be a flaw, is it really so difficult to design a foundation that avoids that? Tax is a response to the flawed system, it doesn't address the design of the system. Edit: I always read some comments before I read the article, to see if the article is worth reading, which is fine, but I should probably read the article before I start commenting!

nickff 13y ago
>"The more capital you have, the more capital you are able to accrue. And capital is power. The old saying, the rich get richer, is not just the superficial, flippant comment it might appear, flung around in the pub - it describes a core characteristic of capitalism." This is an interesting idea, but has been shown to be false. One example is that the average company on the S&P 500 lasts for less than 20 years, and this is dropping.[1] Another example can be seen by simply looking at all the richest families in the USA in 1900, and seeing which of them is still a famous dynasty; there are a number of studies on this, but it seems like family wealth does not usually last more than 3-4 generations. Even the Annheiser-Busch family, who created the still-popular Budweiser brand, have lost their empire after six generations of hard work.[2] Or look at a list of the "robber barons", and see how many of the family names correspond to the list of richest people on earth.[3] [1] http://www.innosight.com/innovation-resources/strategy-innovation/upload/creative-destruction-whips-through-corporate-america_final2012.pdf http://www.innosight.com/innovation-resources/strategy-innov... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
- bronsoja 13y ago
  For your point about Anheuser-Busch, I'm not familiar enough with all that went down, so hopefully you can clarify if I'm wrong. Since the company was bought out (vs going out of business), doesn't that mean the Anheuser-Busch family (which I'm presuming had a large number of shares) would still have their wealth?
  - nickff 13y ago
    Anheuser-Busch is a very interesting case, I would refer you to Julie Macintosh's book "Dethroning the King", or one of her excellent presentations.[1] The Wikipedia page on Augustus Busch IV states the following: >"Press reports indicated that the Busch family ownership of the company had greatly dwindled over the years with Busch's father owning only 1.2 percent of the shares at the time of the takeover. In total the Busch family owned only 4 percent of the company"[2] I think it is fair to say the the Busch family were able to preserve some of their wealth, but their status has declined drastically over time, and will likely continue to do so. I must admit that the story about this family is subjective, and anecdotal. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXq9Jj4LGCo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXq9Jj4LGCo [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Busch_IV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Busch_IV

nickff 13y ago

>"The more capital you have, the more capital you are able to accrue. And capital is power. The old saying, the rich get richer, is not just the superficial, flippant comment it might appear, flung around in the pub - it describes a core characteristic of capitalism." This is an interesting idea, but has been shown to be false. One example is that the average company on the S&P 500 lasts for less than 20 years, and this is dropping.[1] Another example can be seen by simply looking at all the richest families in the USA in 1900, and seeing which of them is still a famous dynasty; there are a number of studies on this, but it seems like family wealth does not usually last more than 3-4 generations. Even the Annheiser-Busch family, who created the still-popular Budweiser brand, have lost their empire after six generations of hard work.[2] Or look at a list of the "robber barons", and see how many of the family names correspond to the list of richest people on earth.[3] [1] http://www.innosight.com/innovation-resources/strategy-innovation/upload/creative-destruction-whips-through-corporate-america_final2012.pdf http://www.innosight.com/innovation-resources/strategy-innov... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)

bronsoja 13y ago
For your point about Anheuser-Busch, I'm not familiar enough with all that went down, so hopefully you can clarify if I'm wrong. Since the company was bought out (vs going out of business), doesn't that mean the Anheuser-Busch family (which I'm presuming had a large number of shares) would still have their wealth?
- nickff 13y ago
  Anheuser-Busch is a very interesting case, I would refer you to Julie Macintosh's book "Dethroning the King", or one of her excellent presentations.[1] The Wikipedia page on Augustus Busch IV states the following: >"Press reports indicated that the Busch family ownership of the company had greatly dwindled over the years with Busch's father owning only 1.2 percent of the shares at the time of the takeover. In total the Busch family owned only 4 percent of the company"[2] I think it is fair to say the the Busch family were able to preserve some of their wealth, but their status has declined drastically over time, and will likely continue to do so. I must admit that the story about this family is subjective, and anecdotal. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXq9Jj4LGCo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXq9Jj4LGCo [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Busch_IV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Busch_IV