Capitalism can work to our benefit. It’s main benefit is incentivising people to get more, which seems to work well at encouraging people to be productive. The main idea is supposed to be efficient resource allocation, but that plainly does not work as it leads to wealth accumulation at the top.
Our problem is twofold. The first problem is we externalize negative costs onto society. So environmental damage, health costs, workers pensions, roads, bridges etc.
The second problem is efficient wealth distribution. Currently we focus on income rather than wealth. We should tax wealth just as much as income. We certainly should make any use of an asset as collateral a taxable event.
Some things that might help.
We should look at changing taxation systems to be a formula rather than bands. The more income you get, the higher it goes. The lower your income, the lower you’re taxed. Same as now but rather than having to meet a threshold to move bands, every dollar is taxed based on where it falls in the distribution curve. It would be more complex for people to get their heads around at first, but actually simpler for all calculations going forwards.
UBI would also help with redistribution and make society more efficient overall.
I think these are reasonable suggestions to make society more equitable. Do you disagree with any of them? Or just don’t like them because they modify the existing system instead of tearing it all down?
No it’s not. Russian and Chinese state capitalism turned two preindustrial countries into global superpowers in a matter of decades, and lifted unprecedented numbers of people out of poverty. And they weren’t even communist! Communism has been tried in places like Catalonia and economically, it succeeded. Militarily, not so much, but only because all the capitalists turned against them. Capitalism is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to lifting people out of poverty.
No, they didn’t advance by adopting capitalism market principles. They advanced by adopting state capitalism, which is actually defined by lack of a market. They had a planned economy instead, and they advanced faster than the US because markets are inefficient. China has a planned economy with markets, but highly regulated and non based on competition like a traditional capitalist style market.
That’s a completely ahistorical take. Capitalism is best at creating poverty when you look at it globally. Yes it is good at concentrating riches in a few places, and from a rich western perspective it may look like it “reduced” poverty, but even that is starting to become questionable these days.
No, its really not. Capitalism increases productivity and wealth. How that wealth is distributed varies by country. Russia for instance has oligopolies that mean most goes to individuals. Europe has social programs that mean its more evenly spread. Its up to the countries and law makers to plan that well. Its not the fault of the concept if its misused. Its a tool, like any other.
Sorry but I hate to pop your privileged bubble, but that is evidently false and pure propaganda by capitalists. And capitalism isn’t even a tool, it is a political ideology with a clear goal (concentrate wealth in a few hands).
You just mentioned a number of ways that capitalism could be “fettered” to work more for the benefit of all. But the person you responded to said “unfettered capitalism” (unless they changed it later). :-)
They probably meant “unchecked capitalism” and it would have worked had we continued to keep it in check. The inequality is so excessive now that correction would be criticized as demotivating to industry and innovation. At this point, I think they’re just trying to run out the clock so we don’t collapse before the world burns.
Sadly it does kinda look that way, but even more devastatingly sad than that is the near certainty that we are giving them far too much credit for forethought there. To think that the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg has that level of strategic capabilities, rather than simply “gimme monay, now puh-lease”, is rather generous. More likely they will be shocked that the leopards (themselves in this case!!?!!?!!) have eaten their faces off too, and as the move Don’t Look Up perfectly illustrates, they too will be more surprised than anyone else as the world ends. But hey, at least they got theirs while the getting was good, right? :-(
i.e. Business Intelligence (acumen) is not the same thing as actual intelligence (IQ), and definitely not the same as emotional ability to empathize, with others and even one’s future self (EQ?). If these people could understand something, but it is to their financial detriment to do so hence they won’t, then it is no longer a matter of helping them understand (IQ), but rather of motivating them to care (EQ) and thereby actually do something about it (business).
I assumed they were using hyperbole as no country has unfettered capitalism. All our restrictions on it in some form. My suggestions would be one way we could do this. There are others.
One problem is that most of your solutions have been attempted before and they failed to stick - e.g. a majority of people who are alive today were present when the top marginal tax rate in the USA was 90% (I am focusing on that b/c the OP referred to MIT), and when that was true, government programs were so well & sufficiently funded that we literally went to the moon! (but how often have we been back there since? granted, there isn’t much real reason to go…:-P)
e.g. people started hiding their wealth in offshore tax havens, only bringing in what they need in the short term to get by at any given moment. This relates to globalism as in how much is a wealthy person even a resident of any one country, despite them living in it 100% of the time and getting 100% of their income from it? If you open up a broom closet and maybe assign 0-1 employees to it, but file the paperwork for thus you can make anything into your “global headquarters” even for a multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporation - Amazon does this all the time, and moreoever keeps shifting it around to take advantage of tax incentives offered to them to move it there (for awhile).
Another way that people hide their wealth - Donald Trump is famous for this (among other things:-) - is to keep the actual financials low while still having the full quality of life experience. So he and his family may not “earn” much, yet still live in a fantabulous apartment that they value in the millions if not billions of dollars. Their cars, helicopters, private jets etc. also may not be directly “owned” by them, but rather by their corporate entity, which is subject to all the tax burdens and benefits of such - so even though he gets the exclusive use of all of his “stuff”, does he truly “own” it, at least as far as tax reporting purposes go?
Even UBIs have been tried before - e.g. slaves might be given their rations regardless of output, so that their families could eat even while taking care of the next and present generation of workers rather than produce work product directly.
So it is not that nobody has ever heard of these things before, it is just that they do not “stick”. e.g. Donald Trump, after taking advantage of that whole financial system, when he gets into power decides to defund the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), essentially the police who monitor for such excesses and abuses as he and others like him are exactly likely to try to get away with. (And yes, the IRS - the general taxation services & enforcement division - got its funding reduced as well, but that gets off into a whole HUGE tangent where it is not just its funding level, but direct mandates to specifically not go after the most wealthy offenders, or rather the particular style of crimes that they are able to abuse, which are more complex and can be held up in court for years and thereby take up a disproportionate amount of resources to enforce) And then on top of that, Donald Trump also lowered the wealth taxes - so both by making things legal, and also by reducing the ability to enforce certain particular styles of crimes that are illegal, he steadily moved the notch more towards “unfettered capitalism” and away from “placing restrictions on it in some form”. Nothing ofc is 0% or 100%, but there is a spectrum, and we do move along somewhere on it.
So, extremely unfortunately, it is not hyperbole at all - the most narrow interpretation of it as meaning equal to precisely 0% restrictions would be, but the common interpretation is to look at the spectrum and see the direction we are moving along it towards that particular extreme end, as in “more unfettered now than it was in the past”. You may actually therefore be in agreement with the person you are arguing with, but missing out on that b/c you keep talking about how to “solve” the crisis, as if the solution could be to simply pass a handful of laws and the problem would be over. However, pass those laws how - through Congress? And with the Supreme Court now having been stacked with judges that each day are revealed to be even more corrupt than we suspected in the past, ready to strike down any law that may cause their own personal quality of life to degrade i.e. they might receive fewer free rides on private jets if they displease the billionaires that they have befriended?
Well, anyway if you are speaking on purely theoretical grounds, or perhaps in Aussie land it may even be possible on practical ones, but in America we do tend to feel that we are well and truly and even royally fucked by the system, and any such “solution” seems unlikely to ever be possible to implement, for the simple fact that our overlords do not wish it. We may have come too far down this road, to the point where even the entire federal government cannot fight against them any longer, except in perhaps specific areas, but not overall, not anymore:-(. Ironically this illustrates the dangers of unfettered capitalism: I get that capitalism isn’t so much “good” as it is the lesser of other competing evils (socialism being demotivating etc.), but it really is like harnessing the power of this giant behemoth beast, whereas if you let the beast take over control then you can become well and truly and royally fucked…:-(. When riding a mount, one must always remain in control, or else… well, we are about to find out I suppose.
i.e. capitalism may be good, but only if properly restrained.
Capitalism is neither good or bad. It’s a tool. It’s the people that design the system that hold ultimate responsibility.
All the things you say about things having been tried previously applies just as much to socialism, Marxism and other forms of non capitalism economies.
Slow incremental improvements pay off dividends in just the same way that slow incremental worsening has made things worse.
I think faster broader changes would help more, but that doesn’t make them easier to implement.
Yes, there is a despair with how the world is worsening. We have a lot of things to blame for it. Facebook, trump tax laws, tax havens etc. Yet people continue to use facebook and continue to vote for Trump.
What needs to be done is fight and push for better candidates and better policies. Many are doing that but not at the level that is required. When was the last time you went to a political meeting? Or a rally or march? Those questions are rhetorical. I know I haven’t been in a long time. We have become complacent and despondent as a society. Things are harder, but also easier. We have lots of conveniences now that were unthinkable at the times you mentioned where things were subjectively better in the past.
Things were not better for women and minorities. Things were not better for child workers. Things were not better for lgbtqi people. Slaves were not better off by having a UBI. Please be aware that ubi means you have no obligation to work. Any income from work would be on top of the UBI. With advancement in productivity. I don’t see how society will function without UBI or cutting hours significantly. Jobs in transport, logistics etc will all go. AI will kill many more in communication.
Exactly - bad implementations of communism, bad implementations of capitalism, bad implementations of whatever utopian form of government we can dream up in theory, all suffer b/c they are bad implementations, even if in theory they are perfect. Beyond that, some theories may themselves just be “bad” overall, if the theory is too far removed from reality.
One problem that the USA has found for itself is having allowed itself to devolve to become a 2-party system, where no other parties matter. This is a fundamental phase shift b/c at that point the parties no longer try to accomplish positive aims, and instead merely try to “not” be the other side. Biden won b/c he wasn’t Trump, Trump won b/c he wasn’t Hilary Clinton, Obama won b/c he wasn’t Romney, or McCain, Bush won b/c… well it goes back many, many decades. Afaik, no democracy has ever survived that.
Nor does it seem to matter even, b/c regardless of who wins, the wealthy are in charge. School shootings are a perfect example of that - our CHILDREN are being MURDERED… and nobody gives a damn. I recall one poll result where 80% of the American people were for some form of gun control, and that rose to >90% of responsible, registered gun owners! Also that was a decade ago, so surely after all that we’ve seen since, it could be even higher? There is nothing that engenders bipartisan efforts in Congress these days - but 80-90% agreement among the American populace is astounding!!?!! However, it does not matter one bit what we want - b/c the lobbies want something else there, and they are willing to pay 10-fold more than the counter-lobby, hence children continue to be murdered all across the nation (typically in poorer schools though).
In addition to being horrific, that example also reveals that our democracy is beyond broken, it is no longer “democracy” at all, but a plutocracy where regardless of whoever votes for whatever goal to be done, the rich control what actually gets done, regardless.
So to fix something like that… assuming that it even could be fixed, would take… I have no idea. But going to a political rally will not begin to cover it. We may literally have a civil war coming up, or at least it is highly expected (among experts, it is said) to have some kind of “constitutional crisis event”, much like the January 6 protests where Donald Trump attempted the most ineffective coup that I have ever heard of, yet still was solidly an attempt.
And one potential reason for all that is that whereas the wealthy previous wanted to use middle-class workers to be the underpinnings of society - doctors, researchers, lawyers, engineers, etc. - now they gloves are coming off, and they would have divide the world into the haves vs. have-nots. That CPG Grey Rules for Rulers really helped me see this clearly, though also depresses me:-).
Yes, that’s a great response. I would disagree on some points but agree overall.
What people fail to see is that all these systems are just that, systems we use as a tool. Its up to us to design the system such that it benefits more people. However, those that design the systems have an incentive to design them to be reelected rather than what’s best. We need to overcome that. One way that can help is sunset clauses on bills. They expire after a set time and need to be devoted on. It should reduce the effect of interest groups, or at least require more funding for them to be able to intervene multiple tines over multiple years with more and more politicians and beurocrats. Basically, reduces their investment. Next one is term limits.
Its a great video, by the way, I hadn’t seen it before. It does emphasize why democracy is better, but what might be missed is capitalism as part of democracy is what also provides that extra wealth that mininoses the risk of revolt and increases number of stakeholders or power brokers.
Those whonarguse socialism or communism forget that there is still a ruling class working in their own interest and that ruling by committee is slow and inefficient. Just ask anyone on a committee.
I agree, the wealthy have an outsize influence. The wealthy is not one person. It is a constant rotation of power brokers coming in and our of power. Take the USA, the 1% is 3 million people. Sure, there are a large number who stay at the top and corrupt society with their interestd, but they don’t control all the levers. They focus their efforts on controlling the interests that will benefit them most, usually taxation.
Gun law is a great example of people wanting change but not having consensus on that change. However, much ofnthst change was thwarted nut the NRA using membership moneybfron the same people that claim to want change. We now know they also took money from Russia, in an effort to destabilise. Russia understands that a large mass of people effects vhsbge. They have weaponised it. Those seeking to stabilise and improve the world need to do the same.
The fact that Trump, who staged a shitty coup, is a horrible person and has clear mental instability is on line to be reelected is a shitty endorsement of current politics. That’s not the fault of democracy as a concept, that’s the fault of bad rules, like the electoral college, like campaign finance rules, like citizens first etc. All of which the democrats have not touched, ever.
I don’t see a civil war coming. Society is too comfortable(even if financially very tough) for people to revolt violently end masse. I do expect some form of constitutional crisis. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened after the coup. Many of the problems identified by that, remain uncorrected. If something is tradition and not codified, it is useless as a protector of democracy.
I think the complexity of society and the intersecting interests of so many people and groups is what makes civil war so much less likely in developed countries. I can’t think of the last time it has happened. The closest thing is middle east or eastern Europe, but that was fallout from global power struggles more than general unrest.
You bring up some points I did not say… but to confirm, yes totally agree with. Capitalism isn’t the only evil, and may in fact be the least evil of them all, yet it does have a tendency towards slavery, doesn’t it? :-( Ofc, so too does socialism, in part b/c just as pure capitalism has never once been tried in the world (afaik?), neither has communism. Everything is just a blend - I mean no judgement there, just that it is what it is.
Yet looking back, democracy+capitalism did some wonderful things in the so-called “Western world” (ironically including Australia that is located in the East, but you know what I mean:-), but in the USA at least, it looks like we are ready to end it. Not the capitalism part, but democracy. Or at least that is what the people - like Majorie Taylor Greene, a literal sitting congresswoman - are calling for, and Donald Trump too, who says he wants to be emperor “for a day”. If these people get their way - and the likelihood looks to be something along the lines of just shy of 50%? - then the ability (/burden/responsibility) to vote will be removed. But either way, as I mentioned, the consequences of voting has long since been taken away from us, in certain main aspects - importantly, not all, but many.
Btw you are off on your numbers: try the numeral three. Not 3 million, but literally three as in one person more than two and one shy of four. THREE people have as much wealth as the entire bottom HALF of America - and that was 5 years ago, before billionaires doubled their portfolios just last year alone. More recently, I see titles like “The bottom half of American families hold just 2% of the country’s wealth — while the top 1% of families have a third”. That is beyond “outsized influence”, they have it ALL (almost). Tbf, there is still a very healthy middle class it seems, but the wheels definitely seem to have come off of this ride i.e. the trends are not good, and the “outsized influence” of those at the very top who can literally purchase Supreme Court Justices with their enormous wealth is a problem that seems like it will only solidify the issues.
Also, don’t glaze over the percentage of Americans that have only 2% of its wealth: to state it again, it is HALF. Granted, some are children, but many/most are GenZ to Millenials - those who have started families and are looking to purchase a home, but find out that not only can they not, but it looks likely that they never will. Is that an exaggeration? Only time will tell, but neither Trump nor Biden look to be fixing anything, and Congress only recently passed its budget for the 2024 year (which started on October 1) here a couple of weeks ago - we very nearly started into the 7th month of the year before it got passed. This is routine, now. And don’t even get me started on the corruption of the Supreme Court Justices. Or our for-profit, click-bait media. So if help will not come from the Presidency, Congress, Judiciary, or Media, and it certainly will not come from corporations, then from whence will it come?
Rather, we will see a slide - sometimes steady, sometimes rapidly falling - into anarchy as people find themselves not vested in the system anymore; or alternatively the healthiest people will be those who simply give up and accept their new station in life, at the very bottom, as peasants, making up part of that HALF of all members of society who control <2% of the nation’s wealth, and who cannot afford a home or advanced medical care. In short, America won’t be what it used to be - the dream has died.
So, you are correct that Trump is an example of enshittification of politics but that it does not mean that the entire concept is invalid, however I am relying on that one singular point to make that claim. Also, I am not stating that it is entirely invalid - a glance at the European Union is enough to dispel that. Rather, I am stating that the current state in America is not good, and only looks to be worse. Btw if you have any counter-examples I would love to hear them, but I have heard that no country that has ever devolved to become a 2-party system has ever managed to survive, and that worries me. So even if we managed to fix literally everything else, so long as that foundational flaw remains we may still be doomed, even if the deadline would have been pushed back? In that sense then, therein may lie some glimmer of hope: Donald Trump was so bad, that he may have woken up this sleeping giant to realize its predicament, so we might finally be more open to tinkering with this democratic system that could be done better? e.g. replace first-past-the-post voting with something else, which would force politicians to actually offer something positive merely than claiming that they are not the other side.
Also, note that I am not advocating for a civil war, nor a coup. I am only stating that some people are, and the fact that a coup has already been attempted is proof enough that it could happen again, by the end of this very year even. “Cvil unrest” is present, and I am only trying to open my eyes to acknowledge that. Also, I agree that it is likely to be some kind of boring “constitutional crisis event”, rather than a full-scale shooting one, though the latter is not beyond the realm of possibility either? The people who Putin has working for him are quite good at what they do… and they may yet find another way, like the January 6 attack, to turn a handful of people into a force for a much larger change. “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
UBI would also help with redistribution and make society more efficient overall.
UBI is a band-aid, not a solution. It’s a way to keep a broken system working for a little bit longer until it’s no longer politically expedient to help those in need. It props up capitalism in the guise of giving people a leg up.
It’s selling people bootstraps so they can lift themselves up by them.
Practicality for one. How do you change the world economy when they couldn’t even get together to manage a respiratory disease by wearing masks and isolating for 2 to 3 weeks.
There is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as a concept. It’s how it’s abuses. Regulation and rules to circumbet that can help.
Communism doesn’t work. China shows some totalitarianism works, but I don’t want to lose personal freedoms for the greater good.
What system would you suggest would address capitalisms faults yet has a chance to actually happen?
Practicality for one. How do you change the world economy when they couldn’t even get together to manage a respiratory disease by wearing masks and isolating for 2 to 3 weeks.
You could say the same about UBI. Proper implementation requires wealthy to give up their wealth. Do you see that practically happening?
There is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as a concept. It’s how it’s abuses. Regulation and rules to circumbet that can help.
Except that the system inherently causes capital accumulation and rewards abusive behavior. The kind of rules and regulations you’re thinking of work against capitalism and the wealthy are allowed to circumvent those rules anyway (see how they avoid paying tax).
Communism doesn’t work. China shows some totalitarianism works, but I don’t want to lose personal freedoms for the greater good.
I’m not going to get into the details of what communism actually is supposed to be or how the USSR or China are not necessarily the way to communism. I’m just going to point out that socialism does not have to go the way of USSR or China.
What system would you suggest would address capitalisms faults yet has a chance to actually happen?
Socialism. Not the Leninist way but the Marxist way. Marx described socialism as a process, a series of steps necessary to dismantle capitalism and establish communism. He didn’t go into details on what those steps are or how many steps they may or may not be. So to be true to Marx I’m not saying “let’s completely throw capitalism in the bin and go into planned economy” but rather lets treat it as a process. We don’t need to establish communism, but lets take step by step towards a better future.
And as such I think the smallest first step, which in many ways is already a huge step, is changing the ownership of companies. Everyone working at the company is also the owner of the company and gets a say in how the company operates. That change alone would improve working conditions and arguably have companies do less shady shit. But realistically I don’t see it happening any more than I see UBI happening in the way that you imagine.
UBI can be changed gradually. It loses some of it’s efficacy in distribution but it doesn’t need to be revolution. It can be evolution. It also does not mean a high risk of capital flight for the first movers. This means countries or areas can do it incrementally, one at a time, rather than a complete global shift at once. The wealthy won’t want to give up their wealth, that’s a given. That is the case for any change we plan for better distribution, so it’s not really an argument against or for any change.
Yes, it favours capital accumulation and rewards poor behavior. So what I have suggested adding is a method that leads to better wealth distribution and to disincentivise the negative externalities. Correct the flaws, so to speak. There is no perfect system that cannot be exploited. It’s a case of risk mitigation not elimination.
Socialism may stop companies doing shady shit, but will it make them.less competitive on the world stage? Remember, they are competing with non socialist countries initially. As you mention, it would be a means of transition. Yet, every country that has tried communism has failed, often with devastating consequences for the people there. Our world and nation state economies are much more complex and intertwined than before, yet efficient use of resources was not possible then. The problem is not the theory, it is people. Power corrupts.
I don’t have a problem with changing the ownership structure. However, can you point to any cooperative that was able to scale in the way that modern companies in a capitalist system do? Cooperatives exist and on a local scale can be beneficial. On a macro scale, they are less efficient and society as a whole is worse off for that loss of efficiency. That is the problem. Capitalism priorities profits, which require growth. The key is not to ensure broader ownership, but rather broader distribution of the wealth and profits created by that. We already have examples of that with share disbursement as a reward. Perhaps we could look at that being a regulated norm, in tandem with pensions payments etc.
The rise in productivity, wages and wealth in most countries that adopted it would bef to differ. Yes, there is more wealth created at the top, but that can be corrected with other policies.
The only point you have going for capitalism is the supposed productivity, but any system that has a way to reward performance can do the same just fine. There is a range of economic models between capitalism and communism, several of them very market based.
A good example which i always felt would work well with minimal systemic change is the free money system (freigeldsystem), which is largely private enterprise. The big differences are that all land and natural resources are owned by the public/the state, leasing it out to companies; and negative interest making the hoarding of wealth impossible.
These key changes give the public a large degree of power over the private sector, since they could simply choose not to lease any land to companies who are not compliant with the public needs, and largely remove the capitalist class - the owners, the profit parasites, the shareholders, the ones living off their hoarded wealth - from the system
I like this concept. I do think it would generally slow resource extraction because companies would be more wary to invest in the large infrastructure if they don’t have perpetual ownership of the land. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, just an outcome I think is likely.
This is a great write up. I think the problem with economic theory discussions is it is an extremely complex and nuanced topic. Saying ‘capitalism bad’ is popular, but not very constructive.
I think one big point that gets bungled in these economic debates is markets. That’s supposed to be the shining light of capitalism because of how efficient markets are at allocating scarce resources. The point that I think is missed, is that markets can be used very effectively outside of a capitalist system. They need to be designed for other economic systems, but they can easily handle the biggest argument with socialism; centralized control.
I feel that is a major point missing in these debates and I just wanted to give it some attention.
Widespread UBI in a capitalistic system would see all prices immediately rise to extract that UBI money and go back to its old ways immediately after that.
And of course the tax system should be changed, but many millions in lobbying and campaign money is used to get it in its current state and keep it there. Everything is for sale, including the law.
Unfettered capitalism will be the end of us.
Capitalism can work to our benefit. It’s main benefit is incentivising people to get more, which seems to work well at encouraging people to be productive. The main idea is supposed to be efficient resource allocation, but that plainly does not work as it leads to wealth accumulation at the top.
Our problem is twofold. The first problem is we externalize negative costs onto society. So environmental damage, health costs, workers pensions, roads, bridges etc.
The second problem is efficient wealth distribution. Currently we focus on income rather than wealth. We should tax wealth just as much as income. We certainly should make any use of an asset as collateral a taxable event.
Some things that might help. We should look at changing taxation systems to be a formula rather than bands. The more income you get, the higher it goes. The lower your income, the lower you’re taxed. Same as now but rather than having to meet a threshold to move bands, every dollar is taxed based on where it falls in the distribution curve. It would be more complex for people to get their heads around at first, but actually simpler for all calculations going forwards.
UBI would also help with redistribution and make society more efficient overall.
I get what you are trying to say, but you sound like someone in an abusive relationship that still believes they can fix the abuser somehow.
I think these are reasonable suggestions to make society more equitable. Do you disagree with any of them? Or just don’t like them because they modify the existing system instead of tearing it all down?
They are reasonable suggestions if you refuse to think outside the box of capitalism.
And no, thinking outside of capitalism doesn’t require to tear it all down. That is exactly what the capitalist want us to think with their TINA.
What would you change it for? We’ve tried many systems globally and historically. Capitalism seems to be the best at reducing poverty.
No it’s not. Russian and Chinese state capitalism turned two preindustrial countries into global superpowers in a matter of decades, and lifted unprecedented numbers of people out of poverty. And they weren’t even communist! Communism has been tried in places like Catalonia and economically, it succeeded. Militarily, not so much, but only because all the capitalists turned against them. Capitalism is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to lifting people out of poverty.
Yes, China and Russia had rapid advancements in reducing poverty by embracing capitalism market principles. That’s partly the point.
Nobody is advocating for pure capitalism. No country practices it. It’s theoretical and has no restrictions, or regulations.
No, they didn’t advance by adopting capitalism market principles. They advanced by adopting state capitalism, which is actually defined by lack of a market. They had a planned economy instead, and they advanced faster than the US because markets are inefficient. China has a planned economy with markets, but highly regulated and non based on competition like a traditional capitalist style market.
That’s a completely ahistorical take. Capitalism is best at creating poverty when you look at it globally. Yes it is good at concentrating riches in a few places, and from a rich western perspective it may look like it “reduced” poverty, but even that is starting to become questionable these days.
No, its really not. Capitalism increases productivity and wealth. How that wealth is distributed varies by country. Russia for instance has oligopolies that mean most goes to individuals. Europe has social programs that mean its more evenly spread. Its up to the countries and law makers to plan that well. Its not the fault of the concept if its misused. Its a tool, like any other.
Sorry but I hate to pop your privileged bubble, but that is evidently false and pure propaganda by capitalists. And capitalism isn’t even a tool, it is a political ideology with a clear goal (concentrate wealth in a few hands).
Bbbut be just needs anger management classes…
40 years of néolibéralisme cannot be undone overnight, it will take small steps to reverse the damage done, and to normalise societal expectations
You just mentioned a number of ways that capitalism could be “fettered” to work more for the benefit of all. But the person you responded to said “unfettered capitalism” (unless they changed it later). :-)
They probably meant “unchecked capitalism” and it would have worked had we continued to keep it in check. The inequality is so excessive now that correction would be criticized as demotivating to industry and innovation. At this point, I think they’re just trying to run out the clock so we don’t collapse before the world burns.
Sadly it does kinda look that way, but even more devastatingly sad than that is the near certainty that we are giving them far too much credit for forethought there. To think that the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg has that level of strategic capabilities, rather than simply “gimme monay, now puh-lease”, is rather generous. More likely they will be shocked that the leopards (themselves in this case!!?!!?!!) have eaten their faces off too, and as the move Don’t Look Up perfectly illustrates, they too will be more surprised than anyone else as the world ends. But hey, at least they got theirs while the getting was good, right? :-(
i.e. Business Intelligence (acumen) is not the same thing as actual intelligence (IQ), and definitely not the same as emotional ability to empathize, with others and even one’s future self (EQ?). If these people could understand something, but it is to their financial detriment to do so hence they won’t, then it is no longer a matter of helping them understand (IQ), but rather of motivating them to care (EQ) and thereby actually do something about it (business).
I assumed they were using hyperbole as no country has unfettered capitalism. All our restrictions on it in some form. My suggestions would be one way we could do this. There are others.
One problem is that most of your solutions have been attempted before and they failed to stick - e.g. a majority of people who are alive today were present when the top marginal tax rate in the USA was 90% (I am focusing on that b/c the OP referred to MIT), and when that was true, government programs were so well & sufficiently funded that we literally went to the moon! (but how often have we been back there since? granted, there isn’t much real reason to go…:-P)
e.g. people started hiding their wealth in offshore tax havens, only bringing in what they need in the short term to get by at any given moment. This relates to globalism as in how much is a wealthy person even a resident of any one country, despite them living in it 100% of the time and getting 100% of their income from it? If you open up a broom closet and maybe assign 0-1 employees to it, but file the paperwork for thus you can make anything into your “global headquarters” even for a multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporation - Amazon does this all the time, and moreoever keeps shifting it around to take advantage of tax incentives offered to them to move it there (for awhile).
Another way that people hide their wealth - Donald Trump is famous for this (among other things:-) - is to keep the actual financials low while still having the full quality of life experience. So he and his family may not “earn” much, yet still live in a fantabulous apartment that they value in the millions if not billions of dollars. Their cars, helicopters, private jets etc. also may not be directly “owned” by them, but rather by their corporate entity, which is subject to all the tax burdens and benefits of such - so even though he gets the exclusive use of all of his “stuff”, does he truly “own” it, at least as far as tax reporting purposes go?
Even UBIs have been tried before - e.g. slaves might be given their rations regardless of output, so that their families could eat even while taking care of the next and present generation of workers rather than produce work product directly.
So it is not that nobody has ever heard of these things before, it is just that they do not “stick”. e.g. Donald Trump, after taking advantage of that whole financial system, when he gets into power decides to defund the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), essentially the police who monitor for such excesses and abuses as he and others like him are exactly likely to try to get away with. (And yes, the IRS - the general taxation services & enforcement division - got its funding reduced as well, but that gets off into a whole HUGE tangent where it is not just its funding level, but direct mandates to specifically not go after the most wealthy offenders, or rather the particular style of crimes that they are able to abuse, which are more complex and can be held up in court for years and thereby take up a disproportionate amount of resources to enforce) And then on top of that, Donald Trump also lowered the wealth taxes - so both by making things legal, and also by reducing the ability to enforce certain particular styles of crimes that are illegal, he steadily moved the notch more towards “unfettered capitalism” and away from “placing restrictions on it in some form”. Nothing ofc is 0% or 100%, but there is a spectrum, and we do move along somewhere on it.
So, extremely unfortunately, it is not hyperbole at all - the most narrow interpretation of it as meaning equal to precisely 0% restrictions would be, but the common interpretation is to look at the spectrum and see the direction we are moving along it towards that particular extreme end, as in “more unfettered now than it was in the past”. You may actually therefore be in agreement with the person you are arguing with, but missing out on that b/c you keep talking about how to “solve” the crisis, as if the solution could be to simply pass a handful of laws and the problem would be over. However, pass those laws how - through Congress? And with the Supreme Court now having been stacked with judges that each day are revealed to be even more corrupt than we suspected in the past, ready to strike down any law that may cause their own personal quality of life to degrade i.e. they might receive fewer free rides on private jets if they displease the billionaires that they have befriended?
Well, anyway if you are speaking on purely theoretical grounds, or perhaps in Aussie land it may even be possible on practical ones, but in America we do tend to feel that we are well and truly and even royally fucked by the system, and any such “solution” seems unlikely to ever be possible to implement, for the simple fact that our overlords do not wish it. We may have come too far down this road, to the point where even the entire federal government cannot fight against them any longer, except in perhaps specific areas, but not overall, not anymore:-(. Ironically this illustrates the dangers of unfettered capitalism: I get that capitalism isn’t so much “good” as it is the lesser of other competing evils (socialism being demotivating etc.), but it really is like harnessing the power of this giant behemoth beast, whereas if you let the beast take over control then you can become well and truly and royally fucked…:-(. When riding a mount, one must always remain in control, or else… well, we are about to find out I suppose.
i.e. capitalism may be good, but only if properly restrained.
Capitalism is neither good or bad. It’s a tool. It’s the people that design the system that hold ultimate responsibility.
All the things you say about things having been tried previously applies just as much to socialism, Marxism and other forms of non capitalism economies.
Slow incremental improvements pay off dividends in just the same way that slow incremental worsening has made things worse.
I think faster broader changes would help more, but that doesn’t make them easier to implement.
Yes, there is a despair with how the world is worsening. We have a lot of things to blame for it. Facebook, trump tax laws, tax havens etc. Yet people continue to use facebook and continue to vote for Trump.
What needs to be done is fight and push for better candidates and better policies. Many are doing that but not at the level that is required. When was the last time you went to a political meeting? Or a rally or march? Those questions are rhetorical. I know I haven’t been in a long time. We have become complacent and despondent as a society. Things are harder, but also easier. We have lots of conveniences now that were unthinkable at the times you mentioned where things were subjectively better in the past.
Things were not better for women and minorities. Things were not better for child workers. Things were not better for lgbtqi people. Slaves were not better off by having a UBI. Please be aware that ubi means you have no obligation to work. Any income from work would be on top of the UBI. With advancement in productivity. I don’t see how society will function without UBI or cutting hours significantly. Jobs in transport, logistics etc will all go. AI will kill many more in communication.
Exactly - bad implementations of communism, bad implementations of capitalism, bad implementations of whatever utopian form of government we can dream up in theory, all suffer b/c they are bad implementations, even if in theory they are perfect. Beyond that, some theories may themselves just be “bad” overall, if the theory is too far removed from reality.
One problem that the USA has found for itself is having allowed itself to devolve to become a 2-party system, where no other parties matter. This is a fundamental phase shift b/c at that point the parties no longer try to accomplish positive aims, and instead merely try to “not” be the other side. Biden won b/c he wasn’t Trump, Trump won b/c he wasn’t Hilary Clinton, Obama won b/c he wasn’t Romney, or McCain, Bush won b/c… well it goes back many, many decades. Afaik, no democracy has ever survived that.
Nor does it seem to matter even, b/c regardless of who wins, the wealthy are in charge. School shootings are a perfect example of that - our CHILDREN are being MURDERED… and nobody gives a damn. I recall one poll result where 80% of the American people were for some form of gun control, and that rose to >90% of responsible, registered gun owners! Also that was a decade ago, so surely after all that we’ve seen since, it could be even higher? There is nothing that engenders bipartisan efforts in Congress these days - but 80-90% agreement among the American populace is astounding!!?!! However, it does not matter one bit what we want - b/c the lobbies want something else there, and they are willing to pay 10-fold more than the counter-lobby, hence children continue to be murdered all across the nation (typically in poorer schools though).
In addition to being horrific, that example also reveals that our democracy is beyond broken, it is no longer “democracy” at all, but a plutocracy where regardless of whoever votes for whatever goal to be done, the rich control what actually gets done, regardless.
So to fix something like that… assuming that it even could be fixed, would take… I have no idea. But going to a political rally will not begin to cover it. We may literally have a civil war coming up, or at least it is highly expected (among experts, it is said) to have some kind of “constitutional crisis event”, much like the January 6 protests where Donald Trump attempted the most ineffective coup that I have ever heard of, yet still was solidly an attempt.
And one potential reason for all that is that whereas the wealthy previous wanted to use middle-class workers to be the underpinnings of society - doctors, researchers, lawyers, engineers, etc. - now they gloves are coming off, and they would have divide the world into the haves vs. have-nots. That CPG Grey Rules for Rulers really helped me see this clearly, though also depresses me:-).
Yes, that’s a great response. I would disagree on some points but agree overall.
What people fail to see is that all these systems are just that, systems we use as a tool. Its up to us to design the system such that it benefits more people. However, those that design the systems have an incentive to design them to be reelected rather than what’s best. We need to overcome that. One way that can help is sunset clauses on bills. They expire after a set time and need to be devoted on. It should reduce the effect of interest groups, or at least require more funding for them to be able to intervene multiple tines over multiple years with more and more politicians and beurocrats. Basically, reduces their investment. Next one is term limits.
Its a great video, by the way, I hadn’t seen it before. It does emphasize why democracy is better, but what might be missed is capitalism as part of democracy is what also provides that extra wealth that mininoses the risk of revolt and increases number of stakeholders or power brokers.
Those whonarguse socialism or communism forget that there is still a ruling class working in their own interest and that ruling by committee is slow and inefficient. Just ask anyone on a committee.
I agree, the wealthy have an outsize influence. The wealthy is not one person. It is a constant rotation of power brokers coming in and our of power. Take the USA, the 1% is 3 million people. Sure, there are a large number who stay at the top and corrupt society with their interestd, but they don’t control all the levers. They focus their efforts on controlling the interests that will benefit them most, usually taxation.
Gun law is a great example of people wanting change but not having consensus on that change. However, much ofnthst change was thwarted nut the NRA using membership moneybfron the same people that claim to want change. We now know they also took money from Russia, in an effort to destabilise. Russia understands that a large mass of people effects vhsbge. They have weaponised it. Those seeking to stabilise and improve the world need to do the same.
The fact that Trump, who staged a shitty coup, is a horrible person and has clear mental instability is on line to be reelected is a shitty endorsement of current politics. That’s not the fault of democracy as a concept, that’s the fault of bad rules, like the electoral college, like campaign finance rules, like citizens first etc. All of which the democrats have not touched, ever.
I don’t see a civil war coming. Society is too comfortable(even if financially very tough) for people to revolt violently end masse. I do expect some form of constitutional crisis. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened after the coup. Many of the problems identified by that, remain uncorrected. If something is tradition and not codified, it is useless as a protector of democracy.
I think the complexity of society and the intersecting interests of so many people and groups is what makes civil war so much less likely in developed countries. I can’t think of the last time it has happened. The closest thing is middle east or eastern Europe, but that was fallout from global power struggles more than general unrest.
You bring up some points I did not say… but to confirm, yes totally agree with. Capitalism isn’t the only evil, and may in fact be the least evil of them all, yet it does have a tendency towards slavery, doesn’t it? :-( Ofc, so too does socialism, in part b/c just as pure capitalism has never once been tried in the world (afaik?), neither has communism. Everything is just a blend - I mean no judgement there, just that it is what it is.
Yet looking back, democracy+capitalism did some wonderful things in the so-called “Western world” (ironically including Australia that is located in the East, but you know what I mean:-), but in the USA at least, it looks like we are ready to end it. Not the capitalism part, but democracy. Or at least that is what the people - like Majorie Taylor Greene, a literal sitting congresswoman - are calling for, and Donald Trump too, who says he wants to be emperor “for a day”. If these people get their way - and the likelihood looks to be something along the lines of just shy of 50%? - then the ability (/burden/responsibility) to vote will be removed. But either way, as I mentioned, the consequences of voting has long since been taken away from us, in certain main aspects - importantly, not all, but many.
Btw you are off on your numbers: try the numeral three. Not 3 million, but literally three as in one person more than two and one shy of four. THREE people have as much wealth as the entire bottom HALF of America - and that was 5 years ago, before billionaires doubled their portfolios just last year alone. More recently, I see titles like “The bottom half of American families hold just 2% of the country’s wealth — while the top 1% of families have a third”. That is beyond “outsized influence”, they have it ALL (almost). Tbf, there is still a very healthy middle class it seems, but the wheels definitely seem to have come off of this ride i.e. the trends are not good, and the “outsized influence” of those at the very top who can literally purchase Supreme Court Justices with their enormous wealth is a problem that seems like it will only solidify the issues.
Also, don’t glaze over the percentage of Americans that have only 2% of its wealth: to state it again, it is HALF. Granted, some are children, but many/most are GenZ to Millenials - those who have started families and are looking to purchase a home, but find out that not only can they not, but it looks likely that they never will. Is that an exaggeration? Only time will tell, but neither Trump nor Biden look to be fixing anything, and Congress only recently passed its budget for the 2024 year (which started on October 1) here a couple of weeks ago - we very nearly started into the 7th month of the year before it got passed. This is routine, now. And don’t even get me started on the corruption of the Supreme Court Justices. Or our for-profit, click-bait media. So if help will not come from the Presidency, Congress, Judiciary, or Media, and it certainly will not come from corporations, then from whence will it come?
Rather, we will see a slide - sometimes steady, sometimes rapidly falling - into anarchy as people find themselves not vested in the system anymore; or alternatively the healthiest people will be those who simply give up and accept their new station in life, at the very bottom, as peasants, making up part of that HALF of all members of society who control <2% of the nation’s wealth, and who cannot afford a home or advanced medical care. In short, America won’t be what it used to be - the dream has died.
So, you are correct that Trump is an example of enshittification of politics but that it does not mean that the entire concept is invalid, however I am relying on that one singular point to make that claim. Also, I am not stating that it is entirely invalid - a glance at the European Union is enough to dispel that. Rather, I am stating that the current state in America is not good, and only looks to be worse. Btw if you have any counter-examples I would love to hear them, but I have heard that no country that has ever devolved to become a 2-party system has ever managed to survive, and that worries me. So even if we managed to fix literally everything else, so long as that foundational flaw remains we may still be doomed, even if the deadline would have been pushed back? In that sense then, therein may lie some glimmer of hope: Donald Trump was so bad, that he may have woken up this sleeping giant to realize its predicament, so we might finally be more open to tinkering with this democratic system that could be done better? e.g. replace first-past-the-post voting with something else, which would force politicians to actually offer something positive merely than claiming that they are not the other side.
Also, note that I am not advocating for a civil war, nor a coup. I am only stating that some people are, and the fact that a coup has already been attempted is proof enough that it could happen again, by the end of this very year even. “Cvil unrest” is present, and I am only trying to open my eyes to acknowledge that. Also, I agree that it is likely to be some kind of boring “constitutional crisis event”, rather than a full-scale shooting one, though the latter is not beyond the realm of possibility either? The people who Putin has working for him are quite good at what they do… and they may yet find another way, like the January 6 attack, to turn a handful of people into a force for a much larger change. “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
UBI is a band-aid, not a solution. It’s a way to keep a broken system working for a little bit longer until it’s no longer politically expedient to help those in need. It props up capitalism in the guise of giving people a leg up.
It’s selling people bootstraps so they can lift themselves up by them.
UBI is not a band aid. It would be a complete overhaul of our economic system with a major change in how we value people, time products and services.
It is not a way to prop up capitalism, but a way to use capitalism for better equality and minimum standards of living.
What you’re describing could just as well not be capitalism. Why cling to capitalism?
Practicality for one. How do you change the world economy when they couldn’t even get together to manage a respiratory disease by wearing masks and isolating for 2 to 3 weeks.
There is nothing inherently wrong with capitalism as a concept. It’s how it’s abuses. Regulation and rules to circumbet that can help.
Communism doesn’t work. China shows some totalitarianism works, but I don’t want to lose personal freedoms for the greater good.
What system would you suggest would address capitalisms faults yet has a chance to actually happen?
You could say the same about UBI. Proper implementation requires wealthy to give up their wealth. Do you see that practically happening?
Except that the system inherently causes capital accumulation and rewards abusive behavior. The kind of rules and regulations you’re thinking of work against capitalism and the wealthy are allowed to circumvent those rules anyway (see how they avoid paying tax).
I’m not going to get into the details of what communism actually is supposed to be or how the USSR or China are not necessarily the way to communism. I’m just going to point out that socialism does not have to go the way of USSR or China.
Socialism. Not the Leninist way but the Marxist way. Marx described socialism as a process, a series of steps necessary to dismantle capitalism and establish communism. He didn’t go into details on what those steps are or how many steps they may or may not be. So to be true to Marx I’m not saying “let’s completely throw capitalism in the bin and go into planned economy” but rather lets treat it as a process. We don’t need to establish communism, but lets take step by step towards a better future.
And as such I think the smallest first step, which in many ways is already a huge step, is changing the ownership of companies. Everyone working at the company is also the owner of the company and gets a say in how the company operates. That change alone would improve working conditions and arguably have companies do less shady shit. But realistically I don’t see it happening any more than I see UBI happening in the way that you imagine.
UBI can be changed gradually. It loses some of it’s efficacy in distribution but it doesn’t need to be revolution. It can be evolution. It also does not mean a high risk of capital flight for the first movers. This means countries or areas can do it incrementally, one at a time, rather than a complete global shift at once. The wealthy won’t want to give up their wealth, that’s a given. That is the case for any change we plan for better distribution, so it’s not really an argument against or for any change.
Yes, it favours capital accumulation and rewards poor behavior. So what I have suggested adding is a method that leads to better wealth distribution and to disincentivise the negative externalities. Correct the flaws, so to speak. There is no perfect system that cannot be exploited. It’s a case of risk mitigation not elimination.
Socialism may stop companies doing shady shit, but will it make them.less competitive on the world stage? Remember, they are competing with non socialist countries initially. As you mention, it would be a means of transition. Yet, every country that has tried communism has failed, often with devastating consequences for the people there. Our world and nation state economies are much more complex and intertwined than before, yet efficient use of resources was not possible then. The problem is not the theory, it is people. Power corrupts.
I don’t have a problem with changing the ownership structure. However, can you point to any cooperative that was able to scale in the way that modern companies in a capitalist system do? Cooperatives exist and on a local scale can be beneficial. On a macro scale, they are less efficient and society as a whole is worse off for that loss of efficiency. That is the problem. Capitalism priorities profits, which require growth. The key is not to ensure broader ownership, but rather broader distribution of the wealth and profits created by that. We already have examples of that with share disbursement as a reward. Perhaps we could look at that being a regulated norm, in tandem with pensions payments etc.
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Capitalism does not incentivize people to get more, it incentivizes a very exclusive few to get it all.
The rise in productivity, wages and wealth in most countries that adopted it would bef to differ. Yes, there is more wealth created at the top, but that can be corrected with other policies.
You’re confusing capitalism with communism.
The only point you have going for capitalism is the supposed productivity, but any system that has a way to reward performance can do the same just fine. There is a range of economic models between capitalism and communism, several of them very market based.
A good example which i always felt would work well with minimal systemic change is the free money system (freigeldsystem), which is largely private enterprise. The big differences are that all land and natural resources are owned by the public/the state, leasing it out to companies; and negative interest making the hoarding of wealth impossible.
These key changes give the public a large degree of power over the private sector, since they could simply choose not to lease any land to companies who are not compliant with the public needs, and largely remove the capitalist class - the owners, the profit parasites, the shareholders, the ones living off their hoarded wealth - from the system
I like this concept. I do think it would generally slow resource extraction because companies would be more wary to invest in the large infrastructure if they don’t have perpetual ownership of the land. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, just an outcome I think is likely.
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This is a great write up. I think the problem with economic theory discussions is it is an extremely complex and nuanced topic. Saying ‘capitalism bad’ is popular, but not very constructive.
I think one big point that gets bungled in these economic debates is markets. That’s supposed to be the shining light of capitalism because of how efficient markets are at allocating scarce resources. The point that I think is missed, is that markets can be used very effectively outside of a capitalist system. They need to be designed for other economic systems, but they can easily handle the biggest argument with socialism; centralized control.
I feel that is a major point missing in these debates and I just wanted to give it some attention.
Widespread UBI in a capitalistic system would see all prices immediately rise to extract that UBI money and go back to its old ways immediately after that.
And of course the tax system should be changed, but many millions in lobbying and campaign money is used to get it in its current state and keep it there. Everything is for sale, including the law.