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Unfortunately, we don't really have more and more technology. Business owners do, and they're just going to use it to earn more money for themselves and their s

Unfortunately, we don't really have more and more technology. Business owners do, and they're just going to use it to earn more money for themselves and their shareholders. That's just how capitalism tends to operate. I'm going to come right out and say that at some point, maybe we should re-evaluate communism. Of course it's going to need a massive rebranding, and we'll need to figure out how to prevent all the recurring themes of corruption and "making people disappear". My colleague highly recommends Capital in the Twenty-First Century [1], which I'm looking forward to reading. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/067443000X http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Pi...

MattHeard 12y ago
Wouldn't increasing the progressivity of taxation improve redistribution without removing the efficient incentives that capitalism provides?
- nickff 12y ago
  One of the many problems which this idea has is that it redistributes money away from people who are good at investing in growth, and gives it to people who are likely to spend on consumption goods.
  - GeneralMayhem 12y ago
    ...which is fine, really, because spending on consumption goods is the basis of the modern economy anyway. Giving money to the poor is one of the most effective ways to give money to the rich, and has the nice side effect of feeding a few mouths along the way.
    - nickff 12y ago
      Money invested in growth has different economic effects from money invested in consumption goods; the former is likely to be spent on capital goods, and thereby increase production and reduce prices in the future, whereas the latter is likely to be spent on raw materials and labor (or possibly just driving up prices), with fewer long-term benefits.
      - Retric 12y ago
        Your ignoring the most profitable use of capital which is bribes. Current tax laws are vary focused around letting rich people keep there money but there is little evidence US growth is particularly capital constrained. Overall economic growth tracks vary closely to population growth long term Per capita economic growth tending to hover around 1%. Economics 101 is a vary limited model of how real world economy's work. In the real world ultra rich people tend to cause a lot of long term economic harm because there goals tend to be vary different from most people. PS: Bill Gates sending aid money to developing areas may be a 'good' thing but it's not investing in the way your thinking.
        nickff 12y ago
        Large corporations (such as those listed on the stock market) are not capital constrained, but the small, new and potential companies which are most important to growth are highly capital constrained.[1][2] Some have argued that it is good that rich people often get their way, because the alternative is far worse.[3] [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/the-30-year-decline-of-american-entrepreneurship/262831/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/the-30-y... [2] http://www.nber.org/digest/feb11/w16300.html http://www.nber.org/digest/feb11/w16300.html [3] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/why_is_democrac.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/why_is_democrac....
        jjoonathan 12y ago
        Small companies may be capital constrained, but the constraints come from friction more than from limitations on capital supply. If DD on the proposal for Joe's Diner is going to cost more than the pre-DD profit expectation, it doesn't matter how much capital is in the pool, Joe won't be getting funded. There's a nifty way around this: if Joe self-funds, he need not worry about his own principal agent problem. What kind of economies encourage self-funding? Those that provide employment opportunities sufficient for the purposes of saving and serving as a safety-net. NOT economies that systematically de-leverage the bulk of the working population.
  - Retric 12y ago
    Past performance does not equate to future growth.
  - ap22213 12y ago
    Why don't we teach more people to be better 'investors in growth'?
  - ArkyBeagle 12y ago
    This is because at some point ( like ... about now ) consumption becomes the bottleneck* for production. *actually becomes the bottleneck for the transfer function between consumers and producers we call markets...
- Kaizyn 12y ago
  No it doesn't. People like to receive a benefit for the work that they do. When a person works and produces a surplus and it is stolen to give to people who produce nothing, it has a tendency to reduce their future output. This is the reason that communist states have a tendency to hold guns to the heads of their people and MAKE them produce for the government.
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  Possibly, but the internationalization of capital has made this much harder. Throw in that governments have lousy track records at actual redistribution... it's much harder than it looks. You have to have government-levels of instrumentation of the processes, and that's expensive. This isn't just governments, either - public charities can run into this problem as well.
JetSpiegel 12y ago
"The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed"
paulhauggis 12y ago
With communism, wealth is redistributed and centrally controlled by the government (or governments). I can't even trust my government will put my money to good use now. It will also have a negative effect on innovation and technology. Some of the greatest technologies we have today is a result of fierce competition in the marketplace. I run my own business now (it took many years of working for many terrible bosses and managers). I have many freedoms. Why would I want to take away the chance for anyone to ever have the chance to also achieve this freedom? The answer is to invest more in education and bring more people to a level where they can make a living. Not to completely destroy the current system and bring everyone down to nothing. I hope I'm not still around ever see this happen.
- virtue3 12y ago
  just because you benefited from the current system doesn't mean that everyone else can or even wants to. (just playing devils advocate). Things are going to change very soon. I've yet to meet anyone in a currently stable industry that I couldn't replace with a robot in the next 20-30 years. Hell, programming has gotten SO tremendously easy now that _almost_ anyone can do it. We're quickly approaching an age where learning how to code is the equivalent of knowing how to read. So once we've automated everything. and everyone knows how to program things. Where do we go?
  - xienze 12y ago
    Sure, you can teach just about anyone to perform simple programming tasks but that doesn't mean they possess the knowledge, experience, and problem solving ability to actually be a competent programmer. The thing you're forgetting is that development involves a lot of abstract thinking and years of understanding how "A" fits into "B". People with basic knowledge of a programming language can bang out easily conceptualized tasks like plotting their car's monthly gas mileage but ask them to write a simple Twitter clone and you're likely to receive blank stares. A seasoned developer could knock that out in an afternoon though (not at real Twitter scale of course!) because they have years of experience knowing how dozens of loosely-related systems and libraries can be assembled to create the bigger picture. Saying that knowing how to "code" means anyone can create anything is like saying that anyone can paint the Mona Lisa given a canvas, paint, and a six week bootcamp session.
jacquesm 12y ago
Be careful with your terms there, communism and associated structures are rife with problems, ideal in theory only and all but impossible to implement using real-life humans. I think we should start by re-evaluating capitalism (at some point in the next 500 years or so when we run out of steam on the current system), and then see what needs fixing rather than to throw caution to the wind and have a re-run of the 20th century.
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
Communism per se is badly, badly broken. Piketty seems to be drawing to trying to get the genie of international capital back into the bottle. I doubt that's do-able. Megan McArdle has, I think, a fine treatise on how the globalization of capital killed off the equilibrium that made even organized labor possible: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/e023c820e0110130a0d758d38561c600 http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/e023c820e0110130a0d758... In the world described by JK Galbraith's "Modern Industrial State", organized labor sorta made sense. Now? Not so much. Hayek and Milton Friedman ( generally considered economists of the Right, although that has problems ) have both espoused a basic income/negative tax. That's quite distinct from Communism.

MattHeard 12y ago

Wouldn't increasing the progressivity of taxation improve redistribution without removing the efficient incentives that capitalism provides?

nickff 12y ago
One of the many problems which this idea has is that it redistributes money away from people who are good at investing in growth, and gives it to people who are likely to spend on consumption goods.
- GeneralMayhem 12y ago
  ...which is fine, really, because spending on consumption goods is the basis of the modern economy anyway. Giving money to the poor is one of the most effective ways to give money to the rich, and has the nice side effect of feeding a few mouths along the way.
  - nickff 12y ago
    Money invested in growth has different economic effects from money invested in consumption goods; the former is likely to be spent on capital goods, and thereby increase production and reduce prices in the future, whereas the latter is likely to be spent on raw materials and labor (or possibly just driving up prices), with fewer long-term benefits.
    - Retric 12y ago
      Your ignoring the most profitable use of capital which is bribes. Current tax laws are vary focused around letting rich people keep there money but there is little evidence US growth is particularly capital constrained. Overall economic growth tracks vary closely to population growth long term Per capita economic growth tending to hover around 1%. Economics 101 is a vary limited model of how real world economy's work. In the real world ultra rich people tend to cause a lot of long term economic harm because there goals tend to be vary different from most people. PS: Bill Gates sending aid money to developing areas may be a 'good' thing but it's not investing in the way your thinking.
      - nickff 12y ago
        Large corporations (such as those listed on the stock market) are not capital constrained, but the small, new and potential companies which are most important to growth are highly capital constrained.[1][2] Some have argued that it is good that rich people often get their way, because the alternative is far worse.[3] [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/the-30-year-decline-of-american-entrepreneurship/262831/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/the-30-y... [2] http://www.nber.org/digest/feb11/w16300.html http://www.nber.org/digest/feb11/w16300.html [3] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/why_is_democrac.html http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/09/why_is_democrac....
        jjoonathan 12y ago
        Small companies may be capital constrained, but the constraints come from friction more than from limitations on capital supply. If DD on the proposal for Joe's Diner is going to cost more than the pre-DD profit expectation, it doesn't matter how much capital is in the pool, Joe won't be getting funded. There's a nifty way around this: if Joe self-funds, he need not worry about his own principal agent problem. What kind of economies encourage self-funding? Those that provide employment opportunities sufficient for the purposes of saving and serving as a safety-net. NOT economies that systematically de-leverage the bulk of the working population.
- Retric 12y ago
  Past performance does not equate to future growth.
- ap22213 12y ago
  Why don't we teach more people to be better 'investors in growth'?
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  This is because at some point ( like ... about now ) consumption becomes the bottleneck* for production. *actually becomes the bottleneck for the transfer function between consumers and producers we call markets...
Kaizyn 12y ago
No it doesn't. People like to receive a benefit for the work that they do. When a person works and produces a surplus and it is stolen to give to people who produce nothing, it has a tendency to reduce their future output. This is the reason that communist states have a tendency to hold guns to the heads of their people and MAKE them produce for the government.
ArkyBeagle 12y ago
Possibly, but the internationalization of capital has made this much harder. Throw in that governments have lousy track records at actual redistribution... it's much harder than it looks. You have to have government-levels of instrumentation of the processes, and that's expensive. This isn't just governments, either - public charities can run into this problem as well.

JetSpiegel 12y ago

"The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed"

paulhauggis 12y ago

With communism, wealth is redistributed and centrally controlled by the government (or governments). I can't even trust my government will put my money to good use now. It will also have a negative effect on innovation and technology. Some of the greatest technologies we have today is a result of fierce competition in the marketplace. I run my own business now (it took many years of working for many terrible bosses and managers). I have many freedoms. Why would I want to take away the chance for anyone to ever have the chance to also achieve this freedom? The answer is to invest more in education and bring more people to a level where they can make a living. Not to completely destroy the current system and bring everyone down to nothing. I hope I'm not still around ever see this happen.

virtue3 12y ago
just because you benefited from the current system doesn't mean that everyone else can or even wants to. (just playing devils advocate). Things are going to change very soon. I've yet to meet anyone in a currently stable industry that I couldn't replace with a robot in the next 20-30 years. Hell, programming has gotten SO tremendously easy now that _almost_ anyone can do it. We're quickly approaching an age where learning how to code is the equivalent of knowing how to read. So once we've automated everything. and everyone knows how to program things. Where do we go?
- xienze 12y ago
  Sure, you can teach just about anyone to perform simple programming tasks but that doesn't mean they possess the knowledge, experience, and problem solving ability to actually be a competent programmer. The thing you're forgetting is that development involves a lot of abstract thinking and years of understanding how "A" fits into "B". People with basic knowledge of a programming language can bang out easily conceptualized tasks like plotting their car's monthly gas mileage but ask them to write a simple Twitter clone and you're likely to receive blank stares. A seasoned developer could knock that out in an afternoon though (not at real Twitter scale of course!) because they have years of experience knowing how dozens of loosely-related systems and libraries can be assembled to create the bigger picture. Saying that knowing how to "code" means anyone can create anything is like saying that anyone can paint the Mona Lisa given a canvas, paint, and a six week bootcamp session.

jacquesm 12y ago

Be careful with your terms there, communism and associated structures are rife with problems, ideal in theory only and all but impossible to implement using real-life humans. I think we should start by re-evaluating capitalism (at some point in the next 500 years or so when we run out of steam on the current system), and then see what needs fixing rather than to throw caution to the wind and have a re-run of the 20th century.

ArkyBeagle 12y ago

Communism per se is badly, badly broken. Piketty seems to be drawing to trying to get the genie of international capital back into the bottle. I doubt that's do-able. Megan McArdle has, I think, a fine treatise on how the globalization of capital killed off the equilibrium that made even organized labor possible: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/e023c820e0110130a0d758d38561c600 http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/e023c820e0110130a0d758... In the world described by JK Galbraith's "Modern Industrial State", organized labor sorta made sense. Now? Not so much. Hayek and Milton Friedman ( generally considered economists of the Right, although that has problems ) have both espoused a basic income/negative tax. That's quite distinct from Communism.