BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Amos
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 10:46 AM

Sounds like you have stirred a lot of ideas into a pot, Ake, some of which are good and others of which will not bear close inspection.

Capitalism is not the single thing which ruined the planet by any means. Organizing human effort in order to undertake large projects is not inherently evil--termites and ants do it and are not blamed. THe problem is large-scale projects and industries with unknown side-effects.

I completely agree that compassionate technology needs to replace the more hostile sorts of technology currently in use. That is a small idea but a huge undertaking.

As for "completely destroying the planet", I think you will find that is not the case. We definitely are harming the thin shell of the ecosphere and having an impact on the climate, but the planet is of a different scale and it will do just fine long after we are relocated elsewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 03:48 PM

I think we need regulation and I think we need a substrate below which we can not fall..especially in terms of food supply..

And there are some people who need a structured work situation, with the work being given to them according to their abilities, and them provided with benefits and salary. There are some people who need this on a temporary basis, and some who need it on a permanent basis, with various sorts of handicaps, and most of us might need it in a catastrophic situation.

But if that were secure, and if we had a trained and flexible and at least partly mobile workforce, we need capitalism to function..and we don't really understand why it does...but it does feed people and innovate things and create whole new job markets and industries and help things become more efficient or die...the trouble is it moves too fast..it needs to be tempered with public safety nets and public employment and public works in case of depressions etc. We need a backup system for when the buggy whip makers are totally and forever out of that kind of work.

Now, speaking of which..we are bailing out automakers. I have not heard of one single car, bus, motorized vehicle being produced by that. why IN THE NAME OF SAM HILL AREN'T WE GETTING AT LEAST POLICE CARS, AMBULANCES, HEAD START BUSES ETC. OUT OF THIS?

We keep hearing that Katrina effects keep lingering..partially because there are not enough carpenters etc. Why in the hell not?   If there were zero carpenters in the world, we have had plenty of time to train millions of them. We are idiotic when it comes to failing to train people for skilled occupations.

I could go to probably any high school in New Orleans and find young men with their feet up on their desks refusing to turn in their assignments and being sullen to teachers. And that is just the young men. Why aren't all of them, including the ones bound for UL etc...(and young women as well) taking some occupational courses?

Then of course we will build under sea level with wood again. Just watch. Part of what needs to be regulated is housing, made out of appropriate materials for the most probable emergency, and we need to stop saying..well we have to build out of wood because that is what builders know how to build out of. Tough shit. That is not how it should be determined. We certainly can train masons and cement workers as well can't we? Or have we lost the ability to think we even can????? Why should America tremble? mg

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 07:57 PM

The potential for making money is the only reason anyone creates anything useful.

How does that apply to the Mudcat, just for a start?

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 08:20 PM

Some very timely discussion here..

http://fora.tv/2009/03/03/Global_Capitalism_with_Jeffrey_Sachs_and_Matthew_Bishop

It might be necessary to click on "Full Program" just below the viewer, and then click on "Introduction" just below that, in order to watch or listen to the whole video.

One of my two most favorite economists, Jeffrey Sachs, has some very interesting things to say about the auto bailout and about GM in particular. It's definitely worth listening to. Anyone who wants to just listen to that part rather than hearing the whole discussion (all of which is worth hearing in my opinion), can click on menu option 24 - "Sachs on GM Bailout".

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 08:24 PM

I have to say that I also disagree with the idea that money is the only reason for useful creativity. Linux, Firefox, and much of the rest of the openware/freeware is proof of the opposite. They are much better than the equivalent Microsoft products, and they were not developed specifically for the purpose of making money. Money actually can have the effect of causing people to create and produce inferior products, because the primary motivation is to make money rather than to produce the best possible whatever is being created.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Amos
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 08:44 PM

People create things to make their futures better or richer in some way; love, food, friendship, control of the elements, joy of song, intangible spiritual oscillations, getting laid, or acheiving power. It ends up LOOKING like it is all about money because of the widespread use of money as an index measurmeent of merit. This however is an insidious misunderstanding which underlies the ruination of many a career and a company as well. Money is an index of some values (profitability, sales, earning value, for example) but is a piss-poor index of other values including technical merit (remember Beta video?). A company solely fixated on money loses its direction faster than a fart in a hurricane.

But a company that fails to manage money well, among other skills, tends to go out of business.

THere IS a sweet spot of balance among the different values one tries to serve; but to believe they are all indexed by money is like believing the universe is only good for temperature. It's a silly, confused notion, no matter how infectious.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 09:01 PM

For many people, the joy and sense of fulfillment that accompanies the act of creating is the main motivation. In a sense, creation is its own reward.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 10:00 PM

Creation is improved if it is followed by a nicely marbled steak and a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 11 Mar 09 - 10:02 PM

Capitalism hasn't outlived it's usefulness..corruption has!

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: mg
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 12:05 AM

Great thought there.

And the bad thing about socialism is that they are going to send a whole bunch of us down into the coal mines...or equivalent. MInes for clean coal. Of course, so does capitalism.

we have a great untalked about problem, which is that some people work way more than is healthy and some work way too little and it needs to be evened out somehow. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 12:16 AM

mg, However or as much as people work, should be left up to the individual, and capitalism allows that..if a person wants more..he works more, or harder, sometimes, even smarter.in any event, nobody should 'force' anybody else to work. The whole socialistic enticement, is nothing more than sugar coated, slavery!..That being said, so can any form..it should be left to the individual,..but alas, freedom isn't much tolerated, by the so called 'progressives'

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: mg
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 12:24 AM

Well I certainly think that there are very many people who want to work, or want more work, and don't find those opportunities. Some very ambitious and creative ones could create their own opportunities, but most of us are probably not going to for various reasons. There are also many people who are working 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day who would love to cut back to 6 or maybe 4 with young children (or zero), but can't because of the beneifts situation, or lack of part-time opportunities, or need to stay in the job market for security reasons. I don't think capitalism is for everyone and I don't think socialism is for everyone but some sort of mix, leaning heavily towards capitalism but regulated to prevent abuse etc. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Amos
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 01:09 AM

Yes--capitalism within a firm social contract would be a different beast than wehave just now; instead, it is protected by some aspects of law and encouraged toward ramapnt self-serving aggrandization by others.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 04:09 AM

Can you not see that Capitalism, within a firm social contract, is now unable to sustain itself in so called developed countries.

The waste of resources, energy, materials and labour has become so great,that the economic growth required cannot be achieved by conventional Capitalism. We are now forced to manufacture false "booms" based on credit burdens much too heavy to ever be repayed.

The endgame of course is already in progress....."quantitive easing" or in good old fashioned speak....The printing of money!

When folks begin to realise that this term has a third meaning, (armed robbery of their savings, pensions and public sevices)...and start to protest about it, we move to the final stage of Police State and Facism.

"Virtuous Capitalists" soon turn into tyrants when asked to endure the same conditions as the common people.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: GUEST,Wayne, near Baltimore
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:02 AM

Under real capitalism we probably wouldn't see these "bailouts".

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:22 AM

But the common people can also be capitalists.   The term "capitalist" is not inherently one that only refers to the kind of large scale capitalism that tends to be in the forefront of our awareness these days. Capitalism can be one person with a milk cow who sells their wares down at the village marketplace, and who got his or her cow with a micro-loan that was provided by a taxi driver on the other side of the world.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 01:24 PM

Being the hottest thing on Mudcat, doesn't give you the right to post in "Bimboese"!!

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 01:27 PM

Thank you very much..you flatter me and I will try not to write in Bimboese. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Amos
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 01:31 PM

Ake:

I will say again that your observation that "capitalism cannot sustain itself" is inaccurate. The problems of large corporations, a culture of obsessive consumerism, and a money-motivation untempered by ethical principle are all issues of culture, and individual, codes of right conduct, and are not built in to capitalism per se, as Carol's Bimboese post makes clear.

IF you want to solve a problem you have to name the right problem, which means differentiating between what's wrong and what ain't. If you are using the word capitalism to mean "the system that allows large immoral corporations to take advantage of individuals" then you are redefining the word, which will make it hard for folks to understand what you are actually saying.

It is not private ownership of the means of production that is at fault in the offenses you describe, and that is the core concept that drives capitalistic systems. PRivate ownership of the means of production is a reasonable reward for bringing the means of production into existence from nothing and creating a game for people to play.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 01:33 PM

Hey Mary....haven't seen your picture yet...but I'm sure you're just as nice as the lovely Carol!!

However, Bimboese has been banned for all but the "inner circle"....you know who they are......:0)

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 01:50 PM

Amos..... regardless of the motives, capitalism will always end up in the sort of mess we now see around us.

Dont imagine that this is the end of capitalism, the new capitalism that you long for is likely to be very bloody indeed.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 01:50 PM

Bimboese?

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 03:03 PM

The system of micro-loans (see Carol post) has helped some very small entrepreneurs in 'third world' countries.
The cases presented by BBC (on BBCNews) are very thought-provoking.

Capitalism, with all its faults, is the only game in town. Regulation is needed, but it will have to be through international agreements to be effective.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Goose Gander
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 03:09 PM

Funny how many people rattle on against capitalism while listening to CDs, driving in cars, eating commercially produced food (including nearly all organic produce, unless you grow it yourself or belong to a collective), living in comfortable housing, using computers,and so on.

But you think "capitalism has outlived its usefullness" . . .

What is the alternative? There is no way of going back to agrarianism or hunting and gathering on the scale necessary to maintain the population with food and shelter at even a minimum level. For all its abuses, capitalism has an unequaled record for creating wealth and improving living standards. The social benefits enjoyed by all of us (education, health care, social security, infrastructure, etc.) in developed countries were payed for with government revenues (taxes) gleaned from commercial enterprise. Regarding pollution, 'destroying the world', blah blah blah, the 20th century nation with the worst envirnomental record was not the US, Britain, Japan, or Germany but the USSR. So if you want to blame industrialism or modernism in general, then you're getting warmer, but again what is the alternative?

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: olddude
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 03:29 PM

Hey come on, it works great ... just look at guys like Madoff
he did well ... it took 65 billion before he went down

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 03:39 PM

Madoff is not an example of capitalism. Madoff is an example of hucksterism.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Amos
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 04:03 PM

Ake:

Can you explain your assertion that it is capitalism, rather than individual corruption, that causes the klind of BS now rampant? Obviously, a social framework of limits has to be imposed, and under the free-market airheads of the Bushian Reign it was not.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Goose Gander
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 04:11 PM

If we had a genuinely free market, there would be no bailouts for poorly run companies. What we are seeing now - first under W. and continuing under Obama - is not capitalism but a perverse hybrid where gains are privatized and costs are socialized.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 04:39 PM

Capitalism is the economic system which allows individual corruption to flourish.....in fact it actively encourages individual corruption.

All the systems which attempt to "organise" society are to a large extent corrupt, but capitalism more than any other, is poison to the human mind. The desire to gain power over our fellow creatures through the aquisition of money causes our species to do the most unspeakable things to one another.

It is convienient to blame evil or some personal aberation, but the system must shoulder the blame for the monsters it produces...

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 04:41 PM

We've never had a genuinely free market. And we never will have a genuinely free market. And considering how badly the closest thing we've ever had to a free market (the derivatives market) has performed (utter failure), I think that's a very good thing.

In order to have a genuinely free market, we would have to eliminate our military industrial complex, and end our subsidies of agricultural products and corporate welfare. I don't see that happening any time soon.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 04:43 PM

Socialism and communism are no less likely to encourage corruption to flourish than capitalism.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Amos
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 04:49 PM

The desire to gain power over our fellow creatures through the aquisition of money causes our species to do the most unspeakable things to one another....It is convienient to blame evil or some personal aberation, but the system must shoulder the blame for the monsters it produces...

You haven't answered the question, but instead have just re-turned your original assertions about the inherent evil of capitalism.

Definition:

1. an economic system based on private ownership of capital
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

2. Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are owned by private persons, and operated for profit and where investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are predominantly determined through the operation of a free market.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

What is it in these definitions that you believe inherently causes evil?

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Goose Gander
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 05:08 PM

Why yes, Akenaton, capitalism practically invented evil. It certainly never existed in tribal cultures, in agrarian societies, in the medieval period, in socialist countries, or anything like that.

Furthermore, you personally certainly have never availed yourself of any of the products of capitalism. I have no doubt that you dress yourself in animal skins, dig for roots, and live in a cave, right?

But the question remains: what is the alternative to capitalism?

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Peace
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 05:21 PM

"But the question remains: what is the alternative to capitalism?"

The answer to that is simple, but no capitalist would ever understand because to effect a working answer would mean a relinquishment of control on the part of capitalists.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 05:22 PM

neither "pure" capitalism nor "pure" socialism is a workable system in today's world--the question is where to strike a balance.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: gnu
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 05:28 PM

Indeed, Dick. That balance may hang in the balance for eternity. After all, we are talking about humans.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 05:40 PM

The question is surely for you Mr Morris, as you don't appear to disagree with my contention that capitalism struggles to sustain itself in a "highly developed society", yet state that there is no alternative to it.

Talk of dressing in animal skins gets a cheap laugh I suppose, but seriously, does humanity really have to live in the fashion we do?
Slaves to money and debt, quality of life in many cases nil and a generation of rudderless young people smothering their despair in herion and cocain. Women and even children enduced to sell their sex and femininity for the gratification of moronic males, who no longer understand or appreciate the beauty of sex.

Does primitive society as practiced by the American Indians, or the clan system in Scotland (before capitalism drove the people from the land),not seem a better way of life,even to one as jaded as yourself?

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: gnu
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 05:44 PM

I like air conditioning.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Goose Gander
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 05:46 PM

Akenaton -

To return to life as practiced by American Indians or Scottish Highlanders (which, romantic dreams aside, included slavery, warfare, torture in some cases, not to mention a average lifespan much shorter than you or I can expect) would require the elimination of several billion humans. I'm not jaded, I'm realistic. When you can provide a realistic, working alternative to capitalism I'll be willing to listen.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 05:54 PM

The Native Americans made things and used some of them as barter. I would expect that the Scottish clans did so also. How is that different than capitalism?

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:10 PM

"Socialism and communism are no less likely to encourage corruption to flourish than capitalism"

Oh yes they are!!......If led by someone perceived to be incorruptible.....This does not apply under Capitalism where everyone is expected to be very corruptible, especially our leaders!

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Peace
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:13 PM

When rifles were traded for their height in beaver pelts, that was trade and barter.

When the mother f##kers from the Northwest Company (Hudson's Bay Company) lengthened the barrels of rifles to get MORE pelts, that was Capitalism.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:24 PM

Mr Morris..I don't much care whether you listen or not, but I do believe that before the end of this century,the surviving humans will be living a lifestyle common to primitive people for thousands of years.
You say that we can expect to live much longer than primitive peoples, I would dispute that, and suggest that our quality of life and general health are much worse.....we rely over much on a capitalist drug producing and marketing culture, to be really healthy.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:32 PM

History shows us that corruption in communist and socialist societies has been just as much of a problems as in capitalist societies. Access to and control of resources (which historically has been the purview of the few rather than the many in communist and socialist societies) is just as much a factor in encouraging corruption as access to and control of capital.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:33 PM

How is trade and barter different from capitalism?

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Peace
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:33 PM

Too true, Carol.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:38 PM

I think it should be further pointed out, that all of the societies that have self-identified as communist or socialist have also practiced some capitalism. Just as all societies that self-identify as capitalist also practice some socialism.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: GUEST,Mike Morris sans cookie
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 06:45 PM

Akenaton -

Life expectancies in developed countries have steadily increased over the last few centuries, and infant mortality rates have dropped, particularly in the 20th century. You can look this up if you don't believe me. Anyone who prefers healthy food to garbage can choose the good stuff over fast food, it's often cheaper if you cook it yourself. Concerned about your health? Get off the couch and go for a walk or bikeride, or go play sports. Don't like marketing culture and its effects on mental health? Turn off the television.

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: Amos
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 08:09 PM

You are mixing up your symptoms and causes, Ake. The issues of private ownership --where someone borrows or earns the means to build a factory and organizes it and makes products and therefore --after having paid those who worked for him and those who supplied him with materials--enjoys a portion of the profits therefrom--are NOT the causes of despondency, drug use, and so on. Your list of social ills would be reduced if those who are in apathy and despond engaged in a little productive capitalism of their own.

Unless you can enlighten me (as I asked above) as to how the nature of capitalism breeds these evils you bemoan, I will have to conclude that your speaking through your BVDs.

THis is not to say that I don't think a good deal of social engineering is necessary to make the whole social spectrum of people more productive and more decent. I do think so. But you have to name the right cause of the problem if you really want to cure the problem, and private ownership is not the cause of the problem.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Capitalism has outlived its usefullness
From: robomatic
Date: 12 Mar 09 - 08:41 PM

C