…What are you going to do when Capitalism fails then? Because it will. Less and less companies owning more and more of the wealth being the downfall.
(p.s. I am not taking your word for it. It’s just a nice way to title a followup)
Capitalism “fails” regularly. That’s why we have poor people. It’s also why we have depressions. Seems like we’ve gotten pretty good at managing and fixing these “failures” though. We work on them all the time.
Are you and whats-his-name friends? Do you both go to the same kindergarten?
I think we’ve been taken over by the chowder and marching society.
Feudalism, milady.
Capitalism is cyclical. It fails, businesses collapse, their capital is spread far and wide, in the s–tstorm that follows, and eventually people regroup, and build up new businesses. Capitalism is like a forest, yes, over time some trees grow large, and choke out the smaller ones, but they fall, and become food for the next generation to spring up.
ok mr pedantic point avoider. Read ‘collapse’ where I said ‘fail’. If ‘fail’ is too hard for you to understand the meaining of.
That’s what the welfare state is for. People may not like it, but let’s face it-no system is without it’s flaws, and no economy is going to succeed without a large middle class.
You are implying a cyclic pattern of collapse and replace. Capitalism doesn’t do that. I just gets more and more and more close to failure. companies are bigger and bigger and fewer and fewer.
I am not a communist myself. I just had quite a long conversation about it and marx with someone not long ago, before which I knew nothing, after which I understood the concepts enough to contribute to these for and against arguments.
Personaly I don’t care much because the ‘bloodless revolution’ is unlikely to happen in my life time.
And even if it does. I won’t be disappointed if something other than communism is the result.
Fundemently I have the same view of this as I have of what happens when we die. I.e. no-one knows, so why guess, it’s a waste of time, just wait til you die and then you will know. simple.
“we’re going to paradise”
“what’s it like?”
“Wait til we get there”
I like the way these guys half admit defeat without finishing the debate and call for sequels before the credits have rolled through.
Ah the impatience of today’s youth…
And why do they hunt in pairs? Does the whole Communist Youth of England (all 7 of them) share the same favorites folder on the communal 64K down at ‘party headquarters’ or what?
You are implying a cyclic pattern of collapse and replace. Capitalism doesn’t do that. I just gets more and more and more close to failure. companies are bigger and bigger and fewer and fewer.
I am not a communist myself. I just had quite a long conversation about it and marx with someone not long ago, before which I knew nothing, after which I understood the concepts enough to contribute to these for and against arguments.
Personaly I don’t care much because the ‘bloodless revolution’ is unlikely to happen in my life time.
And even if it does. I won’t be disappointed if something other than communism is the result.
Fundemently I have the same view of this as I have of what happens when we die. I.e. no-one knows, so why guess, it’s a waste of time, just wait til you die and then you will know. simple.
“we’re going to paradise”
“what’s it like?”
“Wait til we get there”
p.s. in anticipation of “you just contradicted yourself” replies. I know, I don’t care, I just wanted to debate.
I thought this concentration among trusts and syndicates occurred at least once already at the end of the 1800’s and beginning of 1900’s. Somehow we managed to pull through.
And lobley, remember that insulting posters outside of the Pit is seriously frowned upon.
They are? I’ll admit the biggest companies have gotten a lot bigger in the last few decades, but fewer? Got any statistics on corporate registration that show the overall number of companies is shrinking? If anything, I’d say they expanded mightily in the last decade, though many of the goofier web-based companies suffered a well-deserved death.
Your whole post uses “I” frequently as an example of how capitalism will eventally fail. I hate to break it to you, but capitalism consists of more than just you. There are millions (or even a billion or two) of us earning wages, paying taxes, buying goods and services… Somebody somewhere just dropped dead. One day it will be you. On a much later day, it will be me. The system lives on because our children are taking our place.
And the rest of your so-called debate is just nonsense.
Are you refering to the sarcastic bit about understanding the word ‘fail’?
If so. It was hardly an insult! It was a way of saying “you knew what I meant”
But if he/she took offence then I am sorry.
Way to patronise. FYI I was not one of the ‘main’ pro-communists in that thread so I am not one of ‘these guys’. I just started a new thread because I wanted some attention.
And I got it. Tee hee hee. 
I predict that we’ll have strong AI before capitalism collapses. Once we have strong AI, all bets are off. Economics, politics, and day-to-day life after that are pretty much unimaginable. Or if we do try to imagine them, we’ll be like SF writers of the 40s imagining the computers of 2002. “These computers will be so advanced, they’ll have THOUSANDS of vacuum tubes!”
Once you plug strong AI into industrial processes, you have factories that run themselves. Plug into agriculture and you have farms that run themselves. Plug into computer design, and you have computers as smart as people designing computers smarter than people, which design computers MUCH smarter than people which design…
If we ever reach that point, humans will either live like kings on the leftovers of AI industry, or we’ll be extinct. Either way, no worries.
But UNTIL then, liberal democracy and capitalism are the best things going. If you’ve got a better idea, tell us. I’ve never heard a better one, but there’s always the first time, and just because I can’t figure out a better way doesn’t mean that the better way doesn’t exist.
I’m not so sure that capitalism is as destined to collapse as you think. Even if everything becomes concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchs, leading to a worldwide revolution and collapse of the global economy, the best thing to replace the failed capitalist order would be a new capitalist order. Hang the fatcats, disperse their goons, divvy up their stuff, and start over with everyone as small business owners and yeoman farmers. And watch the whole thing repeat itself…IF capitalism is destined to fail of its own internal contradictions. If it is there’s nothing we can do about it except to smooth those contradictions as much as possible and keep the run going as long as possible.
**
Really? I suggest you look at the history of capitalism from 1890 to 1950. The entire system didn’t collapse in the 1920s, but vast swaths of it did. In the wreckage of those collapsed corporations grew up the generation of corporations that dominated the mid-20th Century.
The consolidation today is nothing compared to the great trusts, pools and monopolies of the last half of the 19th Century. Sure, we have multi-industry conglomerates, but these conglomerates compete against each other across the board, as opposed to 110 years ago, when there were single-industry conglomerates that ran entire industries (Standard Oil, anyone).
And historically, like multi-national states, vast conglomerate corporations do not last. They’re either eclipsed and defeated by more nimble and specialized companies, they overextend and fall apart, or they are broken up by the government. These collapses are like infected cells breaking loose and spewing forth virus particles – the efforts and acumen of the company that has collapsed becomes the fertilizer that gives birth to the next generation of smaller companies in that field (which will eventually come to be dominated by one or two large companies, which will in turn collapse and start the process over). The last 30 years of the computer industry have provided many examples of this build up-fall apart-rebirth cycle.
Apple Computer didn’t collapse totally, but it did pretty much fall apart twice in its history, and in turn slough off executives and talent who founded many of the current generation of computer makers, software designers and what have you. Hewlett-Packard had a similar implosion decades ago that spread around talent (including many of the people who would help make the Apple /// and Lisa).
Kirk
To expand on Lemur’s post humans are pretty bad at predicting what is going to happen. Currently we are in a period where no relevant economic theory exists to even begin speculating what is going to happen next. We are close to technology that raises lots of questions including how business will be conducted in the future and where we will get needed resources from. It is conceivable that at some point our progress will make capitalism as behind the times and irrelevant as communism. What exactly could make the market mutate in this way I have no clue. The point is we have no chance of making anything resembling a reasonable guess about what would follow capitalism. It is fun to try but it isn’t going to be any better than Marx’s guess.
How ironic. You called my post nonsense while talking complete nonsense.
What on earth has the amount of times I use ‘I’ got to do with how many people capitalism is. ‘I’ is a letter used to refer to the person writing ‘I’ how am I using it as an example of how capitalism will fail??? are you mental?
Oh I see what you did. You didn’t spot that I just made a spelling mistake
(or more accurately I didn’t press the ‘t’ key hard enough)
below, where it says ‘I’ read 'It"
Sorry I called you mental. But it did get on my nerves that you used apparent nonsense as a counterpoint to my post.
I think we are considerably further from failure than we were in, say, 1930.
I think it’s customary for people to start debates because they actually want to debate something. Those who do what you’ve indicated…post something merely to attract attention…are called trolls.
Maybe you should go read something about the subject you’ve posted on and prepare yourself for an actual debate. You can’t really take sides on an issue if you don’t know anything about either side.
It’s an easy mistake to make when you’re responding to someone who doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.
In case I’m being unclear, that’s you.