If you want to live in a wealthy and prosperous country, it’s a good thing some people do care.
“Because I’m right” is the usual answer of would-be tyrants. It never works out the way you wish it would.
This becomes laborious.
So what I’ve gathered is the best responses we have to “what will replace capitalism” is a bunch of people advocating, well, shared ownership of everything. Diogenes, Agnostic Pagan, monstro, and **JohnnyMac **are all basically advocating a collective ownership system. Otocor is outright advocating communism.
Unfortunately I’ve yet to see any of them meaningfully defend the problems of such systems. Really, aside from JohnnyMac I’ve not seen anything even new, but just rehashing ideas from the early 20th and late 19th century. Ideas that even if they had theoretical purity, history shows the implementation just didn’t work.
Let’s assume we could just transition to one of these systems, how would these systems respond to abuse? What would stop administrators in these systems from becoming a new elite? Dio says “Democracy” and well, again, evidence suggests democracy is no hedge against administrative abuses. People in administrative positions in the United States are corrupt all the time, from Presidents down to county commissioners.
JohnnyMac advocates no administrative class, but everything happens through collective decision making. In truth, “parecon” as it seems his ideas are called is the only thing I’ve seen that even smells like it could work. But even parecon still relies on an assumption that if you get rid of capitalism, people will “just be less selfish.” Its creators have said human selfishness is a by product of our society and would be absent in a parecon society.
I just don’t know that I buy that, we can see lots of examples from history of human selfishness, in pre-capitalist societies. Even in tribal societies in the Amazon.
There’s a question there: The answer of “Because it’s the objective truth and that’s that, so there’s no reason to argue anymore because I’m right” is fine for a lot of debates. But is it really applicable to something like economics, especially national economics? Why or why not?
While I’ve said I don’t want to get bogged down on the issue of implementation, I will say that in the real world when it comes to national economics your ability to get others to buy into your system is of paramount importance. Mainly because you do have to get it implemented. Russia didn’t overthrow the Tsars and become the Soviet Union because Lenin’s ideas were unpopular, no, they happened because he convinced enough people he was right and they threw their hat in with him.
I think it’s also a good time to adjust matters of regulation and the environment.
monstro in particular seemed obsessed with the environmental impact of capitalism. Of course, the Soviet Union was not an environmentally conscious country, nor is China (nor was China before its market reforms.)
Environmental concerns are a reflection of society. No matter the economic system, if the people don’t care about the environment it is unlikely that anyone will, government regulations and regulators aren’t created in factories.
Capitalism can approach the environment in a reasonable manner through two mechanisms. Firstly, it can and is regulated. Regulation isn’t something that is prohibited just because you’re a capitalist country.
Secondly, over time, humans are becoming more and more educated about things.
If I sold shampoo that made your hair look great, you’d probably buy it. But if I also told you when I sold it “this is great, but it’s also going to cause you to get cancer and die” most people would not buy it. My point is, with enough education people do start to eventually understand this stuff.
A small town in West Virginia has been lobbying against Bayer for years to stop producing and storing MIC. MIC is the chemical that was responsible for the Bhopal disaster. Just a few years ago there was an explosion at the planet, and shrapnel from the explosion came very close to the MIC storage tanks. This worried people that if the shrapnel had hit the tanks with enough force, it could have caused a major incident. Well, mostly Bayer has won the lawsuits over the years. But under increasing state environmental regulations and consistent law suits, Bayer stopped production of MIC temporarily. Then they made the production stop permanent. Then they said “we’re going to restart it to fulfill some contracts, and then stop it permanently in 2012.” Amazingly when the residents sued yet again, the case was allowed to go forward and Bayer actually gave in, and agreed they wouldn’t produce MIC there again.
This was a small town in a poor state, and these actions have definitely cost local jobs. The fact that residents were still willing to fight for it shows something.
People can and do start to incorporate the totality of their values into the purchase of things. For example, people who are concerned about the environment actually ponied up cash and bought vehicles like the Toyota Prius that they believed were better for the environment. Of course some people bought these cars to save money at the pump, but many people have said they bought them due to their environmental concerns (of course, there’s some evidence their information was a bit faulty, and that hybrids just damage the environment in different ways than pure gasoline cars.) When consumers start to price in the damage a product causes to the environment, and actually become willing to buy “green” products at a premium, capitalism responds to that by producing more green products.
The Big 3 in Detroit has"profit sharing’. GM and Ford just paid their workers bonuses of several thousand dollars each. Who did it hurt? What did it do for morale?
Is that anti capitalistic? And yes, the big shots got huge bonuses.
That is what I was going to say. When I was younger I considered myself a democratic socialist. I no longer believe in socialism, but I do not dislike it. I do not like capitalism, but I accept it. Nevertheless, there are degrees and varieties and degrees of capitalism, and we do not need to preserve the one we have.
A democratic socialist economy would be one in which most productive wealth was government or employee owned. There would be regular contested elections, and anti socialist political parties would have full legal equality with socialist parties. There would be no restrictions on political debate, although political campaigns would be financed by the government.
Although democratic socialism has been a popular ideal for well over a century it exists nowhere. That suggests to me that it is not capable of working. It probably requires too much of human nature, and assumes an intellectual equality that does not and cannot exist.
What does exist and is by my value system preferable to the American free enterprise system are the mixed economies of Western Europe, the British Commonwealth, and particularly Scandinavia. Nevertheless, these countries continue to have overwhelming white majorities.
I am confident that social democracy would work with an Oriental population, or one evenly mixed between European whites and Orientals. Whether it would work with a large third world population is something I have doubts about.
What sort of system do you think would work for those stupid, brown people?
The only alternative to big business is a much bigger government. Now as it happens I like and trust the government. I dislike and distrust the business community. Nevertheless, we cannot run a modern economy with a network of twenty member communes that meet once a week to decide issues of mutual concern. We need experts and specialists.
Benevolent paternalism. We need to accept the basic reality of human equality. Political policies that are based on assumptions that are not true do not work, and usually cause much harm.
Well, that is the White Man’s Burden, so you might be onto something there!
Most of the economy is controlled by a few corporations.
They are compensated for their labor. The value of their labor is measured by the end value of their labor. The debts of the people who contract with them are not their problem.
We were asked what should replace capitalism, not how it should be implemented or whether people will agree with it. Those are different questions.
I cannot document this, and indeed there seems to be an effort to conceal evidence, but I have read that the standard of living of every black African country has declined since the end of European colonialism.
The standard of living of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe had certainly declined since the end of the white minority regime. Bob Herbert is a black columnist for The New York Times. A number of years ago I read a column by him based on a visit to Zimbabwe. He said that every black person he talked to who was not a government official said that life was better when Ian Smith was in charge. They could not vote. There were places they were not allowed. Nevertheless, they had jobs, and enough to eat.
The average IQ of Negroes in Africa has been estimated at 70. That is a mental age of eleven. People at that level are perpetual children who require adult supervision.
Contractors do not own the companies they contract for, you can’t have it both ways. And actually you’ve already said you’re fine with the workers sharing in the debt. If you agreed it’s fine for them to be part owners in your hypothetical business, the moment they become part owners, they incur all the obligations of ownership as well as its privileges.
Who said they do? I’m saying they own the value of their labor. The value of their labor is measured by the end product of their labor.
Libe Abraham Lincoln said, labor is more valuable than capital.
Dio, why do you feel that it is appropriate to impose your “shoulds” on other people? There are a bunch of people in the US, and we all have our own ideas of how to make life better. Capitalism allows the expression of all those ideas. Your ideas would necessarily involve imposing your “shoulds” on others.
Who said anything about imposing it?
Snerk. Nothing stifles ideas like Capitalism. Capitalism is the reason we’re still destroying the planet with obsolete fuel sources. I never said I wanted to get rid of capitalism anyway, I said it needed regulation.
I didn’t know just compensation and profit sharing were such radical ideas.
Nope–the value of their labor is measured by how much they are willing to accept for it.
Why do you think people are wrong about what they are willing to accept for their labor?
Let’s say you were trying to sell widgets and you wanted to sell if for $20. But I come along and say “nope, it’s worth $100, and you can’t sell it for any less than that.” Do you think that’s a good thing for me to do? What effect do you think my pronouncement would have on your widget sales?
Man, you are all over the map. We were specifically discussing stating a new business, not about existing businesses. And even then, that statement is wrong.
Gain without risk in the case of failure. Like I said… what could possibly go wrong?
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New Deal Democrat**: “Oriental”… “Negroes”… the 60s called. They want their vocabulary back.