It is hugely ironic that your Lindgren story makes a point, while you maintain that my point is obvious and it’s the exact same point.
In case you’re being deliberately obtuse, I’ll clarify, using bite-sized chunks of logic:
[ul][li]Social programs can be implemented, but they have a cost. [/li][li]Productive people in a society create wealth. [/li][li]Governments can pay for their social programs (and thus reduce the misery of less-productive citizens) through taxation on the productive citizens. [/li][li]No social program will ever be perfect (i.e. everyone is happy all the time) but if you want to get closer and closer to that result, you’ll need to spend more on social programs. [/li][li]Spending more on social programs requires higher taxes. [/li][li]When the taxes get too high, the productive members of your society will realize that they are working for no personal gain at all; that any extra effort is being taken away in taxes. [/li][li]As a result, productive people stop being as productive. Why should they work hard at producing when the extra effort doesn’t get them anything? Some of them will move away, taking their skills out of the country entirely. If they are well-enough known (like Astrid) they can make pointed public criticisms that will be read by many citizens, bringing the government down. [/li][li]At the very least, individual taxpayers lose some freedom to enjoy the benefits of their labour, because some of those benefits are being taken away from them. For some, this loss of freedom is a major nuisance. Since they may have worked hard to learn skills than let them earn (for example) $50,000 a year, why shouldn’t they be allowed to spend $50,000 a year as they like, instead of having a sizable chunk taken away from them? Corporations also lose a chunk of their profits, which makes it less likely they can expand, modernize, and hire more workers. [/li][li]The government must then decide: how large a tax can we impose without making it impossible for productive people to be productive? How much corporate tax can we impose before corporations lose their ability to improve themselves? The government could tax everybody 100% (i.e. nationalize all private property) or tax everybody 0% (and have no money for social programs at all) or decide on some middle ground. [/li][li]Where that middle ground lies depends on how much the citizens are willing to pay in taxes before they start to complain. It varies from country to country. The Americans (who love freedom) complain a lot, the Canadians (who love law and good government) complain a little and the Swedes (who apparantly loved social programs in the seventies but have relaxed a bit since) don’t complain very much at all. The Soviets and Chinese might have complained, but being a complainer in those countries often meant imprisonment, exile and/or death. [/li][li]The middle ground is also determined by how much misery a society is wiling to tolerate. Some Americans live in abject misery, a smaller proportion of Canadians do, and very few Swedes do. It is possible to reduce the misery in the U.S. with larger social programs and higher taxes, but the recent pro-Republican vote shows the Americans are not currently willing to pursue such a goal. Calling them “evil” doesn’t really help. [/li][li]Capitalism at its extreme would involve 0% taxes, but even if taxation was more than 0%, capitalism can stil thrive despite the fact that taxation (among other controls) violates “free market principles”. The existence of a tax system does not (in and of itself) destroy capitalism. A draconian tax system, however, will. [/li][li]Socialism at its extreme (i.e. communism) would involve 100% taxes, and not just on the rich (like Astrid) but on every citizen. Far from eliminating misery, millions of people have starved under such systems because productivity collapsed. [/li][li]There is a social benefit to taking taxes and spending it on social programs, but that benefit has diminishing returns and imposing too high a tax hurts a society more than helps it. [/li][li]There is nothing in this list that shouldn’t be downright obvious, unless you’re being deliberately obtuse. [/li][/ul]
We actually seem to agree that taxation is necessary to keep a country from sliding into brutality. I just have to disagree with Chumpsky’s take that capitalists are by definition brutal and parasitic and all his other bullshit.
Incidentally, I thought the “point of this discussion” was why communism died. It was only hijacked into a general discussion of capitalism because Chumpsky fell compelled to do some axe-grinding. Of course, at this point we may as well be discussing which is the one true God.
It’s like asking, What are you going to eat tomorrow? Did you browse through the parecon.org site at all? Actually, numerous books have been written on this subject, as well as voluminous articles, speeches, etc.
You answered your own question. If it would lead to a spectacular failure, why would we choose to do it?
You seem to be missing the very essence of what I am saying. In fact, the most important part of an anarcho-socialist economy is that it is not government-mandated, except in the sense that the people are the government. Socialism, in the anarchist tradition, is a system of self-governance, run bottom-up, with the power flowing from the people.
I think you have some misunderstanding of what capitalism is and why people oppose it. The objections to capitalism all flow from the monopoly (or near monopoly) on resources of the capitalist class. Capitalism is not just an exchange of goods in a market, which has always existed, but rather an entire system with three defining characteristics:
[ul][li]An economy which produces for the market. In a capitalist system, products are not produced based on what people need, but rather based on what they can earn on the market.[/li][li]Monopoly of the means of production. In a capitalist system, a small elite owns everything necessary for producing the necessities of life.[/li][li]Wage labor. In the capitalist economy labor itself is a commodity: the mass of the populace must sell its time and energy to the market in order to live[/li][/ul]
In capitalism, one earns what one can get on the market. The “value”–really the price–of one’s production is determined by what the market will bear. This has only a very minimal relationship to what benefits the population, and often is inversely related to it. It is often the case that one can earn a large sum of money by engaging in activities that are extremely harmful to the majority of people.
In the end, capitalism is not sustainable. Any system predicated on the sanctification of personal material gain is bound to destroy itself and the environment that sustains it.
What makes up the market? People, which means that if you produce for the market you’re actually producing for people. Funny how under a capitalist economy we produce plenty of what is necessary for life.
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The necessities of life being food, shelter, and clothing?
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This is bad?
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What’s wrong with individuals deciding what something is worth to them?
Well give me a call when capitalism melts down and anarcho-communism starts to look good.
And if I had a dog, he be the smartest dog in the world. Can you describe the administrative structure of a factory with, say 1000 workers? Please cover the following situations and the procedures for response to each one (or just some of them, if you prefer) :
[ul][li]Worker claims to need $10 hammer.[/li][li]Worker claims to need $7000 forklift.[/li][li]Several workers claim to need $500,000 industrial laser.[/li][li]Worker is injured, out of service for one week. Request paid leave.[/li][li]Worker is injured, out of service for six months. Requests paid leave.[/li][li]Worker is injured, paralyzed for life. Requests $1,000,000.[/li][li]Worker is injured, paralyzed for life due to accident caused while drunk. Requests $1,000,000.[/li][li]Worker is injured, paralyzed for life due to accident caused when other worker is drunk. Requests $1,000,000 and temination of drunk worker.[/li][li]Worker is killed. Family requests $2,000,000.[/li][li]Factory is at capacity. One group of workers suggests expansion.[/li][li]Factory is at capacity. One group of workers suggests construction of new factory some distance away.[/li][li]Factory is at capacity. One group of workers suggest another group of workers be fired, as they are no longer required.[/li][li]Another factory implements new methods, making their production more efficient. A group of workers suggests similar upgrades be implemented here.[/li][li]As above, but another group of workers suggests closing down inefficient assembly lines, making some workers redundant.[/li][li]As above, but a group of workers have decided to leave your factory and go work in the other factory.[/li][/ul]
Which of these situations require a worker vote and which, if any, could be handled by an elected administrator(s)?
Fair enough. I think there’s a lot of insight in Chumpsky’s views, but naturally, none of us has a corner on the whole truth (except, of course, for Cecil, the Perfect Master). And, at the very least, it’s equally absurd to defend capitalism as a completely benign, beneficial system, as many posters here tend to do.
This thread has long devolved into hijack, which is good IMHO, because the original question isn’t all that interesting. But, after reading some of the comments here devoted to the blind worship of the capitalist system I don’t blame Chump for jumping into the fray to present an alternative viewpoint. And I’m really glad he did. I’ve participated in similar debates in the past, and found some of them to be downright distressing. I was thinking of simply punting the SDMB for a while: if Chumpsky hadn’t shown up, I probably wouldn’t even have posted in this thread.
For my part, I’ve seen this debate primarily as one between those who defend the status quo, on the one hand, and those who argue for change, on the other. Although I think I have a pretty clear picture of the failings of the current economic system, I personally don’t have a very clear idea of picture of how we might fix it. That might be construed by some as a weakness in my argumentation, and maybe it is, but the way I see it, just because I don’t have an answer to all the problems in the world doesn’t mean I shouldn’t point them out, or that I should defend them as a necessary evil unavoidably produced by the best possible solution, etc. – if you get my drift.
Having said that, I’ve been reflecting over some of the practical issues that other posters (such as El Jeffe and Stricker) have brought up regarding an anarcho-syndicalist economic organization. I find that most of them (although not all) are pretty easy to solve, actually. Consider this point, for example, raised by Stricker:
…followed by some practical examples.
Now, Stricker knows quite well that stock companies are, actually, run on a democratic basis. In most stock companies, every year or two, the stockholders get together and vote on issues concerning how the company is run, in accordance with company by-laws; they elect or ratify a Board of Directors, amend the charter of the company if necessary, and so on. And yet, under this democratic system, we see that companies nevertheless perform efficiently.
There is one small hitch, however. When a company is structured in this manner, management is beholden to the stockholders, rather than to the company’s employees. Since the director’s job is to squeeze as much profit out of the company as possible (so that stockholders earn a dividend on their holdings), this automatically places him/her in an adversarial relationship to labor.
Now imagine if the system was structured so that the stockholders were also, by definition, the company’s workforce. That is to say, for the sake of a thought experiment, imagine a situation in which ownership of the company is simply transferred to the people who work for it. Every year or two, just like stockholders, they get together, elect a Board of Directors, and so on. I submit that, in a competitive market, the outcome would be rather similar, with one major difference: mangement and labor would not co-exist in a tense, adversarial relationship – management would, in fact, be motivated to promote labor’s interests. Whatever innovations management might introduce, they would almost certainly be in the best interest of the company’s employees.
Okay, maybe the adversarial relationship between labor and management is a necessary component for the successful creation of wealth in a capitalist system. I don’t know, and I doubt controlled studies have been produced. But as Chumsky has pointed out, small-scale companies like South End have survived, and even done quite well for themselves, even though they have been structured in such a manner. I mentioned earlier that Ben and Jerry’s is also structured according to this principle, I’ve been given to believe, or something very similar to it; and they’ve also been quite successful. Coal mines in Northern England have also been successfully run on this principle, Mrs. S informs me.
(PS. Welcome to the SDMB, Stricker!
And by the way, it’s Mr. Svin, not Mr. Sven, chief.)
Anyway, I’ve run out of time over here. I’m going up country to hunt moose with my in-laws, and will be away for the rest of this weekend. I’ll try check in again on Monday, if the discussion is still afoot.
Everybody have a good weekend, and thanks for the thought-provoking debate!
The word “run” is being used ambiguously here. The voting stockholders make decisions on the board members and company policies, but the day-to-day operations are in the hands of the executives and managers.
It doesn’t require any imagination, since stock ownership and stock-options have been granted to employees at various companies for decades. Chumpsky has mentioned Bill Gates in a negative way, but the stock options Microsoft gave to its employees made many of them rich (though didn’t give them actual control of the company).
The major stumbling block (for me, at least) is your word “transferred”. What do you mean by that? Is the equity claimed by the stockholders abuptly declared null and void? If an inventor had come to me 5 years ago and asked me to invest $1000 in his idea, and his idea turned out to be a wild success, I can reasonably expect a chunk of that success in exchange for my risk of $1000. How exactly do you think my claim of partial ownership could be transferred to someone who actually works at the company; someone who didn’t put any of his personal assets at risk; someone who (I feel) is already suitably compensated by his weekly salary?
If the employee wants to buy my shares, he’s free to make a bid, and I should be free to accept or decline. If the company wants to give stock or stock options to the employee, I expect a chance to vote on the issue, for or against, at the next shareholder’s meeting.
Necessary? No. But you have two groups competing for a limited resource: the company’s revenue. The workers want more pay (of course) and the managers want to be able to report more profit. Though they constantly negotiate and debate, it’s not necessary at all that they become hostile to each other, except in Chumpsky’s world where all managers are parasitic scum and all workers are saints.
The relationship doesn’t have to be any more hostile than the one I have with the corner store. I’d like to pay less for cupcakes and they’d prefer to charge me more. It’s adverserial, but it’s not like gunfire is going to be involved. There have been cases between managers and union officials where gunfire was involved, but these are increasingly rare and unusual and are not required by the system.
The beauty of a capitalist system is that anyone can implement any plan they want, and if they make enough profit to survive, more power to them. In a communist system, though, there are no iconoclastic owners like Ben and Jerry because there are no owners, period. How far would Ben and Jerry have gotten if they had to get approval from a state committee for every decision, i.e. if they were never free to create their company in the first place and run it as they saw fit?
Ben and Jerry’s is not employee-owned (the company’s IPO was on Nasdaq in 1985, and was eventually purchased by Unilever in 2000), though they have a number of employee-friendly policies.
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield will eventually retire (I think Jerry has already reduced his role in the company’s operations) and if they decide to keep their shares in the company so they can live off dividends in their old age, by Chumpsky’s definition, they suddenly morph into evil parasites. Or were they evil parasites when they founded the company in the first place and hired their first employee? I lost track.
I understand perfectly. I don’t consider a lack of a specific solution a weakness at all. The first step to solving these problems is recognizing exactly what the problems are.
That is an interesting thought. A very interesting thought. The CEO still has “dictatorial” power for day-to-day decision making, but is beholden to the workers instead of shareholders.
Even if it worked efficiently, though, which I am not convinced it would do, it would nevertheless discourage individuals from creating new companies, and so the jobs that the new companies would have created would never appear. Bad, bad, bad.
My bad, skip. I’ll be more careful about that in the future.
Why must every discussion of socialism be inundated with these sorts of childish over-simplifications, deliberate misunderstandings and straw men?
Again, the straw man. In reality, what I maintain is that capitalism is an evil system. Not all capitalists are parasitic and brutal. However, the capitalist system selects out the most ruthless and feckless to rise to the top.
Please review this thread. You will note that the most common argument given for the demise of what is called “communism” is that capitalism is a better system. Communism is actually a reaction to capitalism, so any discussion of communism must deal with capitalism.
The hard line of the communist states that evolved developed out of a recognition that the capitalist states would do everything in their power to destroy any workers’ revolution. Thus, it is perfectly predictable that the only so-called communist states that would survive would be the most draconian. Simply witness the attacks on leftist states in the 20th century, and the brutality with which the capitalist states have dealt with workers’ movements.
A microcosm of this tendency can be seen in Vietnam. In the 1950’s, the communist party in Vietnam was almost totally political in the south, and became the only party with any broad base of support. It was only after years of brutal repression that guerilla warfare began. The ensuing attack on the country destroyed the civil society and eliminated all moderate elements of the communist and socialist parties, leaving only the most hard-line elements surviving.
The fact is that any workers revolution that wants to succeed has to face the fact that it will be attacked by the world’s most powerful militaries. Given that the only deterrent to imperialist aggression is now gone, it is no surprise that workers’ revolutions have been beaten back.
That’s a laugh, coming from you. You’ve casually described capitalism as “criminal”, “an abysmal failure” and responsible for 100 million deaths. Beyond your personal sense of disgust, you have no evidence to back up any of these wild claims. And when confronted with the tens of millions of deaths suffered under the extremist socialism/communism systems in the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia, you shrug them off and continue to claim that capitalism is worse.
I’m fondest of this little gem of yours:
Allowed more openness? Does socialism require a closed society? How charming. Care to define your terms? A controlled press? Censored news reports? Gulags for dissidents?
Actually, communism and fascism were much better at promoting the ruthless, since in practice climbing the government hierarchy meant you managed to flatter your superiors while denigrating (and sometimes killing) your rivals. While ruthless capitalist types have succeeded in times when government regulation was lacking (i.e. the twenties and the eighties) ultimately succeeding as a capitalist means you produce goods and services more efficiently than your rivals.
Not entirely. Communism was a reaction to the crushing aristocracy that ruled Europe in the 19th century. Early capitalists were also similiarly ruthless and brutal and I’ll cheerfully admit that they needed their leashes yanked, but that only means capitalism needed some controls. When those controls were put into place, the need for communism evaporated, and when the citizens of Russia and East Germany saw that their western counterparts were living wealthier, more comfortable lives, that’s when they demanded more openness and communism collapsed. Communist states that can totally isolate their citizens from outsiders might be able to continue (this was one of the elements mentioned in Orwell’s 1984) but China is finding it impractical (see the CNN website for stories of the recent opening of Chinese markets to foreign investors) and North Korea is running on fumes.
Actually, there is a growing movement in Washington to normalize relations with Cuba and Vietnam because the USSR is long-gone. It’s no longer necessary to engage in brutal chessboard politics with smaller nations in an attempt to limit the influence of the other major superpower, since the other superpower was kind enough to implode.
Possibly, but the French colonial influence can’t be ignored, and while this falls well within your critisism of imperialism, it’s not a failure of capitalism.
The only deterrennt is gone, i.e. the USSR? Hardly. If the USSR was such a huge deterrent, the Americans wouldn’t have jumped into Vietnam at all, and if the collapse of the USSR opened the floodgates, there would have a U.S.-led invasion of Cuba during the nineties. Your position makes no sense. Can you give us an example of a socialist country that was crushed under U.S. imperialism after the Soviets collapsed and the field was presumably clear? Does Grenada count? If you say it does, I swear I’ll laugh.
Yeah! Like those poor Hungarians in '56! Err…I mean, those poor Czechs in 1968!..err, sorry, I meant that poor Polish dockworker’s union in 1982. So, like I was saying, I agree totally.
I sincerely apologize for the slight if it was unwarranted, but if not intentional, then perhaps you are not entirely competent to be discussing this subject. You make similar mistakes below:
First, the 60 billion is net sales, not net income. The 2 billion for the most recent quarter is correct. They earned about 6 billion for all of last year. Take 6 billion and divide by 1 million employees and you get 6000 each. Unless you think the average wage at WM is less than $6000, then my point is made that WM paid out more in wages than they earned in profits.
Uh, no. The shareholders (many, many of which are WM employees, BTW) receive 7.5 cents per share. This is the dividend paid out to stockholders. The rest of that money is plowed back into the company to help insure its survivability and prepare for future growth.
What claim? That a person can go find another job?
Okay, so, we’ve established that the shareholder’s dividend is considerably less than the net profit of the company, so under your scenario we could send each employee a little over $1200 per year if we gave the dividend to them instead of shareholders. Yep, that’s going to change their lives. Also, keep in mind that most WM employees are already shareholders. Whether the company is a workers’ collective or not, the rest of the profits must be folded back into the company. Actually, this points out a primary flaw in your little utopia. If it was truly up to the workers to decide what to do with the entire net profits, they would likely do just what you suggest and divide amongst themselves, leading to the inevitable demise of the company and the loss of 1 million jobs. Hmmm.
Further, the last time I checked my age would award me more respect than being referred to as ‘son’. Attack my words and not me, if you would be so kind.
(In response to my suggestion that stock companies are run democratically as a matter of current managerial praxis):
The idea is that a similar decision-making set-up could be employed (as just one of a number of possibilities), even if the executives and managers were elected by workers, rather than stockholders. I am a member of a private educational institution here, for example, that works on precisely this principle.
For the purposes of our thought experiment, then, imagine that the employees were granted control of the given company.
I wasn’t very clear on this point, but I was speaking hypothetically. I was suggesting that you imagine how the company would function if, rather than being owned by stockholders, it was owned by the workers themselves. I’ve not gotten to the point of suggesting a revolutionary program – at least not yet.
Ah. This is an important point, and touches upon a theme that has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread.
Apologists for the current system of capitalism generally defend its principles by presenting moral justifications for the extraction of profit. The two most commonly used of these justifications are hard work and risk. There is merit, in fact, to both of them. Taking the first: someone who starts small, sacrifices, dedicates his/her waking hours to building up a successful business, and works hard at it, is clearly justified in reaping the rewards of his/her efforts. This is the basis of capitalism’s work ethic. The problem with this line of reasoning is that there are very many people in the world who work hard, and gain nothing for it; and many more people in the world don’t even have a chance to break out of the cycle of poverty at all. I argue that this kind of poverty is a necessary outcome of capitalism as well. If my argument is correct, it implies that the ethic of capitalism also presupposes a privileged position in the world economy as a necessary component of economic success. In other words, hard work combined with economic privilege can lead to success; but without the latter, the former will get you nowhere.
The question of risk is trickier. Certainly, someone who risks money on a venture should be compensated for it if the venture does well. However, to my mind, risk is the weaker of the two arguments; it’s the equivalent of saying, ”When someone wins on the slots, they ’deserve’ that money for all the risks they’ve taken.” Hardly a sufficient justification for the world economy, methinks. This is complicated by the nature of the risk taken: was it your last 1000$, or just some pocket change? This really cuts to the bone of the issue, in my opinion, because the fundamental question at stake is: who has a the capital necessary to invest in such risks? Not the poor of the world, at any rate, most of whom barely have bread for the day.*
Let us say for the sake of argument that you invest in a company that makes shoes, and it turns out that part of their profits derive from the fact that they employ underage children in China at 40 cents a day to sew the seams. Do you feel they are being ”suitably compensated” for contributing to your wealth?
*If, that is, he/she ever has the resources to make such a bid.
It’s my experience that such negotiation are often hostile. Certainly, historically, they were violent confrontations. These days, in the developing world, labor union organizers are harassed, beaten, or killed. They’re often labeled socialist, or communist, and done away with. There is a low-level war occurring to keep workers from organizing, in an environment where the amenities of civil society are far less well developed than our own.
Regarding Ben and Jerry’s: I stand corrected. Thanks.
Gotcha, boss. Stricker:
Possibly a problem, but I see ways around that as well. For example, start-ups could be structured such that the originators of the company are guaranteed a somewhat larger slice of the pie that the next tier of workers, on something like a stock-option principle: workers would be paid from company profits, and the better the company earned, the higher their salaries would rise. I’m not against income differentials at all, as long as the needs of the society as a whole are met first – and in contrast to Chumpsky, my attitude towards wage-labor is not as negative, provided that the wages are relatively comfortable (Not that that’s particularly relevant; I just mention it in passing.).
No worries, mate.
flex:
That, on the other hand, is entirely possible. Must one have a Ph.D. in Business Economics to participate in the discussion? (By the way, apology accepted).
*My figures were based on the quote of 2 billion in profits from the latest quarter, assuming that WM continues selling at that volume: it ought to be around 8 billion this year. They are reporting a constant growth at above 10%.
*Stop beating that dead straw horse. I never claimed otherwise, as is abundantly clear from your own citation, above.
I don’t know where you got this figure, but I’ll take your word for it.
*No. This claim:
”Also, it should be pointed out that Wal Mart has made more millionares out of their “poor workers” than any other company (perhaps other than Microsoft).”
Assuming a profit of 6, rather than 8, billion – damn straight. Who are you to so snidely and off-handedly dismiss that assertion?
At $7.50 an hour, the average WM employee earns $1200 dollars a month (40 hour work week). An extra $1200 is the equivalent of an extra month of wages per year, and I’d bet a lot of single mothers could use the income.
Yeah – I guess we workers are just, like real, real stupid, D’oh. Good thing for us we have these super-intelligent stockholders around to make sharp business decision in our interest for us. Sparc:
Regarding ”first water:” I’ve heard the phrase before, of course, but never seen it used in such a context.
*Seeing as how it’s difficult to judge a person’s age on a message board, I was forced to respond to my perception of the poster’s level of maturity. Perhaps, if you were to refrain from accusing others of spreading ”socialist agitprop bullshit,” or (even worse) of being Social Democrats, you would find that your debating opponents addressed you more decorously?
In a previous post, you said: “Wal-Mart has approximately 1 million employees. It would be completely astounding to learn that they earned more profit than they paid in wages…”
I mis-read that to be the reverse. I guess I get to apologize again. :smack: Geez, twice in one message!
Also, the dividend number of 7.5 cents is widely available. Do you want a cite for that?
I read that at one time - still trying to dig up the cite. I do believe it’s accurate.
Well, I suppose anyone could use an extra month’s income. I still don’t think one month’s income has that much impact on someone’s standard of living. You have to understand that the dividend is currently going to people who need that income also. Perhaps that senior citizen living off dividends from the stock portfolio painfully built over a lifetime of hard work is slightly better off than the WM single mother, but I think our seniors need a living wage too.
Well, good for you. Have any capitalist goons shown up to shut you down? The beauty of the combination of capitalism and democracy is that whatever works, works. If your institution is able to sustain itself and operate within the law, you’re fairly free of governmental interference. Socialist and communist sytems, however, inevitibly have massive governmental interference, if you dare to step out of line.
You can create as many thought experiments as you like, but all I have to do is walk 50 feet from my front door to the corner store; a small business owned and operated by an Asian couple (I think they’re Chinese). There are hundreds of thousands of similar examples all over North America; small businesses where the owner is also an employee (sometimes the only one). A law or medical practice (or any other form of legal partnership) also has owner/worker(s). Cooperatives exist that buy and sell products. Capitalism has no problem accomodating all of these business models.
I don’t understand your use of the word “granted” and more than I understood your use of “transferred”. If a group of people want to form a company and work there, there is no mechanism in capitalism to stop them. They might even be wildly successful. Eventually, though, some of those owner/workers may decide to work elsewhere or retire. You seem to be suggesting that their equity should be summarily confiscated and reassigned, and that’s something I can’t support because it makes no sense.
In any event, a worker who wants ownership can either buy shares, or form his own company. If he chooses the latter, the company should be his and his alone until he sells it (or part of it) voluntarily. If he offers to pay workers for their weekly services, and they accept, I don’t see why the owner should be compelled to give up his ownership to them. He may want to, eventually, as a means of encouraging employee loyalty and productivity, but when you say “granted” and “transferred”, I get no indication of a voluntary act. It sounds suspiciously like a seizure.
Well, good, but at least try to see the consquences of your recommendations. It’s perfectly okay to say it would be ideal if workers owned their businesses, but if you’re going to suggest some method other than:
[ul][li]Employees create the company and retain ownership[/li][li]Employees legally buy a controlling share of company stock[/li][li]Employees inherit control or are otherwise given control as a voluntary act of the owner(s)[/li][li]Employees win a major court judgement against their company (i.e. they’ve been injured in some way) and receive ownership in lieu of cash[/ul][/li]…you’re advocating confiscation. If there’s a fifth way for workers to get control of a company without having it arbitrarily seized from the legal owners, I’d be curious to find out what it is. Capitalism is already pretty accepting of worker/owners. I see no reason to modify the system to create something that already exists.
Looking at the histories of “revolutionary programs”, which you are not (yet, heh-heh) suggesting shows a pattern of brutality, corruption and starvation. Thought I accept claims that American capitalism is occasionally brutal and corrupt, I’ve yet to hear any evidence of millions of deaths through starvation or murder. When you do get around to suggesting a revolutionary program, try not to kill too many people, please. It looks bad on your permanent record.
Minor note: I’m not an “apologist” for capitalism. I’m a happy proponent of its virtues and while I acknowledge its weaknesses, they pale compared to the brutality of large-scale implementations of communism we saw in the last century.
I’m sorry, were you under the impression that life was fair? Certainly working hard is no gaurantee of success. Nothing is a gaurantee of success. Keeping citizens from starving to death is fairly easy for a wealthy capitalist society that has some form of taxation and social programs. If this represents 90% capitalism (100% being complete Laissez-Faire), it still is demonstrably the system that allows hard-working individuals the best chance (never gauranteed) of improving their lot while making sure everyone has a large degree of personal freedom and basic subsistance. If there’s a system that can gaurantee no failures, freedom and subsistence, I’ve yet to hear about it.
Sweden went to an extreme, creating social programs that were elaborate and comprehensive but they went too far and were forced to scale back when the wealthier members of their society realized they were being played for saps. Fortunately, they were free to complain about it and the social programs were scaled back before the most productive members decided to simply leave.
You’re equating investment with purely random chance? Methinks you’re not thinking, and this doesn’t make me sanguine about your other statements on economics. Buying 1000 shares of IBM is certainly not comparable to buying a similar number of lottery tickets. You’re attempting to disparage capitalism by dismissing it all as luck. There is an element of luck, but claiming this comprises the entirety of capitalism only demonstrates your ignorance of the subject. We’ve mentioned zero-sum games in this thead. Gambling is a zero-sum game, but capitalism is not. Therefore, capitalism is not the same as gambing.
Without the initial $1000 investment, this hypothetical successful company would simply not exist. How is that a benefit to society? How would the inventor be earning a living at all? Do you believe that simply having an idea should entitle an inventor to government money, which originally is just tax money? That’s the worst idea of all.
Maybe the inventor gets the money from magic elves who don’t need a return on their investment. Yeah, that’s it, elves.
Is $1000 any less objectively valuable in the hands of a rich person than in a poorer person? If to start a business I need an investor to give me $1000, should it make any difference if to me what other assets the investor has?
At heart of these kinds of arguments is the vague impression that being wealthy is somehow immoral. The argument is stupid and without foundation.
You should really stay away from starvation imagery. Communism has a far worse record than capitalism in that department.
Sure, there are poor people. There always have been. What’s your point? I’m not sure how dismantling capitalism is going to help the poor person. If anything, by causing wealth to collapse, there will be reduced production and taxation and less “surplus” wealth to be distributed in the form of social programs.
Are there any other opportunities in her country to make even that much money? If there are, why doesn’t she pursue them? Could it be because China is so screwed up that she has no better chance of making any money at all? If you’re blaming the economic mismanagement of China on capitalism, it’s a leap of Olympian quality. Your complaint should be with the Chinese government for not seeing to the needs of its citizens.
In fact, I don’t feel guilty about foreign sweatshops, because such sweatshops existed here in Canada only decades ago, and it follows that the best way to eliminate such places is to allow economic growth and freedom. It may take a long time, of course, but I don’t see you offering a viable alternative. Demanding that sweatshops all be closed will lead to increased poverty and hunger, not utopia.
So, I should give away my equity if they can pay for it, and I should give away my equity if they can’t pay for it? Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Sure, there were goons employed by management to keep workers from organizing. Such goons still exists, but there are now a low fewer of them, because they are far less useful. Modern labour negotiations can take place among lawyers in tidy offices. The conflict between labour and management still exists, of course, but it’s far less likely to involve somebody getting his legs broken. If anything, I consider this improvement a success. Walmart may be resisting unionization, but have any blue-vested goons been sent to anyone’s house to “talk”? Instead, they choose to discourage unions in a legal nonviolent manner. That runs counter to all the sweaty-palmed paranoid bullshit that is being written about capitalism in this thread.
As for countries “where the amenities of civil society are far less well developed than our own”, I don’t see how that is a failing of capitalism. They sound more like failures in democracy, or countries that never embraced democracy. Democracy and capitalism go together beautifully because they represent the systems that offer the greatest individual political freedom and the greatest individual economic freedom. Ultimately, it sounds like you want people to have personal freedom to express themselves, but not personal freedom to own property, because you feel they don’t know how to use it morally.
Trying to take power from individuals for their own good is a tricky, violent, ugly business. Frankly, anyone who tries to take away my control over my own life is going to find me making the transition as tricky, violent and ugly as possible.
So what is then the optimal model You can agree on?
What should the role of the government be?
etc.
I can’t see that we discuss one -ism at a time. But also to discuss many -isms seem to come to a yes-no-yes-no discussion.
If someone could tell me, in this thread or another, where is capitalism going?
As I said before: Socialism was never anywhere, so it is quite impossible to discuss where it has gone.
Because of this:
I would like to see if You have any ideas about, let’s say, how should a firm work with less than 50 workers?
I put my ideas quite shortly:
the owner owns, but can naturally “sell” some shares against e.g. good inventions and proposals. I am very critical to a system where the worker gets one-time bonus. (More about this later if someone is interested).
the workers should have a board where they can discuss everything with the owners and those that are in charge.
This does not give any actual power to the workers, but if the owners are not stupid, they would listen to the “floor”.
In competition questions, with huge companies “that just can any day eat up the small guy”, something should be done. I can give You examples on this.
The big international companies can work on a international level that should be labeled “criminal”. The money has no fatherland.
Many times small-business guys believes that they have something in common with the big business. And defend whatever till the bitter end. They are just common fools.
All workers should be insured by the company.
Because, if we are not talking about a completely “free” capitalism, like the Russian robber-capitalism is now, we have some restrictions and laws that bounds us. For a small business this means that the owner should be capable in book-keeping, a lawyer a tax-specialist, a specialist in his own field.
I am not against that the government regulates, it has to, if we are not just in a very low capitalistic stage.
I mean, we need very well educated/trained specialists. Every ten years or faster there is new professions and fields that we never heard about before => we become a education sociaty, and that costs, costs a lot, so obviously we need taxes.
Many people has been talking that we have grown to a education
sociaty. That is not true. This is just the beginning.
The gap between the need of specialists and what there is on the market is quite big.
And in many countries the education system is 10 - 50 years behind, or just crumbling (because every populist is for lower taxes).
The capitalism like it is now, if we think it as a system that needs no changes, versus the speeding society, gives somekind of non-real and non-secure feeling to most of us. Most of us does not seeem to have any idea that the world is changening.
Capitalism is the fastest (and most ruthless) to answer the new alterning demands. But unfortunately it answers with elite-privet-schools/universities etc., is going to ruin us in the long run.
Those that are the victims of the fast changes, all the times faster cycling reality, are centrifugated against the outern wall, with such a pressure that they can’t move. etc etc.
Capitalism is answering this with some kind of “let the blind help the blind over the street”, othervise the taxes will raise again. They are not killing directly, just looking the other way.
I think it was Chumpsky who wrote about how many people are dying in the capitalistic system, when we think that the whole world is a capitalistic system. Unfortunately he is right.
I do not believe that it is anything wrong with the free trade in itself, it is just that we are running it very badly.
The Mexican farmers can not compete with the prices of some US foodproducts even in their own market. Why? Because these products are subvented by the government.
When a muli-billion business is moving its factories to eg. China, there is not so much to do about it. And if it uses child labour in Indonesia, sweat-shops where-ever, we can boycott these products, but often You can be sued in court if You can not prove this or that and begun to publish something about boycotting.
In Middle-Europe the boycotting is a very powerful method to keep the companies on the right trail. e.g. the paper-industry.
To come back to the small business. I think that because there are regulations etc., the government should help “the little guy” to test his products, patent them, give advice about laws and regulations.
I know that this is a rant, but if someone is interested in discussing these questions, from a small business view, and put up an thread about this, I am more than interested to give specific examples.
Unfortunately I will be gone for 4 - 5 days. I have to go and look at the forests some 500 km away, so I can not reach a computer during that time.
Btw. It is not true that a firm has to pay taxes in Sweden if You are knowing the laws and do everything accordingly.
Naturally You pay taxes on Your personal income, as every worker in Your firm. And when the firm buys something for its production it has to pay VAT, and get’s it back from the next buyer in the chain.
If Your firm is paying taxes, You are doing something wrong.
In Finland, which system is very near the Swedish “socialistic” system, the pensioneers pays more income-taxes than all companies in Finland together.
But if You are a writer and not make a “Publishing Ltd”, well, what can I say: Fire Your book-keeper!!!
Well, I happen to live in Sweden, as you know. If, on the other hand, I was living in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Indonesia, or any of literally dozens of US client states, not only would my ”leftist” institute have been shut down, but I personally would risk torture or death for holding the opinions I have thus far expressed in this thread. The source of such risks would have been government-supported right-wing reactionaries who operate with impunity in these countries, supported in their turn, explicitly or implicitly, by the US. Yet these nations are regularly praised by the US gov’t., and the American press, as ”fledgling democracies” embracing the principles of the West, in the process of making their first tottering steps towards freedom.
Hear me out: I argue that one must see these issues in a broader perspective. When the US supports repressive regimes, it does so because such regimes are good for US-based business. Or to express it in another way: the business interests of transnational corporations have a greater influence on US foreign policies than do the needs of impoverished local populations in distant countries. Repressive regimes garner US support because they promote a political and economic climate that allows transnational businesses to operate with impunity – and this, in its turn, is the true face of Capitalism.
Regimes that lean to the left, or that promote principles like land reform (in Latin and South America), are almost uniformly subjected to brutal, and illegal, US interference. This interference is coupled with the forced implementation of draconian economic policies imposed upon developing nations by international financial institutions. The US government – in accordance with the so-called ”Washington consensus” – promotes a global economic order that is skewed in favor of the wealthy. The lending policies of the IMF and the World Bank have been a spectacular failure in promoting third-world economic development, but have been instrumental in safeguarding the fundamental requirements for multinational corporate operations. This is generally acknowledged by all but the most ideological and obtuse supporters of Neo-Liberalism.
To be honest, the situation is scarcely better here in the Core. The apparent freedoms we enjoy are a result of the fact that our opinions are relatively unthreatening. Honestly – who but a few fringe elements takes these ideas seriously? However, should those in power come to believe otherwise, I bet dollars to donuts they would not hesitate to crack down on us. Remember McCarthyism? Would you consider blacklisting an example of massive interference? How about Kent State?
These small shops were exactly the prototypes I had in mind. But I disagree with your claim that ”Capitalism has no problem accommodating all of these business models.”
But you have to understand, first off, that when I speak of Capitalism, I’m speaking of it as a social structure, such as was defined earlier in this thread. I get the feeling sometimes that you use the word ”capitalism” too loosely, as a kind of synonym for ”our happy-go-lucky modern world.” My claim is that other social/economic orders than Capitalism might be conceived of, such that also might effectively reduce or eliminate poverty. At the very least, considering such a possibility seems worthwhile, unless you are totally, 100% convinced that Capitalism is the final and complete solution to the challenge of survival here on Planet Earth.
The problem is not that Capitalism can’t, or doesn’t, ”accommodate” alternative business models. The problem is that such models seldom survive the onslaught of Capitalism. Consider the economic history of the last 100 years: small businesses, and small farms, have become an endangered species. The development of the capitalist system has led to a massive demographic shift towards employment in factories and large, internationally-run firms. It has only recently dawned on state planners in the Capitalist Core that the resilience of an advanced economy is in part dependent upon the existence of small entrepreneurial business ventures. This realization found expression in Sweden in a rush of state-sponsored support programs for small businesses and entrepreneurs (free consultancy, free ”start-your-own” courses, tax-relief and employment support for small start-ups, and so forth). It is a general matter of faith here that in the current economic climate such small businesses can hardly be launched, let alone survive, without some form of governmental aid, in the form of tax breaks and whatnot.
I have personal experience of this myself, as mentioned earlier, because I ran a small bookshop here for a while. In the best case scenario, such a shop would have to be niched into a very lucrative specialty market to survive: we had no chance when we tried to compete against the major chains here, who could make massive orders, sell very cheap, and who had the capital to sit on books for a while if they didn’t sell. On the other hand, if I failed to sell a large order, it could screw up the store’s economy for months afterwards. We were constantly teetering on bankruptcy, and since then, the store has in fact been forced to close.
So, getting back to your truism, ”Whatever works, works:” you betcha. But rather simplistic, really, don’t you think? If it was so easy, then why would we need any sort of political framework for the market at all? In fact, whatever works, works – but it doesn’t always lead to the best, or fairest, of all possible solutions.
*And how is equity reassigned when a member of the law firm decides to leave the partnership? Does he retain his equity in the firm, despite the fact that he has left it?
*Even if that worker is a 9-year-old Chinese girl who earns 40 cents a day? Groovy! What a fair and egalitarian system! Think about it – we can promote social justice, and get rich at the same time! It’s perfect!
If a worker is well-paid, and has excess capital after meeting the necessities of his/her existence, then this is a completely plausible scenario. But a single parent, with two children, working for WM at standard pay, comes home so poor at the end of the day that he/she qualifies for food stamps.
The underlying point is this: you can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you wish to defend the capitalist system, you must do so with the explicit recognition that it produces massive income disparities. This fact has been empirically demonstrated over and over again, even in this thread.
*First off, let me state for the record that I share your suspicions when it comes to revolutions, and so I don’t advocate violent seizure, as I keep trying to make clear. You seem to be trying to paint me into a corner, here. But clearly, there are other possibilities: involving oneself in the public discourse, promoting a particular world view, informing others of that view and its basis, public protest, mass movements, and so on. Think about it: how do major transformations normally occur in a democratic society?
*Permit me to observe that while you make this claim, you seem profoundly unaware of the weaknesses of a capitalist system, while defending its virtues in the strongest terms imaginable.
*Heh-heh.
This is a world economic system in which 24,000 people starve to death every day, while a teen-age Brittney Spears rakes in millions of dollars a year on the basis of her ability to shake her ass and chant ”Oh baby, baby,” in a seductive manner. It’s worse than brutal or corrupt; its absurd.
Bryan, your response is so extensive that I’m going to have to give up the point by point rebuttal – I simply don’t have enough time. Just a few quick final points, before I go:
Chortle. Hardly. Were you under the impression you were debating with a teenager?
No, wait. On second thought, don’t answer that question.
*A massive oversimplification, and completely false to boot. If anyone in Sweden is being played for a sap, it is the working class. I posted a detailed history of Sweden’s economic policies over the last 4 or 5 decades in this thread a few days ago; if you feel that is factually incorrect, please let me know, and we can discuss it.
*The point was to the moral justifications of capitalism, as you must surely understand. Go back and reread it. I don’t know where you get the notion that I ”disparage capitalism by dismissing it all as luck.” Apparently, I’ve failed to communicate my stance.
*No. Wealth is merely wealth; what matters is how the owner of that wealth utilizes it. And yes, if you have three houses in the Caymen’s already, and you choose to buy a fourth rather than to donate some of your excess to those less fortunate, I would call you immoral. On the other hand, I heard today that Bill Gates is donating 100 million dollars to fight the spread of aids in India. 100 million. Whatever else I might think about him and his rather unethical business practices, such an act can’t possibly be construed as immoral. More, more! I’ll buy Microsoft out the wazoo! And I’ll even feel good about it, because some of the money I spend for my own needs is redistributed to a good cause!
*No, this does not follow. Sweatshops disappeared in Canada, and the US, because working people united, formed unions, demanded salary increases and benefit packages, were often fired, locked-out, beaten up by Pinkertons, or otherwise harassed, and kept at it until they forced the owners of the means of production to give in to their demands. In the current global financial market, where capital is fluid but labor forces stationary, these options for labor no longer exist. I’m not at all convinced that the increasing wealth produced in developing countries will be funneled to the people working in those countries; historically, such wealth has been transferred from periphery to core. As noted in the article I linked to earlier:
**
I’ll try to return to a point by point rebuttal in the next few days, if I find the time.
These are indictments of fascism, not capitalism. A similar list could be made up of brutalities of left-wing thugs in Nicaragua and Cuba, and the massive killings in Cambodia by the ultra-communist Khmer Rouge outnumbers all the atrocities one could attribute indirectly to the Americans. We could trade atrocity statistics for months and all it would prove is that violence exists under all systems of government.
However, capitalism combined with democracy is clearly the best formula for creating relatively peaceful nations like Canada, the U.K., France, Australia and, yes, the Scandinavian countries. They all have slightly varying definitions of “democracy” and “capitalism”, of course, but in any case they all have stable governments, respected courts, and protections for individual rights. The U.S. remains violent mostly because of its gun culture (a whole other thread, if not five or six hundred threads, in itself) and it has played brutal games with smaller nations for decades, bu they were hardly the first to do so, even in Central and South America. The Spanish and Portugese had exploited the area for at least a century before the U.S. was even founded.
Of course the U.S. has done immoral and violent things, mostly rationalizing that it was the best way to stop Soviet aggression (and the Soviets were a pretty aggressive bunch), but the collapse of the USSR has allowed and hopefully will continue to allow genuine governmental reforms in these nations. Their lives still suck, but they suck somewhat less than they did 20 years ago.
It’s at best one face of capitalism, though admittedly it’s the ugliest. Corruption and manipulation are hardly new, nor are they restricted to capitalist countries.
I prefer not to live in fear that the oligarchs will come get me one day. McCarthy was more interested in power than wealth, as was Nixon. You can blame these incidents on failings of the American governmental system, but I don’t see how they could be twisted in critiques of capitalism.
We could sit here and calmly discuss some hypothetical Star Trek-like future where everyone has a replicator in his house and decide that this is better than capitalism. We could also discuss the effect magical faries would have, too. But among demonstrated economic systems, capitalism is clearly the one that invites the most creativity and personal freedom. You can tinker with it, of course, through regulation and taxation, but replacing it entirely with a system where private property is abolished will lead to the end of that society, not to the end of poverty.
Failure of a cooperative is not gauranteed; a casual google search for “oldest cooperative” finds many such organizations, some decades old. A cooperative is usually a very focussed organization, though, dedicated to a single service or product, and may be outdone by more flexible corporations. I fail to see a moral issue in this.
That’s damn tragic, but so what? Should the small bookstore have been kept afloat by government grants or by customers forced to make purchases there? The individual readers decided to buy at the big bookstore instead of the small one. That was their choice. I’d find taking that choice away to be more immoral than a bigger company outperforming you in the normal course of business.
Of course not. Duh! Communism supporters casually use the mantra “central planning” to assume a utopia where all decisions are made perfectly and everything will operate exactly as predicted. That’s simplistic. I just acknowledge that if a company can manage to meet its expenses and keep its staff, it should be able to continue indefinitely. It won’t operate perfectly, of course, but insisting on the best or fairest solutions holds capitalism to an unnecessarily high standard. In practice, it’s shown to offer acceptable compromises the most often. If a product is priced too high, fewer people will buy it, encouraging a price drop. Through trial-and-error, a workable middle ground is found, and this is done without require government interference in every decision.
I’m not sure, actually. I’ll have to look it up.
There you go again, assuming life has to be fair. Let’s say the evil sweatshop was burned to the ground, along with its greedy owners. How does that improve the lot of the 9 year-old girl?
No, the underlying point is this: capitalism can be vicious and unfair and a lousy system, but it’s less lousy than every other system that has been tried in the history of mankind. With some minor controls and regulations, it’s actually not all that bad.
Well, to hold up the Americans as an example, the fourth and fifth amendments to their constitution explicitly limit their government’s ability to seize private property. Further amendments could be added to change this, but it would take a pretty massive effort.
Youv’e painted yourself into a corner by hinting that seizures can occur but no-one will be hurt by them. Instead of talking about “granting” or “transfering” ownership to workers, I suggest you consider that the same action can involve “confiscating” or “seizing” ownership from owners.
I am very aware of the weaknesses, but also that that the weaknesses of every other system can be a hell of a lot worse.
Absurd or not, it represents millions of people making their individual choices. Many dont buy the Britney albums (including me), but many do. Are you suggesting the choice should be taken away because it strikes you as “absurd”?
Why, that would be absurd.
I’m responding to the anecdote you posted about Astrid Lindgren, who realized that though she was happy to pay taxes to support Sweden’s social programs, the rate of taxation had gotten absurdly high, to the point where it exceeded her annual income. She pointed this out to her large audience and brought down a government. This is derived from the text you posted. If my post was a massive oversimplification, then so was yours.
[quote]
Wealth is merely wealth; what matters is how the owner of that wealth utilizes it. And yes, if you have three houses in the Caymen’s already, and you choose to buy a fourth rather than to donate some of your excess to those less fortunate, I would call you immoral.
[quote]
Different opinions, then. The act of buying a fourth house strikes me as morally neutral. Actually, I find getting sanctimonious about how someone else spends their money to be questionable. I wouldn’t care for someone’s sanctimony about how I spent my money, after all.
Goons are always cheap, but the active resistance made them too much trouble to use and increasing standards of living made them largely irrelevant. I cheerfully acknowledge the bravery of labour leaders in the thirties (though some of them were goons, too) but unions didn’t get rid of sweatshops all by themselves. Improving educational standards and mechanization helped a lot, too.
