# Capitalism vs common sense **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 6, 2015, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015 "2015-02-06T23:59:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2015, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/41 "2015-02-09T18:25:28Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > I have no problem with subways per se, but they only take you where the subway goes, and they’re basically useless at moving goods around. As you can imagine, this is quite a problem in dense urban cores. Also, quite a few people _don’t_ like them. Depending on the city, subways are disgusting and/or dangerous. > > In the case of New York specifically, the subways are nice but also limited. Many people absolutely require taxis (or services like Uber) just to get around. Increasingly, people must commune from considerable distances (which usually involves long trips and either jumping multiple lines or expensive parking). > > [Map: NYC's Commute Times Are Long, Long, Long - Gothamist](http://gothamist.com/2013/03/05/map_new_york_citys_commute_times_ar.php) > > New York commutes are substantially above the national average. Given that Manhattan is an island and NYC is quite dense, it is not surprising that commute times are long. Imagine what they would be without subways. I’m in Silicon Valley, and commute times are bad here also with awful transit. 45 years ago I worked as a messenger in New York, back when tokens were 20 cents. I had no trouble getting anywhere on the island. Some people don’t want to deal with subways, and some people don’t want to walk the little bit required, but don’t blame the subways for that. As for dirty and disgusting, NY subways were not so good during the graffiti period, but not bad before that and the last time I rode them. I’ve been on subway systems all through the world, and the only one I didn’t like was in Athens, but that might have been me coming down with a cold. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/42 "2015-02-11T03:12:12Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Given that Manhattan is an island and NYC is quite dense, it is not surprising that commute times are long. Imagine what they would be without subways. I’m in Silicon Valley, and commute times are bad here also with awful transit. I don’t specifically disagree, but none of this actually detracts from my point. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/43 "2015-02-11T07:29:12Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > I don’t specifically disagree, but none of this actually detracts from my point. Which appears to be that subways are disgusting and horrible. However I rather like them. Though you’re right about them not being useful about moving goods around. When I was a messenger, I carried stuff that today would be emailed and ten years ago would be faxed. Contracts and such are goods in a sense. Plus, subways mean fewer cars which leaves more room for the trucks which do carry the goods. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/44 "2015-02-11T11:46:02Z")
One of the biggest flaws I see in capitalism is that you can make money simply by having money. Let’s say I have a million dollars. If I invest that million dollars in the stock market, and get a modest 5% return every year (on average), that means I made $50,000 without having to lift a finger. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/45 "2015-02-11T11:51:38Z")
> [@Blalron](#): > > One of the biggest flaws I see in capitalism is that you can make money simply by having money. Let’s say I have a million dollars. If I invest that million dollars in the stock market, and get a modest 5% return every year (on average), that means I made $50,000 without having to lift a finger. What system would you create that is better than capitalism, and that did NOT allow that happen? Because I’m thinking you’re conflating tax policy with economic policy. If you’re thinking of inherited wealth, that’s a tax issue, not an issue related to the economic system. You could have a 100% tax on inheritance and still have a capitalist system. It should also be noted that you can LOSE money simply by having money. It’s not automatic and investing is more complicated than you make it out to be, even if it’s not more complicated than starting your own successful company. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/46 "2015-02-11T11:58:36Z")
> [@mgalka](#): > > Our free market society is based Adam Smith’s concept of the “invisible hand” that, when markets are allowed to operate freely, allocates resources in an optimal way. Uh, no. Really, no. Economic science tells us _how markets work._ It’s important to understand that this is not the same thing as _what we should want._ There is no guarantee that a free market will come up with a solution of maximum possible utility. Trusting the free market to spontaneously create “optimal outcomes” is like trusting a bunch of kids playing on all-terrain vehicles in a meadow to spontaneously create “optimal traffic patterns.” They’ll go where they choose to go, that’s all. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/47 "2015-02-11T12:05:29Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Laughable. Why are we entering a “post-scarcity” society if capitalism provides nothing to poor people? Shouldn’t we be in an extremely scarce society as a result of being capitalist? **We’re not.** Seriously, we have serious scarcity of energy, water, and various resources in the food production chain. These things have greater demand-to-supply ratios than they did a few generations ago. That’s why owning a lot of mineral rights has led to not only multi-billion-dollar fortunes, but multi-billion-dollar increases in net worth in a single year for a few privileged rights-holders. There is no post-scarcity society now, nor will there be absent a population collapse. Star Trek is not real, son, and it never will be, either. _Is this an April Fool’s thread? Am I dreaming?_ ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/48 "2015-02-11T12:15:15Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#): > > You are also assuming that […] the future will consist of a super-rich elite and a vast underclass, which is (as stated above) just science fiction. No, it’s history. Most “civilized” societies in history have looked like this: God-King at the top. Small class of courtiers, sycophants, educated persons, and skilled artisans. Lots of agrarian peasants. That \*exact \*model describes medieval Japan, medieval Europe, ancient China, and ancient Egypt. With small modifications, it describes ancient Rome and early modern Russia. It’s pretty much _normative._ I’d guess that most societies in history have been either this kind of “Pharaonic” system, or a tribal society with the majority somehow “related” and thus of a single class. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/49 "2015-02-11T16:52:23Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Their labor doing something else of course…same as has been the case when other jobs were eliminated. There will never be a true elimination of scarcity, since even if all your material needs are taking care of, there will always be a need for entertainment. Games to play, things to read and experience, or just thoughts to share. So you think that, so long as people do SOMETHING, ANYTHING … they’ll get paid for it? And well enough to survive on? WONDERFUL!!! Where do I sign up for my job as an Internet Message Board Debater? I can’t wait! > [@](#): > > Again, you are thinking of this all in very limited Marxist terms (not saying you are a Marxist btw, just that you have the same narrow view point on this). ‘Labor’ can mean a lot of different things, and it doesn’t HAVE to mean sitting at a conveyor belt for 8 hours a day turning bolt A in slot B, nor does it mean that because we have a machine to do that now (in much of the 1st world anyway) that those workers have nothing to trade their labor for now so must starve on the streets. The US is one of the most heavily automated countries on Earth today, yet we don’t have 30 or 40% unemployment even though a fraction of the work force does manufacturing today. It’s like how we don’t have 90% unemployment because we have less than 1% of the population in agriculture compared to a large percentage of the population even 100 years ago…those ex-farmers took their labor to do other things. You keep missing the point … it doesn’t MATTER what sort of new occupations people find for themselves if automated software and hardware can do it better and cheaper. The new jobs will just be automated as fast as they come into existence, just as the old ones were. There are SOME things that will probably take a very very long time to automate (for example, lawyers will probably pass laws making it illegal to automate their work) but they’re a tiny fraction of what constitutes employment. THAT’S what makes this problem different from all the other automation threats that have come up in the past. It’s not a Marxist/capitalist sort of issue. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/50 "2015-02-11T16:57:14Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Well, they did. Most people found others. > > One thing that Evil Captor missed is that, even assuming robots do ultimately replace almost everyone, it drives down the marginal cost of everything to near-zero. Which is basically what has always happened: automation frequently does cause people to lose jobs, but at a net savings in money expended on that good or service. Which means society is can consume more of it. Yes, which means that in the long term automation will be a good thing and we will all be richer and happier, even if we are a peasant class from the standpoint of the future one percenters (should we not realize that they don’t deserve their money and change to a more rational system of divvying up the goodies produced by automation). Short term, I see the potential for some nasty shit happening, and that’s what I’d like to avoid. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/51 "2015-02-11T17:00:52Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > **We’re not.** > > Seriously, we have serious scarcity of energy, water, and various resources in the food production chain. These things have greater demand-to-supply ratios than they did a few generations ago. That’s why owning a lot of mineral rights has led to not only multi-billion-dollar fortunes, but multi-billion-dollar increases in net worth in a single year for a few privileged rights-holders. > > There is no post-scarcity society now, nor will there be absent a population collapse. > > Star Trek is not real, son, and it never will be, either. > > _Is this an April Fool’s thread? Am I dreaming?_ We are straining all of those resources because of population growth. That will change, and is changing, in industrialized nations, as people realize that children are not your only form of social security, as is traditional in most Third World cultures. Population rates are falling in Europe and Japan and WOULD be falling in the US if not for our large immigrant influx. In the meantime, the world’s population COULD be fed, most if not all of the starvation now is a result of culture, not lack of resources. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/52 "2015-02-11T17:05:41Z")
> [@XT](#): > > 😛 You just get funnier and funnier. So, poor people don’t buy things? No TVs, no cell phones, no, I don’t know, food, clothing, gas, etc? Nothing? Or they only buy a ‘few goods and services that capitalism’ provides? They get everything else by magic or for ‘free’?? > > And you seriously believe this? Unemployed people don’t buy nearly as much as employed people, absent the strong social safety net that Republicans have been busily shredding since the 1980s. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/53 "2015-02-11T17:11:03Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > You keep missing the point … it doesn’t MATTER what sort of new occupations people find for themselves if automated software and hardware can do it better and cheaper. And it didn’t matter that people who used to be subsistence farmers but had their jobs eliminated by better farming tools became weavers when those jobs were eliminated by automation and then they became house servants but those jobs were eliminated by home appliances and then they became switchboard operators but those jobs were eliminated by Cisco and now they’re what people do today. Your complaint is just incredibly tiresome to anyone who has read a book on the economic history of the world. To a pretty good approximation, ALL the jobs that there have ever been have already been eliminated by automation. Like, 99% of them. And yet the unemployment rate isn’t 99%. Why are you right when everyone who has said exactly the same thing you’re saying for two or three hundred years was utterly, hopelessly, hilariously wrong? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/54 "2015-02-11T17:22:43Z")
[QUOTE=Evil Captor] So you think that, so long as people do SOMETHING, ANYTHING … they’ll get paid for it? And well enough to survive on? WONDERFUL!!! Where do I sign up for my job as an Internet Message Board Debater? I can’t wait! [/QUOTE] You sign up for that job where you can find someone to pay you to do it, of course. Just like everything else. 30 years ago the concept that we’d pay people to not only review computer games but to play them would have seemed ludicrous, but of course today it happens. > [@](#): > > You keep missing the point … it doesn’t MATTER what sort of new occupations people find for themselves if automated software and hardware can do it better and cheaper. The new jobs will just be automated as fast as they come into existence, just as the old ones were. There are SOME things that will probably take a very very long time to automate (for example, lawyers will probably pass laws making it illegal to automate their work) but they’re a tiny fraction of what constitutes employment. THAT’S what makes this problem different from all the other automation threats that have come up in the past. It’s not a Marxist/capitalist sort of issue. No, you are the one missing the point, which is that you are saying exactly the same things (with a more modern slant on it, exchanging ‘software and hardware’ instead of ‘mass production’ and ‘assembly line’) as people have for literally hundreds of years. You are as wrong as they are. It DOES matter what new occupations become available in the future, and we can’t predict what those might be any better than people predicted the ones we have today that didn’t exist 10, 20 or 50 years ago. Until we have magical nano-assemblers making everything for us and magical robots who will market and ship all those goods and magical energy that requires no human intervention to produce and distribute to fulfill all our needs and magical AI to produce all the entertainment and porn we need without humans and all the other magic tech to completely take humans out of each and every loop there will always be a need for humans to work. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/55 "2015-02-11T17:25:08Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Unemployed people don’t buy nearly as much as employed people, absent the strong social safety net that Republicans have been busily shredding since the 1980s. Are you equating ‘poor’ with ‘unemployed’ now? Because that’s not what I was responding too. Even poor AND unemployed buy stuff, so even that admission is you backpedaling, and of course the social safety net, whether strong and robust or not relies on Capitalism to provide not only the goods but also the money to make it work, so your original assertion that I was replying to there sort of falls apart, regardless of how you try and spin it. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/56 "2015-02-12T01:51:56Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Which appears to be that subways are disgusting and horrible. However I rather like them. _Bonk_ No, that was not the point. The point is that cities tend to have slower transportation all things considered. Which is a fact, regardless of how many people like New York subways so huggy-wuggy much. Which means that land, being a scarce resource, will tend to get bid up by those who can afford to do so even beyond the strict value of the property itself. Hence rents in the core of large cities has a tendency to go eye-poppingly huge. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/57 "2015-02-12T05:50:24Z")
> [@XT](#): > > […]and of course the social safety net, whether strong and robust or not relies on Capitalism to provide not only the goods but also the money to make it work,[…] Uh… It is possible to have money without Capitalism. Also handicrafts. I think we may need to define some terms. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/58 "2015-02-12T05:56:31Z")
Here’s the thing. I don’t really care that much about the issue in the OP. Adam Smith might not have cared overmuch, beyond thoughts like this:[ul][li]If you can drop 120x the median household income on housing, you probably can afford a much higher tax rate, thanks.Maybe there’s something hinky going on, if you’re making enough to rent a place to live for that kind of money. When will competition appear to make your income less secure?[/ul][/li] Outrageously priced housing is not a market failure itself, but it could be a marker of other problems that lead to outrageous structural income disparity. But we knew we had that anyway, right? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/59 "2015-02-12T15:29:41Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Here’s the thing. I don’t really care that much about the issue in the OP. Adam Smith might not have cared overmuch, beyond thoughts like this: “Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” “By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into, without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England.” “The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess … It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” “We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate … Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.” “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” “The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquility of anybody but themselves.” ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2015, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015/60 "2015-02-12T15:39:30Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Uh… > > It is possible to have money without Capitalism. Also handicrafts. > > I think we may need to define some terms. Not really. I never said that you couldn’t have money without Capitalism…that’s your own mis-reading of the point I was making. The large amounts of money that make the various social programs in the US and Europe work comes from Capitalism. The vast social programs in a communist country such as China comes from Capitalism. The jobs, goods and services used by all of the above, including the poor, comes from Capitalism. The ability to capitalize a sentence or a name comes from capitalism. It’s verra versatile, is that Capitalism stuff. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/capitalism-vs-common-sense/712015.md?page=4)