# On the Many Failings of Capitalism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 15, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911 "2015-01-15T17:51:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/281 "2015-01-29T18:20:18Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I am not suggesting Obama will personally be in possession of as much money as Bill Gates, but pointing out that saying this makes him poorer than the top dog of a dictatorship is kind of silly. Obama will not be, in any sensible way, worse off than Robert Mugabe, Vladimir Putin or any other dictator. Beyond a certain level of material wealth, the marginal utility of additional dollars begins to approach zero. That’s why Bill Gates is happy to give away billions. The money doesn’t serve him any purpose anymore except to give him the satisfaction of giving it to people to whom it does make a difference. > > Barack Obama is already a millionaire, after all, and stands to make money at a rate that means he can enjoy material wealth to about the limit of a human’s ability to be materially wealthy. In no meaningful way will he be less wealthy than anyone else. This is really an important consideration about capitalism. Capital is empowering, from the power to buy lunch, to the power to buy a car, to own some land, to bribe the mayor, etc. There is some sort of vague threshold, probably currently between five and ten million net worth, where acquiring more wealth is not useful to the individual’s personal comfort but becomes a means to assert influence/power over others. Even if the US were to institute campaign finance reform, the effects of large aggregations of wealth/capital will only be superficially attenuated. And there is at least one aspect of wrongness to this situation. Thousands of businesses fail every year, a few last five or ten years, a tiny fraction expand beyond their first location. It is not always entirely obvious why one business succeeds wildly when another or another dozen similar ones slog along or collapse. The one factor that can be consistently teased out of the picture is luck, and it should be pretty self-evident, since a whole lot of wealth is known as a “fortune”. So, the country, any given country, is controlled or run by the really rich guys, and the rich guys got there by hitting the jackpot (not matter how much effort may have been involved, the luck of the draw cannot be ignored), so basically the people are accepting rule by a bunch of gamblers. I doubt very much that this is a good thing. It would make sense to put upper limits on individual aggregations of wealth/capital, in order to keep the running of the country as clearly visible and above board as possible. Yet, of course, there also has to be some kind of balance, to keep the government itself from fully replacing the tycoons and robber barons with itself. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/282 "2015-01-29T18:41:44Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > And there is at least one aspect of wrongness to this situation. Thousands of businesses fail every year, a few last five or ten years, a tiny fraction expand beyond their first location. It is not always entirely obvious why one business succeeds wildly when another or another dozen similar ones slog along or collapse. The one factor that can be consistently teased out of the picture is luck, and it should be pretty self-evident, since a whole lot of wealth is known as a “fortune”. The coincidence between two meanings of “fortune” is not a basis for sound analysis of economics and sociology. English has many words that have contradictory or unrelated meanings, and words change meaning entirely over time. In truth, most businesses that succeed do so because they deserve to, and most fail do so because they deserve to. There are elements of luck in all of life, but like any other area of skill, business is not simply a matter of blind luck. I agree, though, that there is room to ensure oligarchs don’t rule through the use of capital without taking away the highly valuable incentive to build riches. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/283 "2015-01-29T18:44:15Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > In the case of the Vietnamese and Chinese, it is quite specifically a step up from communism and, for the Vietnamese, the colonialism that preceded it. Vietnam has seen incomes rise and absolute poverty decline as a result of economic reforms aimed towards more liberalism, free markets, and international trade. China’s story is essentially the same. Sure, if you rather arbitrarily say, let’s compare 1980 with 2010. Why not? The same would probably have been true if you compared Russia in 1930 and in 1960–and, of course, whatever state China’s economy was in at the beginning of Mao’s rule was itself a function of its dependent position in a capitalist world system. Liberalism, free markets, and international trades are the flip side of the Opium Wars, Boxer Rebellion beat-down, Hong Kong lease, and other imperialist depredations, after all. That’s not to say that China would have been better off under the Empire: it’s just to say that whatever position Mao started out with is already deeply influenced by capitalism. > [@](#): > > You don’t have to go back centuries to feudal times. The improvement in people’s lot in life in those countries is within the living memory of people now, and is directly connected to international trade and allowing the markets some freedom to work on their own. You do if you want to understand capitalism–understand, rather than merely look selectively at the past 30 years and say: hey, it’s doing a good job now. China is industrializing at break-neck pace because it ultimately has to in a capitalist world-system, and in so doing, it’s not just (perhaps) bettering (we’d have to go for more than just income here) the lives of its citizens; just for starters, a look at Beijing’s air pollution or the various ecological disaster perpetrated through river damming hints at the costs of capitalist growth–costs that in richer countries regulation might prevent, but which China must bear to catch up. > [@](#): > > 1. Who said it’ll get better “soon”? > 2. If we eliminate the “soon” bit, why are these statements contradictory? If we eliminate the soon bit, what do we replace it with? And they’re not contradictory, I don’t think. I’d just much point out the former than merely trust that the latter will eventually come true. > [@](#): > > Of course it’s terrible that people are poor. It is also apparently true that liberalization of economic policy, free markets, international trade and the like reduce poverty. It’s very bad that people are poor, so why not try the best possible solution for fixing that? Exactly! Though you and I obviously differ on what the best possible solution for that is…:). Is that an “apparently”=“obviously” or an “apparently”=“it seems to be the case”? > [@](#): > > People in Vietnam were, until the late 1980s, about as poor as people can be. Now they’re not. They’re still very poor, and the country, being a mix of Communist dictatorship and control and free markets, still has a lot of structural problems with its economy. But being goggled-eyed at the fact they aren’t living the high life is like being surprised people in England in 1830 weren’t as wealthy as they are now. As Hellestal points out, true economic growth is a succession of small, marginal improvements that happen by the millions, over and over again. > > There is no shortcut to solving a severe problem. There’s no solution to the problem under capitalism. We can trade pithy one-liners all day, really. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/284 "2015-01-29T18:56:08Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > This is really an important consideration about capitalism. Capital is empowering, from the power to buy lunch, to the power to buy a car, to own some land, to bribe the mayor, etc. There is some sort of vague threshold, probably currently between five and ten million net worth, where acquiring more wealth is not useful to the individual’s personal comfort but becomes a means to assert influence/power over others. Even if the US were to institute campaign finance reform, the effects of large aggregations of wealth/capital will only be superficially attenuated. I was mulling this thread over on the way from work and came up with what **eschereal** is saying, too: one first step on the way to socialism might indeed by to simply limit (world-wide, obviously) the possibility of accumulation. To whatever amount, really–fifty million, if need be, or a hundred, it’ll still be a good first step. Because the analysis is correct: money will seek investments, and if it can’t really meaningfully buy “nice” things (there’s only so many gold-fauceted yachts a person can own), it’ll will out other ways. There’s probably a neat Marxist interpretation of CitizensUnited v. FEC in here. ---
**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:** [January 29, 2015, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/285 "2015-01-29T20:32:53Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > I had understood that the top apparatchiks had a standard of living much lower than that of an American or European CEO. So, cite? > > Sure, US Presidents are paid squat, both by US corporate standards and by the standards of the heads of states of other countries. But that’s neither here nor there. It is pretty much true for government officials up and down the line. I have a friend who was treasurer of a major state. The best thing that ever happened to him was when his boss got voted out. He got a much less stressful job making oodles of money without a tenth of the responsibility he had before. You can usually see people complaining about the high salaries of government officials controlling massive budgets, budgets that in industry would get them paid many times as much. It’s a shame that so many who take such jobs are rich, or get richer when they leave, but not surprising. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2015, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/286 "2015-01-29T21:13:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So – does Marxist theory fall apart if you subtract the labor theory of value from it? That’s a difficult question, because there’s a lot of Marxist theory. Some Marxists believe one can do without it, largely owing to what they believed were successful neoclassical challenges to the idea. I personally would hold, and argue that Marx would agree, that you cannot take the labor theory of value out of Marx’s analysis of capitalism. If you’re interested, I think _[The Value Controversy](http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a1_t1_1&qi=EnUC9HztgOwRCsWqjp0GKYU2uFo_1422565906_1:661:2473&bq=author%3Dian%2520steedman%26title%3Dvalue%2520controversy)_ gives a decent overview of a variety of arguments, including non-labor theory of value Marxist points of view. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/287 "2015-01-30T02:40:48Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > Sure, if you rather arbitrarily say, let’s compare 1980 with 2010. It wasn’t “arbitrary” at all. Vietnam began to liberalize its economy in 1986. > [@](#): > > Liberalism, free markets, and international trades are the flip side of the Opium Wars, Boxer Rebellion beat-down, Hong Kong lease, and other imperialist depredations, after all. Wait, you’re holding up HONG KONG as a bad example? I know it might be tough to accept the fact that countries that embrace international trade become better off, but it remains true, and we have example after example after example. Capitalism is part of the solution. You also need a government strong enough to keep the peace and liberal enough to give people freedom to get the most you can out of it, but there it is. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/288 "2015-01-30T03:01:32Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > I was mulling this thread over on the way from work and came up with what **eschereal** is saying, too: one first step on the way to socialism might indeed by to simply limit (world-wide, obviously) the possibility of accumulation. To whatever amount, really–fifty million, if need be, or a hundred, it’ll still be a good first step. Because the analysis is correct: money will seek investments, and if it can’t really meaningfully buy “nice” things (there’s only so many gold-fauceted yachts a person can own), it’ll will out other ways. There’s probably a neat Marxist interpretation of CitizensUnited v. FEC in here. Do you seriously believe you will be able to take trillions of dollars of wealth peacefully? And who could possibly administer such a bounty without being utterly corrupted? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/289 "2015-01-30T03:29:19Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#): > > Do you seriously believe you will be able to take trillions of dollars of wealth peacefully? And who could possibly administer such a bounty without being utterly corrupted? It has happened before. A small number of wealthy landowners in Hawaii, for instance, used to own pretty much the whole of the land. The great estates were broken up, gradually, and peacefully. (Although land ownership there is still more centralized than in most other states.) The bounty doesn’t have to be administrated centrally; if it is dispersed to other social classes, it pretty much takes care of itself. (A market solution!) ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/290 "2015-01-30T03:38:26Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > When? In 1700, when most of them were subsistence farmers, probably obligated to feudal overlords? You’re quite right that for most people, capitalism is a step up from feudalism. But I don’t suppose your argument is: yes, things could be better for them yet (if capitalist economies did not require companies to seek to pay the absolute minimum that they can get away with, for example), but at least they’re not being owned by some baron or other? Mao died in 1976. They began real market reforms soon after. It hardly needs to be said what the Chinese have accomplished since. Their current prosperity is greater than it’s ever been. Bangladesh achieved independence in the 1970s. Their agricultural policies after independence were import restrictions, price controls, and government ownership over inputs like fertilizer. All for the greater good, of course. After independence from Pakistan in 1971, the famine of 1974 probably killed over a million. It’s hard to lay blame direct for that, since their government was so new, but not a good start. Starting in the 1980s, and continuing into the 90s, the Bangladeshis began liberalizing their markets. Imports were allowed. Price controls were relaxed. The evolutionary process of adaptation to circumstances started to develop, and agricultural output rose to the point where they became a net exporter of rice. Even during years of bad crops, the connection with world markets allows imports. With Chinese wages high enough now to lose competitivity on the most labor-intensive industries, Bangladesh has moved in. The increased productivity from stronger industries like textiles gives them the international reserves to afford these sorts of imports. The Bangladeshis recently succeeded in surpassing a per capita income of 1000 dollars per person for the first time ever. Their current prosperity is greater than it’s ever been. Vietnam after independence followed a similar route to China. They abandoned the strictest tenets of their notionally communist regime and began liberal market reforms. The story might be getting boring by this point, but the story doesn’t change. Their current prosperity is greater than it’s ever been. I notice that in a new post you write about “arbitrary” dates. The New Oxford American defines arbitrary as _based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system_. But of course, there is a **very specific reason** for picking the dates above. It’s not random. It’s the specific dates when they started to reform their economies in exactly the ways that mainstream economists recommend. When we study economic growth carefully, we can see that there are features in common. No country is perfect, but some get closer to the ideal. This is the first time, literally ever, when these countries have have been willing to respect a relatively strong form of abstract property rights – meaning paper claims on large amounts of resources within the country, enforced by law – along with allowing relatively freer trade with the rest of the world, and also allowing individuals to pursue their own gains with markets within that stronger legal system. It’s easy to list violations of basic principles. They occur in every country. There is no market utopia, nor do I think there could be, nor does the vast majority of economists think there could be. There is a spectrum. What we’re talking about is finding the right place on the spectrum. What matters is how many violations there are, and how severe they are. China, for instance, doesn’t actually have a particularly free market from many perspectives. They’re not on a good place on the spectrum. But they began the 1970s at a malevolent extreme of the spectrum, the economic equivalent of striking one’s own skull with a hammer repeatedly. They have moved away from that malevolent extreme. They are no longer striking their own skull with a hammer repeatedly. That’s good. They’re moving in the right way. And presto: forty years later, they should have the biggest economy in the world (maybe in about 5 years by PPP measurements). But they won’t reach US levels of per capita income without stronger reforms and more decades of discipline. For another example, Venezuela has been moving in the other direction – your chosen direction – of confiscating the property of people deemed unworthy by the state. Venezuela’s economy is pretty much fucked right now. There is no mystery about this. They’re moving the wrong way. It’s a gestalt, it’s not about cherry-picking individual policies. It’s not about pointing at South Korea and saying _they do this so this is okay_. It’s probably not okay. But if everything else is in place, it’s a small piece of the puzzle. We can point to broad differences in the legal systems of countries, and point out the shortcomings of the poor and stagnant compared to the institutions of the successful and growing. This approach has the advantage of nuance. When something works better, we can point to specific reasons why it works better. These reasons involve relatively strong abstract property rights, relatively free trade, and market systems that allow people to work hard for their own gain. This is the stuff that leads to a stronger, better trend in growth. Over time, growth adds up. > [@Enterprise](#): > > It’s perpetually fascinating to me that Mao and Stalin can come up everytime somebody says, listen, capitalism might not be the be-all and end-all of economic systems, but the depredations of capitalism are handwaived away (imperialism? oh, that’s politics! it’s nothing to do with economic systems; colonialism? ditto!; war? no, no, that’s not the system, that’s something else entirely; [famines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1770)killing millions a century before Stalin was even born? Hardly capitalism’s fault, eh?). Now, you might not be meaning to say that: but if you are willing to accept that capitalism kills just as easily as Communism, then please refrain from bringing up Stalin and Mao as though they stood easily for the necessary consequences of Communism–or worse, as thought they stood for socialism at large. If you’d asked any of those people if they were exploiting, and murdering, and mal-administrating their colonial regions in the name of “capitalism”, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about. The ideology wasn’t a driver for the brutality, because the ideology didn’t exist. The communist states couldn’t say the same thing, since the _explicit purpose_ of those countries was to create their ideal of communism. The explicit purpose of early colonization was the same as every earlier period in history: to extract wealth from foreigners with violence. People with powerful weapons were doing what people with powerful weapons always had done. They wanted wealth, so they used violence in an attempt to extract it from others. There is not yet anything new to see here. Here’s a funny thing about words. When we want to apply a label to something, it helps to apply the label to interesting features that _distinguish_ it from other things, rather than applying new labels to old trends. For the majority of history, the way to become wealthy was to target an outgroup, use violence against them, and then extract what they had for the ingroup’s benefit. This is how Rome worked, this is how the Mongols worked, this is how feudalism worked, and of course this list could continue indefinitely. The best (and really only) way to accumulate massive wealth was to take it forcibly from the outgroup. Other folks had the goods, and to become “wealthy” meant to invade, sack their cities, murder and enslave their people, take their stuff, and have a nice parade back home when you got back. This is history. Eventually a group of European countries became buff, more powerful than others. And what did they do? _Exactly the same thing that they had been doing before._ We have no distinguishing feature yet. If you apply one of your favorite pejorative labels right now in lieu of an actual argument, you’re applying that new label to identical behavior. When they talked about what they wanted to accomplish, they gave the same answers that their predecessors had: wealth and power for their ingroup. Nothing had changed. They claimed that their violence abroad would lead to prosperity back home. Now here’s one of the really interesting questions of history. _When did warfare and violent imperialism start becoming a net liability for a nation, rather than a benefit?_ This is finally our distinguishing feature. The beginnings of proto-capitalism marked the new era when warfare and “exploitation” of foreigners was completely stupid, from the perspective of the home society. The colonial leaders themselves gained, but at their mother country’s expense. The capitalist era was the first, ever, when the smartest political decision was to put the guns away and open up the accounting ledgers. That’s a brand new era of history that had never been seen before. This is what deserves the label. I’m hardly the first to notice this. [Adam Smith](http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN18.html#B.IV,%20Ch.8,%20Conclusion%20of%20the%20Mercantile%20System): “A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers all the goods with which these could supply them… The interest of this debt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinary profit which it ever could be pretended was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value of that trade, or than the whole value of the goods which at an average have been annually exported to the colonies.” [David Ricardo](http://www.econlib.org/library/Ricardo/ricP6.html#Ch.25,%20On%20Colonial%20Trade): “Adam Smith, in his observations on colonial trade, has shewn, most satisfactorily, the advantages of a free trade, and the injustice suffered by colonies, in being prevented by their mother countries, from selling their produce at the dearest market, and buying their manufactures and stores at the cheapest. He has shewn, that by permitting every country freely to exchange the produce of its industry when and where it pleases, the best distribution of the labour of the world will be effected, and the greatest abundance of the necessaries and enjoyments of human life will be secured.” For a French example, [Bastiat](http://bastiat.org/en/electors_1846.html): “To me it is a proven fact, and I venture to say a scientifically proven fact, that the colonial system is the most disastrous illusion ever to have led nations astray.” From the very beginning of the modern discipline, the people who have studied economics have been weighing in against the stupidities of their imperialistic governments. Even when economists are united in opinion, people don’t listen. It took a long damn time to win this argument. In all that arguing, it was never the logic of “capitalism” that had changed. What was required then, as now, was a better understanding of how the system works best for prosperity. Violence, so favored by human beings, became counterproductive. But then, as now, people didn’t readily listen. They were still trying to follow the rules of the old historical system where Caesar can go off and conquer Gaul and bring glory to Rome. People are still tempted to do the same thing today. Something atavistic inside our heads, maybe. Something genetic we can’t shake off. Once again, the trend is at least in the right direction. Violence per capita is less now than it has ever been before. If you want to apply a new label to something, you do so for its interesting new features. That people harm each other is as old as Cain and Abel. The new feature of the new market system was how stupid it was to do this and expect for the nation to profit. That was the actual historical shift of capitalism. > [@Enterprise](#): > > Richer as measured how? It’s a serious question. It’s richer, wealthier, according to all of the common definitions we’ve already seen here. They produce more commodities. They consume more output of both goods and services. They save more. The people voluntarily depart the subsistence countryside for opportunities of higher wages in the city. The people who remain receive higher wages from the same work they were doing before. Across essentially every definition of wealth listed in this thread, they are wealthier. They have better homes, a more stable supply of food, more tools, more toys, and a bigger buffer against the future. Their lives aren’t perfect. They are still extremely poor by developed-world standards, and hell, our lives ain’t perfect either. But that gap is closing. > [@Enterprise](#): > > Well, I’m one of those people who’d much rather say it’s terrible that they are poor than to say, I’m absolutely sure it’ll get well soon. That’s certainly right. Nobody in this thread has said “it’ll get well soon”. Nobody has implied it, nobody has asserted it, nobody has said anything even remotely like that. My explicit point was exactly the opposite, that there is no magic switch that can make this process finished soon. The current system is _quicker_ than anything else we’ve seen. Quicker is a relative term. It’s got that -er suffix at the end of it. _Quicker_ doesn’t mean _quick_. It merely indicates that compared to everything else we have to compare it to, it’s the one with the highest velocity. 10% is terribly slow, but it’s also a record-breaking growth rate. It’s the fastest tortoise in the race. It’s the only tortoise in the race. The worst levels of poverty are being reduced at a rate worldwide that has never been seen before in history. That’s still painfully slow, but it’s what we have. > [@Enterprise](#): > > Why are those businesses in Bangladesh or China or Myanmar or Malaysia? Not because they aim to improve working conditions, but because labor there, whatever its local conditions, is cheaper than labor in the U.S. …Poverty is being reduced worldwide at a rate never before seen on this earth, and you have to comment about their fucking _intentions_? Seriously? They could be burning wooden effigies of Martin Luther King and Gandhi on black altars to their lord and prince satan, and I wouldn’t give a damn as long as it worked. They could be very mean-spirited people and write very rude and abrasive posts on the internet, and I wouldn’t give a damn as long as it worked. Some of us care about _results_. I’m not concerned about whether the people accomplishing it are waving the wrong color flag with their impure intentions. > [@Enterprise](#): > > While in the U.S., [wage growth has all but ceased](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-19/only-rich-know-wage-gains-with-no-raises-for-u-s-workers). China entered the world labor markets in the 1980s, and India’s reforms got going in the 1990s. Other smaller countries have joined in, too, after seeing the big guys’ successes. More than _two billion workers_ entered the world labor markets. Some might think it’s astonishing that real wages in the US (as conventionally measured) have managed to stay stable instead of actually dropping. As wages worldwide increase closer to developed-world levels, US workers will have a stronger bargaining position again. > [@Enterprise](#): > > It doesn’t matter whether it’s THIS particular mechanism or some other of the usual market failures that will, but it will happen. And Christ will return any day now. Unlike your prediction, which can always be pushed off indefinitely when you’re wrong year after year – just as Marxists have been doing for decades and decades – my own comment just above has built-in falsifiability. When Chinese and Indian wages are more like European wages, and there’s no special competitive advantage to outsourcing, then we can look at US wages in comparison. If they don’t start working their way upward, then I’m wrong on this point. There’s no pushing the prediction off endlessly. > [@Enterprise](#): > > You say “more relevant,” I say “apples and oranges”. You say “it’s going up,” I say “foreever and ever?” How would a world look in which the wealth gap between poor and rich countries is closed? How would capitalism function? Who would work the factories? And how could we afford the prices at our newly-rich factory workers will need demand for their labor? Or won’t they be rich? Why wouldn’t they be? What standard of living will they reach? Why will anybody want to work in a factory anymore? You’re running up against \*\*exactly \*\*the same questions as socialism does, only you’re pretending you don’t have to, and that capitalism will go on, and on, and on. I’m not pretending anything. You haven’t asked me these questions before. I haven’t said a word about the endless future of capitalism or anything like that. You might be mistaking me for another poster. This is a long series of question marks, and I can address many of these questions, but not quickly because there’s too many, and the topics are too big. Also, comparative advantage now belongs on my previous list. > [@Enterprise](#): > > Please spare me the pointless strawmen that I’ve whacked down over and over in this thread. It’s doing your credit a severe disservice. Unless your name is **BrainGlutton** , that wasn’t addressed to you. Which reminds me, there’s another poster who actually responded substantively in defense of BG… > [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > To be fair Brainglutton was responding to, “And yet societies that adopt Marxist principles for their economic organization find themselves poor and backwards.” And that statement is highly misleading. Soviet communism can and did secure economic growth, largely via forced savings and high capital accumulation. Growth was sufficiently rapid so as to persuade lots of third worlders and a few first worlders that they had discovered a good developmental path. By about 1980 we had the means to compare third world countries following the Soviet model and those following the export oriented model. The latter was superior, but that’s not to say that the former didn’t deliver GDP growth. It did. During the 1920s - 1950s Russia did in fact industrialize, while other third world nations operating under capitalism looked on with envy. > > As for the murderous excesses of Stalin and the famine under Mao… well that’s certainly a downside to put it mildly. But I assume Brainglutton was correcting the record, not advocating a dictatorship of the proletariat. This just shifts the argument to GDP fetishization. GDP is normally pretty decent as these things go, but stacking up big numbers in a spreadsheet doesn’t necessarily correspond to real wealth. When the Nazis are coming, you want guns and tanks. Lots and lots of guns, and lots and lots of tanks. That’s relatively easy. The engineering problem is clearly specified, and can be addressed with central planning by a sufficiently ruthless dictator. That sort of GDP industrialization is “real” in the sense that what was created is exactly what was wanted. There is no such blueprint that can build the age of cream and dumplings, because everyone likes different cream, and different dumplings, and once their bellies are full, they start wanting different things, too. The Soviet system faltered the very instant it tried to plan for the non-militarized world of human happiness, rather than big showy engineering projects. They forced “investment” of machines that barely worked, creating items that were barely functional, using procedures that were downright silly, grinding up the lives of the workers they didn’t actually care about. They made a lot of noise about their pure intentions while never investigating what really worked. Somehow that’s very familiar. Lots of famous people were suckered by Soviet numbers, including many famous economists. They were wrong. The rosy numbers disguised a diseased system. ---
**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:** [January 30, 2015, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/291 "2015-01-30T04:13:58Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > While this is literally true, I am confident Barack Obama is never going to worry about money again as long as he lives. He’ll command fees for speaking engagements that exceed the annual salaries of most of his countrymen. > > Beyond a certain level of wealth there really isn’t any meaningful difference in terms of how someone can “live better.” You don’t live any better on a billion dollars than you do on a quarter of a billion. Barack Obama will in any sense that matters be about as materially wealthy as a human being can be. Except Obama doesn’t even have 1/10 of a quarter billion, so that analogy is neither here nor there. I have more accumulated wealth than Obama does, and I can assure you that I am not as materially wealthy as a human can be. Now, Obama might get there\* eventually, but he won’t be when he leaves office, and it’s not a slam dunk that he actually will get there. \*So wealthy that he can’t possibly spend it all himself ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/292 "2015-01-30T04:18:22Z")
Speaking generally, I want to try to get cold war history right, or at least avoid a few misstatements. I assume that it’s obvious that Stalin was a murderous tyrant, but we should still try to get our facts as straight as we can. It’s not just GDP fetishism. Emphasis added. > [@Hellestal](#): > > This just shifts the argument to GDP fetishization. GDP is normally pretty decent as these things go, but stacking up big numbers in a spreadsheet doesn’t necessarily correspond to real wealth. > > … **once their bellies are full** , they start wanting different things, too. > > …big showy engineering projects. > > Lots of famous people were suckered by Soviet numbers, including many famous economists. They were wrong. The rosy numbers disguised a diseased system. That’s 3 things. I suppose a few members of the elite were snowed by the numbers, but I’m guessing that the other 2 factors were more relevant historically. The Soviets could deliver the goods _up to a point_, a point beyond that experienced by many third world residents. Their centrally planned economy could also compete at a world class level with our centrally planned economies (i.e. military and space). I guess I’m saying that it’s an historical puzzle why so many people were snowed, one that is worth investigation.\* My take is that communism’s appeal is higher in a) lower income countries, b) countries where the elite are more prickish and c) pre-Keynesian environments. But perhaps it’s simpler: it might just be a matter of having an organizing principle that can hold together insurgents, sort of like ISIS in a way. Of course I understand that you are mostly just knocking down bad ideas. That’s all to the good. - Though to tell you the truth, it’s somewhat uninteresting if we’re discussing 1-10% of the West. For example, “4 percent believe shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies, while 7 percent are not sure if this is true or not.” [Cite](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/americans-believe-obama-anti-christ-global-warming-hoax_n_3008558.html). But there were a number of countries where communism’s appeal had a broader base. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/293 "2015-01-30T05:21:58Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > … import restrictions, price controls, and government ownership over inputs like fertilizer. All for the greater good … Again with this whole “central planning” business. I have not read _Das Kapital_, is this prescription in it? What about Lenin, did he advocate a centrally-planned economy or repressive autocracy? In terms of genuine socialist goals, I get the impression that you (and others) are shouting at another strawman. I am not sure what the practical socialist/collectivist/communist social ideal would look like, but as I understand it, autocracy is not typically a part of the model. > [@](#): > > … They produce more commodities. They consume more output of both goods and services. They save more. The people voluntarily depart the subsistence countryside for opportunities of higher wages in the city. The people who remain receive higher wages from the same work they were doing before. Across essentially every definition of wealth listed in this thread, they are wealthier… This is also a problematic issue surrounding what we know as capitalism. Resources are finite, including midden space, and our current production/consumption stream is just plain ridiculously wasteful, but there is no indication that the capitalist system in general is wont to address that. A healthy economy seems to be one that maximized the rate of transfer from mine to landfill, which strikes me as reckless and idiotic. How should that be addressed? Will markets naturally correct for their wastefulness, or will they simply scrape out new resources to allow them to expand? > [@](#): > > Lots of famous people were suckered by Soviet numbers, including many famous economists. They were wrong. The rosy numbers disguised a diseased system. The numbers for the current capitalist system look pretty good on the surface. Are they also structurally sound? What will we find if we dig down? I was listening to Thomas Jefferson (Clay Jenkinson) the other evening, who pointed out that the messy thing with Robespierre occurred primarily because of an extreme disparity of wealth between the aristocracy and the citizens. He (Jenkinson) noted that that situation in late eighteenth century France bears a real similarity to where the US seems headed today. Can the natural tendencies of a capitalist system be expected to correct this trend toward social instability, or will we eventually experience violent upheaval because of it? This, to me, looks like the most critical failing of capitalism.b ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/294 "2015-01-30T05:48:52Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > No, there aren’t. Real estate, mining rights, and agistment are not commodities in the Marxist sense: they have not been produced for exchange on the market by wage labor. Such use value as they have, of course, can only be realized by labor–your mining rights will not even fetch you a good price unless someone, somewhere, is expected to use the rights. I can certainly sell you mining rights and agistment on Pluto–but you’ll probably agree that, because we can foresee no exploitation of them at all, they have no value, even in the looser definition of value favored here. Consider some examples: 1. Bob buys 10 acres of forested land. The only thing he ever uses this land for is to take a walk, because he enjoys the feel of the wind and sunshine, the song of the birds, and the sight of trees and flowers. He never makes any changes to the land or builds anything on it. 2. Jane buys one thousand acres of forest land. Her intention is that it will remain forest forever. She never intends to develop it or even set foot on it. She buys and holds it only because of environmental value she sees in preserving it in its initial state. In both these cases, these people paid money for the land, so it is a commodity bought and sold on a market. Further, both people get use value from the land, without any labor being involved to realize it. This refutes the claim that commodities only have value as a result of labor. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/295 "2015-01-30T07:58:11Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > In both these cases, these people paid money for the land, so it is a commodity bought and sold on a market. Further, both people get use value from the land, without any labor being involved to realize it. This refutes the claim that commodities only have value as a result of labor. Only if you don’t know what a commodity is. Really, do you think that if it were so simple, the masses of very smart Marxist theoreticians would not already have thrown up to their hands and said “oh, that’s right”? As **RickJay** pointed out somewhere above, Marx may have been wrong, but he wasn’t an idiot. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/296 "2015-01-30T07:59:28Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > Again with this whole “central planning” business. I have not read _Das Kapital_, is this prescription in it? What about Lenin, did he advocate a centrally-planned economy or repressive autocracy? In terms of genuine socialist goals, I get the impression that you (and others) are shouting at another strawman. I am not sure what the practical socialist/collectivist/communist social ideal would look like, but as I understand it, autocracy is not typically a part of the model. I am not Hellestal, but I am puzzled by this comment. The Soviets and China before 1980 practiced a fairly pure form of central planning, in contrast to a system based upon the price mechanism. Lenin surely would have signed off on it. So calling it a strawman is puzzling. Marx’s Kapital, as I understand it, was more of a critique of the system than a prescriptive piece. For that, Marxists refer to the [Critique of the Gotha Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_the_Gotha_Program). Or so I understand. Diving into the fair use extracts, I start with Marx’s commentary on a sentence from the Gotha Program, “Labor is the source of all wealth and all culture.” Marx vehemently disagrees. To say that commodities only have a value as a result of labor is a bourgeois construction: [QUOTE=Karl Marx] Labor is _not the source_ of all wealth.\* Nature\* is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power…a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission. [/QUOTE] So there! In Chapter 3, we get Marx’s economic plan: [QUOTE=Karl Marx] That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and first of all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to revolutionize the present conditions of production, and it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state aid. But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of the workers and not protégés either of the governments or of the bourgeois. [/QUOTE] So all co-operative societies will be independent creations of the workers and won’t be under the thumb of the government or bourgeois pig dogs. How exactly these co-operative societies raise, you know, capital is unclear to me. Unless they are to remain at the bike shop level of accumulation. That can work. Here’s the money shot, where Marx advocates a dictatorship of the proletariat: [QUOTE=Karl Marx] The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word ‘people’ with the word ‘state’. Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the _revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat._ [/QUOTE] Marx also thinks the writers of the Gotha Program need to get a grip: [QUOTE=Karl Marx] Now the program does not deal with this nor with the future state of communist society. Its political demands contain nothing beyond the old democratic litany familiar to all: universal suffrage, direct legislation, popular rights, a people’s militia, etc. They are a mere echo of the bourgeois People’s party, of the League of Peace and Freedom. They are all demands which, insofar as they are not exaggerated in fantastic presentation, have already been realized. Only the state to which they belong does not lie within the borders of the German Empire, but in Switzerland, the United States, etc. This sort of “state of the future” is a present-day state, although existing outside the “framework” of the German Empire. [/QUOTE] Yeah, yeah, democracy, universal sufferage, blah, blah, blahdy, blah, popular rights, direct legislation, _ **bor-ring Sid** _. We need a dictatorship of the proles, man. > **[Critique of the Gotha Programme-- IV](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm)** > > Critique of the Gotha Programme: Chapter 4 ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/297 "2015-01-30T08:03:48Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#): > > Do you seriously believe you will be able to take trillions of dollars of wealth peacefully? And who could possibly administer such a bounty without being utterly corrupted? The people. Everybody. You, and I. Everyone who wants to have a say in administering it, I should probably say. And will I be able to take trillions of dollars of wealth peacefully? I certainly hope so (though probably not in the near future). But of course, what’s the alternative? If a democratic society decides that that’s the way to go, then that’s the way to go. And to oppose it would be unlawful. Sometimes, I guess, it’s a good thing that the rich are so few… ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/298 "2015-01-30T08:17:18Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It wasn’t “arbitrary” at all. Vietnam began to liberalize its economy in 1986. And it’s been the subject of capitalist economic influence for a hundred years before, at least–which is why you cannot just start when you’d like and say that capitalism is the source of Vietnam’s economic growth. It is–it’s also the source of its status as a colony before, and, perhaps, the source of a rather unfortunate war in which colonial powers sought to retain their status, and then non-colonial capitalist powers sought to prevent the horrors of communism. It’s arbitrary in that regard. > [@](#): > > Wait, you’re holding up HONG KONG as a bad example? For imperialist acquisition of territory for the sake of opening a market to goods produced by a capitalist economy, without regard for local production or the well-being of the local population? Sure. Why not? Because Hong Kong is (to you) better of now than “before”? Again, it’s just a very narrow perspective. > [@](#): > > I know it might be tough to accept the fact that countries that embrace international trade become better off, but it remains true, and we have example after example after example. Capitalism is part of the solution. You also need a government strong enough to keep the peace and liberal enough to give people freedom to get the most you can out of it, but there it is. Again: it’s not hard to accept that at all, it’s besides the point: international trade isn’t a thing unique to capitalism. The things that are unique to capitalism, on the other hand (private accumulation, the exploitation of labor power, economic boom and bust cycles, to name a few) may make countries better off (not that I care one whit for countries), but if it does, it does at immense human and ecological cost, as I’ve pointed out numerous times above; and at the cost of an unbelievable inequality of income, which reflects in no way the respective part that people have had in creating the value that capitalism produces. You may certainly feel that it’s a good trade off–I don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/299 "2015-01-30T09:14:33Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > The things that are unique to capitalism, on the other hand (private accumulation, the exploitation of labor power, economic boom and bust cycles, to name a few) So you honestly believe that hunter-gatherer synarchical communism and communist dictatorships never suffer from private accumulation, the exploitation of labor power, economic boom and bust cycles? That those things are unique to capitalism? I think that tells us all we need to know. Juts to repeat what everybody else in this thread has been telling you: when the flaws that you point out are even \*bigger \*flaws in every other system that has been tried, then they are not flaws of capitalism. They inevitable facts of the universe. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2015, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/300 "2015-01-30T09:33:55Z")
I snipped some of this, which I believe I’m not actually disputing, or which I’ve already explained elsewhere. > [@Hellestal](#): > > There is a spectrum. What we’re talking about is finding the right place on the spectrum. What matters is how many violations there are, and how severe they are. China, for instance, doesn’t actually have a particularly free market from many perspectives. They’re not on a good place on the spectrum. But they began the 1970s at a malevolent extreme of the spectrum, the economic equivalent of striking one’s own skull with a hammer repeatedly. They have moved away from that malevolent extreme. They are no longer striking their own skull with a hammer repeatedly. That’s good. They’re moving in the right way. And presto: forty years later, they should have the biggest economy in the world (maybe in about 5 years by PPP measurements). But they won’t reach US levels of per capita income without stronger reforms and more decades of discipline. And again: what happens then? What happens when capitalism wealth creation has created equal conditions everywhere? Or will it not? And if it will not, why will it not? The general “you” in this thread keeps saying that I can’t criticize without building an alternative; I’m not sure why it’s more defensible to make such claims as above without playing the scenario out to its logical conclusions. > [@](#): > > For another example, Venezuela has been moving in the other direction – your chosen direction – of confiscating the property of people deemed unworthy by the state. Venezuela’s economy is pretty much fucked right now. There is no mystery about this. They’re moving the wrong way. I’m not debating your strawmen. It’s not my “chosen direction,” it never was, and it will never be. But just for giggles, here’s an [idea](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/14/evo-morales-reelected-socialism-doesnt-damage-economies-bolivia). > [@](#): > > If you’d asked any of those people if they were exploiting, and murdering, and mal-administrating their colonial regions in the name of “capitalism”, they wouldn’t know what you were talking about. So? I’m not claiming capitalism is an ideology, I’m claiming capitalism is a system. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t want, it doesn’t (of itself) do anything. It’s a system that forces economic activity into certain directions, and colonialism is one of them. Which is also why your interesting narrative of economists who should have been followed (on this, apparently, but not on their labor theories of value?) is besides the point. They may be right, or they may be wrong, but the system will still drive capitalists towards new markets, new riches, etc. > [@](#): > > The ideology wasn’t a driver for the brutality, because the ideology didn’t exist. The communist states couldn’t say the same thing, since the _explicit purpose_ of those countries was to create their ideal of communism. I’m sure that’s a relief for the millions who died due to capitalist expansion and exploitation? Where, in what form, of communist ideology does it say that you should kill your people? Even ostensible communists can make mistakes, you know–the most severe in all hitherto existing “communist” regimes being their lack of democractic control. > [@](#): > > The explicit purpose of early colonization was the same as every earlier period in history: to extract wealth from foreigners with violence. People with powerful weapons were doing what people with powerful weapons always had done. They wanted wealth, so they used violence in an attempt to extract it from others. There is not yet anything new to see here. Early is when, for you? > [@](#): > > Eventually a group of European countries became buff, more powerful than others. And what did they do? _Exactly the same thing that they had been doing before._ We have no distinguishing feature yet. If you apply one of your favorite pejorative labels right now in lieu of an actual argument, you’re applying that new label to identical behavior. When they talked about what they wanted to accomplish, they gave the same answers that their predecessors had: wealth and power for their ingroup. Nothing had changed. They claimed that their violence abroad would lead to prosperity back home. This is the same old canard of “that’s just how people are”, isn’t it? It’s hardly a resounding argument for capitalism. It’s also wrong. It’s systematically wrong historically (even without the argument from capitalism, there is a clear distinction between colonial policies in 1700 and in 1880), and it’s nicely eliding the crucial distinction: by 1880, the “ingroup” we’re talking about is capitalists, while in, say, 1550s Spain, it’s the state itself. > [@](#): > > This is finally our distinguishing feature. The beginnings of proto-capitalism marked the new era when warfare and “exploitation” of foreigners was completely stupid, from the perspective of the home society. The colonial leaders themselves gained, but at their mother country’s expense. The capitalist era was the first, ever, when the smartest political decision was to put the guns away and open up the accounting ledgers. That’s a brand new era of history that had never been seen before. This is what deserves the label. The capitalist era? The era that saw the two most devastating wars the world has ever seen? More imperial conflicts than ever before? > [@](#): > > Once again, the trend is at least in the right direction. Violence per capita is less now than it has ever been before. And this is \*now \*due to capitalism, and in 1944 it was due to something else? Or has capitalism changed afterall? Or is immutable human nature not immutable? Not sure what the claim here is. > [@](#): > > …Poverty is being reduced worldwide at a rate never before seen on this earth, and you have to comment about their fucking _intentions_? Seriously? No, I care about the logic of the process, because I know that the creation of wealth anywhere ceases as soon as there is no more profit to be made doing it. > [@](#): > > More than _two billion workers_ entered the world labor markets. Some might think it’s astonishing that real wages in the US (as conventionally measured) have managed to stay stable instead of actually dropping. As wages worldwide increase closer to developed-world levels, US workers will have a stronger bargaining position again. Fingers crossed! But a structural reason for capitalist enterprise to seek _not_ to equalize wages between countries, because strong labor bargaining positions aren’t really a good thing for it… > [@](#): > > Unlike your prediction, which can always be pushed off indefinitely when you’re wrong year after year – just as Marxists have been doing for decades and decades – my own comment just above has built-in falsifiability. When Chinese and Indian wages are more like European wages, and there’s no special competitive advantage to outsourcing, then we can look at US wages in comparison. If they don’t start working their way upward, then I’m wrong on this point. There’s no pushing the prediction off endlessly. I don’t suppose you’re denying the existence of economic crises? We’ve had one every, what, ten years for the past thirty? And that’s just globally speaking, rather than the many localized crises that we’ve also encountered. And, of course, your prediction is just as endlessly off-pushable as mine–it hinges rather strongly on the belief that Indian and Chinese wages will ever reach European wages, and even then you can always quibble about what “more like” means. > [@](#): > > I haven’t said a word about the endless future of capitalism or anything like that. You might be mistaking me for another poster. This is a long series of question marks, and I can address many of these questions, but not quickly because there’s too many, and the topics are too big. > > Also, comparative advantage now belongs on my previous list. I’m glad you’re agreed that these questions are too big to easily answer, because I’m running up against the same questions whenever somebody says: “explain how socialism will work!” Thanks also for the list update. > [@](#): > > Unless your name is **BrainGlutton** , that wasn’t addressed to you. Which reminds me, there’s another poster who actually responded substantively in defense of BG… I suppose the point here is that my answers aren’t substantial. Fair enough, neither are yours. Now that (for whatever reason) we’ve traded those barbs, I’m relieved. The problem here is this: you are unwavering in your perspective, and you believe your perspective is correct. That’s fine. I disagree. I’m also unwavering in my perspective (less so, perhaps, in that I’m not actually disagreeing that by some possible yardsticks and given a timeframe beginning in the 1980s, you can make the claim that capitalist enterprise has many countries wealthier), and I believe that my perspective is correct. And there’s no outside view that would permit either of us to prove the correctness of our perspectives to the other. Which means I can only try and convince you, and I doubt I’ll be able to do that… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911.md?page=16)