5 ms·

> the victors are not those who best solved the problem but those who made the most profit. I would argue that most of the time those go hand in hand. If the m

> the victors are not those who best solved the problem but those who made the most profit. I would argue that most of the time those go hand in hand. If the most people freely gave you there money for a problem, then you accomplished that problem best. > red light cameras Hah! This has nothing to do with capitalism! The only reason people pay tickets is because they want their license and they don't want the government to lock them up. If a truly private institution came to you and told you to pay a ticket because they claim you did something wrong, you would tell them to pound sand. This goes for "private prisons" too. Neither of these things are capitalist at all. I'm not familiar with the Corinthian college case, but I am willing to bet they benefited from government student loans, federal education grants, and a public school system that warns children of a life of failure if they don't go to college. The higher education system in this country is propped up chiefly by government, so I hesitate to call a college failure a failure of capitalism. In fact, after reading the Wikipedia article, it looks like that college was improperly accredited. Isn't this a failure of the department of education?

kristopolous 11y ago
Should there be rewards for lying? Should there be strong encouragement to charge people for things that are effectively free? Should the winner be whoever cut the most corners, cheated the most people, had the greatest deceptions, and paid their employees the worst? Should we have a system where sending things around the world multiple times to be manufactured is seen as the best solution? Should we really exalt those who provide the cheapest service at the most unreasonable price by defrauding people? Should not taking responsibility for the consequences of ones actions be to their advantage? Should exploitation really be how one gets ahead? Should we have a system that defines success and progress by the volume and speed of such swindlers and con-men?
- MCRed 11y ago
  In capitalism, every entity is kept in check by the need to keep employees coming to work, shareholders holding the stock, customers happy enough to come back, and the government off of their backs legally. These keep companies in line. If you think about it, none of these forces exist for government. Government employees often have no rights (military doesn't even follow constitution). They have little choice. The "shareholders" of government don't even get to have clean elections (not since 2001, voting fraud has not gone away, it's just no longer a big news story.) You have no choice. And of course the customers- you can't boycott he government. No matter how much you don't want to fund drones that murder teenagers for the crime of being brown and living near a desert-- you have to pay for it. IF you don't you go to jail, and if you resist, or try to escape you get shot. Can you imagine if walmart could compel people to shop there? Government doesn't even think twice about using the threat of violence for even its most insolent whims. Thus it's extremely important that government be kept in check, otherwise it will grow beyond all proportion until it undermines everything that opposes it and there's little, short of a revolution, you can do to stop it. I can think of examples for each of your points for government run services: > Should there be rewards for lying? Police want a suspect more than they want justice because, especially in high profile cases, being able to say they get to say they solved the case. There's evidence of widespread incidents of just convicting whoever they can convict of the crime without any pursuit of justice (eg: the hair forensics that the FBI was faking for decades.) >Should there be strong encouragement to charge people for things that are effectively free? Like the national parks? The massive amount of taxes people pay at all levels of government-- a charge-- for the pitiful results they get? For example, in Washington state the roads are less than %1 of the state budget, but they often increase the taxes charged by well more than %5 a decade, with repeated claims to use the money to fix the roads. How about he spectrum that he US Government claims to own and sells, even though it's free and everyone could use it at the same time (using spread spectrum technology). >Should the winner be whoever cut the most corners, cheated the most people, had the greatest deceptions, and paid their employees the worst? It is in the case of government. Poorly run services, under paid, overworked employees, entire industry of elections predicated on massive deception of the people, no real investigations when major events happen, pathological lying from the figureheads at the top, etc. etc. >Should we really exalt those who provide the cheapest service at the most unreasonable price by defrauding people? Have you ever been to a campaign rally? Seen how emotional and choked up people get about even really the most heinous examples of psychopathic politicians? Charisma is pretty much like magic. Meanwhile we pay unreasonable taxes compared to the benefits we get and the government defrauds on a massive scale-- from social security which returns less than %3 of net present value of the money taken to the welfare system which loses %75 of the money in overhead and only distributes %25 in benefits, etc. etc. If a retirement fund in the private sector or a charity were run like this, they'd be shut down for fraud. Yet government gets away with it- and people turn around and DEFEND IT! Talk about exalting those who are cheating you! > Should we have a system that defines success and progress by the volume and speed of such swindlers and con-men? You mean how politicians get re-elected by passing laws and claiming that this makes them "tough on crime" or "standing up to those moooslims in the middle east" and the like? Where success comes from backroom deals and selling access as Hillary is being alleged to have done, but as republicans and democrats have been doing since forever? You mean like the common shake down racket of threatening heinous regulations that would put whole industries out of business, yet backing off once a nice fat campaign contribution has been made? (And after you retire, don't those campaign war chests go into the politicians back pocket?)
  - kristopolous 11y ago
    There are more options than trickle-downy free-market anything-goes capitalism and authoritarian centralized despotism. The thing we currently have is enormously unstable and teeters on the brink of collapse every 8 or so years. It allocates resources grossly ineffeciently and can only keep going with a 2% global growth. This isn't going to work if we want our civilization to survive the next 100,000 years. We need to do better than the antiquated 19th century economic models or 18th century goverment models we've been using. There are exciting systems out there, but we need to get past the cold-war era polemics first. It's time to grow up as a species.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    In capitalism, every entity is kept in check by the need to keep employees coming to work, shareholders holding the stock, customers happy enough to come back, and the government off of their backs legally. These keep companies in line. Ah, Doctor Pangloss. I thought I had killed you in Istanbul.
    - MCRed 11y ago
      I never said it was perfect, or even that I was optimistic about it. I just said the forces are there. Government doesn't have any external force keeping it in check. All of the "checks and balances" are other parts of the government or controlled by government (Eg: who counts the votes? Government. Who decides which two candidates get on the ballot? Those currently in charge.) Companies can be naughty, for sure. It's just when they do there are consequences. Government never seems to suffer from the consequences of their own actions-- in fact, when government screws things up they always have a scapegoat and use it as an excuse to take even more money and power. Look at what happened after 9/11-- more money, more power, more wars. Look what happened after snowden? No reforms, more expansion of spying. Hell, spying grew under Obama and the Patriot Act was made permanent. Which means the travesty enacted under Bush wasn't even weakened by giving the democrats control over two branches of government!
      - Frondo 11y ago
Retric 11y ago
On the surface you seem to agree with the parent post. But to be clear private companies do a great job making shoes. Lots of evedence suggests they do a poor job at making fighter jets. The problem is clearly incentives. Less well known there are also issues with private companies making army boots. And again the problem seems to be capitalism only applies when lots of little choices are being made, if each private chose his own boot from say 5 companies you would expect much better outcomes vs the current approach. IMO, you can only call it capitolism when the government buys the same products as any other person on the market. As soon as one person is making a multi million dollar deal you lose feedback that keeps the system in check and are forced to rely on regulations. IMO, this means government contractors are inherently a bad idea.
- jdreaver 11y ago
  I agree. When we talk about government and big business propping each other up, I don't want to get into the chicken and egg problem of whose fault it really is (if such a thing could even be defined). I just like to address the fact that whatever the cause, government mixing with big business is not capitalism. In fact, part of the definition of capitalism the absence of government. I guess I just get confused when people point out things that are failures of the state, blame capitalism, and then go on to blame profit, or owning businesses and capital. Indeed, part of the beauty of a free market is the power of choice. When you make all decisions through a central authority, you lose that power of choice.
- geggam 11y ago
  um... who do you think makes fighter jets ?
  - mbrubeck 11y ago
    I think Retric's point was that private companies are supposed to make fighter jets, but they often fail to produce usable results. See the now-decade-old F-35 program for the latest example.
  - Retra 11y ago
    It's not about who makes it, it's about who buys it. And nobody but the government buys fighter jets, so it is effectively not a private enterprise. It's just contracted government work. There's really no competing consumer.

kristopolous 11y ago

Should there be rewards for lying? Should there be strong encouragement to charge people for things that are effectively free? Should the winner be whoever cut the most corners, cheated the most people, had the greatest deceptions, and paid their employees the worst? Should we have a system where sending things around the world multiple times to be manufactured is seen as the best solution? Should we really exalt those who provide the cheapest service at the most unreasonable price by defrauding people? Should not taking responsibility for the consequences of ones actions be to their advantage? Should exploitation really be how one gets ahead? Should we have a system that defines success and progress by the volume and speed of such swindlers and con-men?

MCRed 11y ago
In capitalism, every entity is kept in check by the need to keep employees coming to work, shareholders holding the stock, customers happy enough to come back, and the government off of their backs legally. These keep companies in line. If you think about it, none of these forces exist for government. Government employees often have no rights (military doesn't even follow constitution). They have little choice. The "shareholders" of government don't even get to have clean elections (not since 2001, voting fraud has not gone away, it's just no longer a big news story.) You have no choice. And of course the customers- you can't boycott he government. No matter how much you don't want to fund drones that murder teenagers for the crime of being brown and living near a desert-- you have to pay for it. IF you don't you go to jail, and if you resist, or try to escape you get shot. Can you imagine if walmart could compel people to shop there? Government doesn't even think twice about using the threat of violence for even its most insolent whims. Thus it's extremely important that government be kept in check, otherwise it will grow beyond all proportion until it undermines everything that opposes it and there's little, short of a revolution, you can do to stop it. I can think of examples for each of your points for government run services: > Should there be rewards for lying? Police want a suspect more than they want justice because, especially in high profile cases, being able to say they get to say they solved the case. There's evidence of widespread incidents of just convicting whoever they can convict of the crime without any pursuit of justice (eg: the hair forensics that the FBI was faking for decades.) >Should there be strong encouragement to charge people for things that are effectively free? Like the national parks? The massive amount of taxes people pay at all levels of government-- a charge-- for the pitiful results they get? For example, in Washington state the roads are less than %1 of the state budget, but they often increase the taxes charged by well more than %5 a decade, with repeated claims to use the money to fix the roads. How about he spectrum that he US Government claims to own and sells, even though it's free and everyone could use it at the same time (using spread spectrum technology). >Should the winner be whoever cut the most corners, cheated the most people, had the greatest deceptions, and paid their employees the worst? It is in the case of government. Poorly run services, under paid, overworked employees, entire industry of elections predicated on massive deception of the people, no real investigations when major events happen, pathological lying from the figureheads at the top, etc. etc. >Should we really exalt those who provide the cheapest service at the most unreasonable price by defrauding people? Have you ever been to a campaign rally? Seen how emotional and choked up people get about even really the most heinous examples of psychopathic politicians? Charisma is pretty much like magic. Meanwhile we pay unreasonable taxes compared to the benefits we get and the government defrauds on a massive scale-- from social security which returns less than %3 of net present value of the money taken to the welfare system which loses %75 of the money in overhead and only distributes %25 in benefits, etc. etc. If a retirement fund in the private sector or a charity were run like this, they'd be shut down for fraud. Yet government gets away with it- and people turn around and DEFEND IT! Talk about exalting those who are cheating you! > Should we have a system that defines success and progress by the volume and speed of such swindlers and con-men? You mean how politicians get re-elected by passing laws and claiming that this makes them "tough on crime" or "standing up to those moooslims in the middle east" and the like? Where success comes from backroom deals and selling access as Hillary is being alleged to have done, but as republicans and democrats have been doing since forever? You mean like the common shake down racket of threatening heinous regulations that would put whole industries out of business, yet backing off once a nice fat campaign contribution has been made? (And after you retire, don't those campaign war chests go into the politicians back pocket?)
- kristopolous 11y ago
  There are more options than trickle-downy free-market anything-goes capitalism and authoritarian centralized despotism. The thing we currently have is enormously unstable and teeters on the brink of collapse every 8 or so years. It allocates resources grossly ineffeciently and can only keep going with a 2% global growth. This isn't going to work if we want our civilization to survive the next 100,000 years. We need to do better than the antiquated 19th century economic models or 18th century goverment models we've been using. There are exciting systems out there, but we need to get past the cold-war era polemics first. It's time to grow up as a species.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  In capitalism, every entity is kept in check by the need to keep employees coming to work, shareholders holding the stock, customers happy enough to come back, and the government off of their backs legally. These keep companies in line. Ah, Doctor Pangloss. I thought I had killed you in Istanbul.
  - MCRed 11y ago
    I never said it was perfect, or even that I was optimistic about it. I just said the forces are there. Government doesn't have any external force keeping it in check. All of the "checks and balances" are other parts of the government or controlled by government (Eg: who counts the votes? Government. Who decides which two candidates get on the ballot? Those currently in charge.) Companies can be naughty, for sure. It's just when they do there are consequences. Government never seems to suffer from the consequences of their own actions-- in fact, when government screws things up they always have a scapegoat and use it as an excuse to take even more money and power. Look at what happened after 9/11-- more money, more power, more wars. Look what happened after snowden? No reforms, more expansion of spying. Hell, spying grew under Obama and the Patriot Act was made permanent. Which means the travesty enacted under Bush wasn't even weakened by giving the democrats control over two branches of government!
    - Frondo 11y ago

Retric 11y ago

On the surface you seem to agree with the parent post. But to be clear private companies do a great job making shoes. Lots of evedence suggests they do a poor job at making fighter jets. The problem is clearly incentives. Less well known there are also issues with private companies making army boots. And again the problem seems to be capitalism only applies when lots of little choices are being made, if each private chose his own boot from say 5 companies you would expect much better outcomes vs the current approach. IMO, you can only call it capitolism when the government buys the same products as any other person on the market. As soon as one person is making a multi million dollar deal you lose feedback that keeps the system in check and are forced to rely on regulations. IMO, this means government contractors are inherently a bad idea.

jdreaver 11y ago
I agree. When we talk about government and big business propping each other up, I don't want to get into the chicken and egg problem of whose fault it really is (if such a thing could even be defined). I just like to address the fact that whatever the cause, government mixing with big business is not capitalism. In fact, part of the definition of capitalism the absence of government. I guess I just get confused when people point out things that are failures of the state, blame capitalism, and then go on to blame profit, or owning businesses and capital. Indeed, part of the beauty of a free market is the power of choice. When you make all decisions through a central authority, you lose that power of choice.
geggam 11y ago
um... who do you think makes fighter jets ?
- mbrubeck 11y ago
  I think Retric's point was that private companies are supposed to make fighter jets, but they often fail to produce usable results. See the now-decade-old F-35 program for the latest example.
- Retra 11y ago
  It's not about who makes it, it's about who buys it. And nobody but the government buys fighter jets, so it is effectively not a private enterprise. It's just contracted government work. There's really no competing consumer.