← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · JoseyWales
Thread ID: 19675 | Posts: 21 | Started: 2005-08-16
2005-08-16 16:59 | User Profile
As ive heard in other discussions, captialisim seems to be the target of criticism as much as communisim. So what then ? Seems to me that capitalisim is a good thing, but limits must be put in place to promote the betterment of our own people.
2005-08-16 17:06 | User Profile
Mr Yannis, paging Mr Yannis. :wink:
2005-08-16 17:38 | User Profile
Josey, My last post was half-joking (but only half, since Walt is quite knowledgeable on these issues), but I decided that I could be more helpful.
Check out these threads -- [url="http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12726"]What is Distributism?[/url]
[url="http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18546"]Social Capital[/url]
I would be curious to hear what you think.
2005-08-16 19:05 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]As ive heard in other discussions, captialisim seems to be the target of criticism as much as communisim. So what then ? Seems to me that capitalisim is a good thing, but limits must be put in place to promote the betterment of our own people.[/QUOTE]
I think that we get lost in terminology.
You're probably assuming that Capitalism = Free Market.
But if we conflate what we have now "capitalism" (and in the common patois it is) then it's clear that the statement is false - capitalism does not equal the free market.
I'm all for allowing the free market to function, and Distributism is all about freeing the market from the distortions that form the marrow of capitalism.
These include especially the routine use of the corporate organizational form in business. Corporations with their limited liability are expressly designed to encourage additional risk taking by passive investors by limiting their liability to amounts invested, thus distorting the risk-benefit analysis that lies at the heart of every economic decision by ARTIFICALLY through state fiat. In effect this allows passive investors to externalize the costs of their risk, thus encouraging socially undesirable risk taking. But since risk has real economic value (and it doesn't disappear just because the state says it does) then that cost of risk gets charged off someplace, namely the social capital account. Routine use of the corporate form is obviously a highly distortive, crude state intervention into the free market that we free marketeers seek to put an end to.
Another major problem with "capitalism" is advertising. The state must regulate advertising because the moral fiber of the nation is the very matrix within which the free market functions, and allowing individuals to treat it as a commons destroys tears the heart from the free market.
Actually, all the problems with capitalism can be summed up by the simple observation that it fails to take any real accounting of social capital. Adam Smith taught that the free market can only function in a moral society - one in which the great majority of people are sober, hard-working, honest and trustworthy. Capitalism fails to even recognize the existence of the social capital account, and basically allows individual economic actors to graze as many sheep on the commons of our morals as they wish.
I suggest that you review some of the threads under the Distributism sub-forum. I will be pleased to discuss this with you.
2005-08-25 17:50 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]Josey, Check out these threads -- [url="http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12726"]What is Distributism?[/url]
[url="http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18546"]Social Capital[/url]
I would be curious to hear what you think.[/QUOTE]
Well, there seems to be some merit to this idea called "distributism". Thats alot to chew on. "Run-away" capitalism seems to have plenty of faults. It (captialism) gives us big multi-national corporations that squash the small family busineses and promote social agendas that many white folks dont like. However, I think these "limits" can be overdone.
2005-08-25 18:06 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]As ive heard in other discussions, captialisim seems to be the target of criticism as much as communisim. So what then ? Seems to me that capitalisim is a good thing, but limits must be put in place to promote the betterment of our own people.[/QUOTE]
Most of the people I see who criticize capitalism seem to have confused capitalism with big-business-ism. Capitalism just means private ownership and a free market. Capitalism does not mean laws and policies designed to promote big business over small business. It does not mean laws and policies designed to promote business concerns at the expense non-business concerns.
There is nothing capitalistic about the US refusing to enforce immigration law, so that big companies can have cheap labor. There is nothing capitalistic about shifting the tax burdon away from international businesses to domestic businesses (the intent behind Free Trade agreements). There is nothing capitalistic about allowing businesses to pollute. Etc.
2005-08-25 18:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]These include especially the routine use of the corporate organizational form in business. Corporations with their limited liability are expressly designed to encourage additional risk taking by passive investors by limiting their liability to amounts invested, thus distorting the risk-benefit analysis that lies at the heart of every economic decision by ARTIFICALLY through state fiat.
Capitalism means letting me make my own business decisions. It does not mean protecting me from liability that arises from those decisions. Limited Liability has nothing to do with Capitalism.
I also don't know why you object to Limited Liability. Could you give me a specific example? If you have no control of a company, and no inside knowledge, why should you be liable for loaning them your money, at least beyond the amount you loaned them? If you do have control, then you shouldn't have liability protection and usually the courts agree.
Another major problem with "capitalism" is advertising. The state must regulate advertising because the moral fiber of the nation is the very matrix within which the free market functions, and allowing individuals to treat it as a commons destroys tears the heart from the free market.
If advertising is done in the public commons, it ceases to be your business to control. So, it is not about capitalism. It's the local government's obligation to pretect minors from public exposure to obscenity. Capitalism doesn't change that.
Adam Smith taught that the free market can only function in a moral society - one in which the great majority of people are sober, hard-working, honest and trustworthy.
Morality is necessary for all forms of freedom.
2005-08-25 20:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Happy Hacker]Most of the people I see who criticize capitalism seem to have confused capitalism with big-business-ism. Capitalism just means private ownership and a free market. Most people who defend capitalism seem to have confused capitalism with private ownership of property. Private ownership has existed under almost every economic system ever devised. The main characteristics of capitalism as commonly practiced are three -- artificial protection from liability via the corporate organizational form, a cleavage between capital and labor (or between those who own and those who actually produce), and profitability serving as a proxy for morality.
[quote=Happy Hacker]Capitalism does not mean laws and policies designed to promote big business over small business. It does not mean laws and policies designed to promote business concerns at the expense non-business concerns. Defenders of capitalism come off sounding like the die-hard Communists one meets on university campuses, who always claim that the Soviet Union fell not due to inherent problems with communism itself, but rather because they 'didn't practice it correctly.' The dictionary definition of capitalism may not mention 'laws and policies designed to promote big business over small business,' but capitalism always promotes such laws nonetheless.
[quote=Happy Hacker]There is nothing capitalistic about the US refusing to enforce immigration law, so that big companies can have cheap labor. There is nothing capitalistic about shifting the tax burdon away from international businesses to domestic businesses (the intent behind Free Trade agreements). There is nothing capitalistic about allowing businesses to pollute. Etc.[/QUOTE] Actually, big companies throwing their money around to keep the US from enforcing immigration law is capitalism par excellence. The companies are responsible only to their stockholders, the liability of those stockholders is limited to their initial investment no matter how much havoc the corporation's behavior wreaks, and the free market ensures that everything is for sale, including the enforcement of certain laws.
Capitalism is inherently destructive, and this quote from William Striker is apropos --
"Contrary to what so many good people - out of sheer terror of 'Communism' - think, Capitalism is not 'free enterprise,' an incentive for success, 'a chance for all.' Capitalism is trusts, speculation, parasitical usury. Capitalism is J. P. Morgan, Rothschild's bank, ripping apart the nations like maddened swine. Capitalism is the Jewish frying pan in which culture is rendered down to the grease of money. Following it, as the night to day, is the thrice hotter Jewish fire of 'Communism.'" William Striker
2005-08-25 23:18 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]Actually, big companies throwing their money around to keep the US from enforcing immigration law is capitalism par excellence.[/QUOTE]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you disagree with the big companies trying to keep the US from enforcing immigration law you still have the freedom to throw your money around and buy your agenda, as well as buy-out and/or boycott the big company that opposes you.
Right?
I'm not sure that discarding the remaining few freedoms we retain in a somewhat capitalist free market is worth the alternatives, just because we don't like the results of said free market.
2005-08-26 02:48 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you disagree with the big companies trying to keep the US from enforcing immigration law you still have the freedom to throw your money around and buy your agenda, as well as buy-out and/or boycott the big company that opposes you.
Right?
I'm not sure that discarding the remaining few freedoms we retain in a somewhat capitalist free market is worth the alternatives, just because we don't like the results of said free market.[/QUOTE]
Back in the 1870's the Supreme Court made up of railroad corporation lawyers judged that the 14th Amendment made corporations persons with the same rights as human persons.
I don't see why a corporation, a legal fiction as some call them, should have the rights of a human person?
Our Founding Fathers came very close to writing what would have been an anti-corporate amendment into the Bill of Rights. Not too many people are aware of that fact.
2005-08-26 15:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you disagree with the big companies trying to keep the US from enforcing immigration law you still have the freedom to throw your money around and buy your agenda, as well as buy-out and/or boycott the big company that opposes you. [/QUOTE] Precisely my problem with the whole system -- right and wrong are based, in practice, on profitability. Instead of might makes right, it is rich makes right. Your solution is much the same as saying that if someone is breaking into your house and kicking your ass every week, then you have the 'freedom' to become stronger than he, or to run away from him. I am saying that we, as a community, should stop him from breaking into your house and kicking your ass.
2005-08-26 17:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]Precisely my problem with the whole system -- right and wrong are based, in practice, on profitability. Instead of might makes right, it is rich makes right.
Well, right or wrong I'm hard pressed to think of when it has ever been otherwise. Freedom of association is critical I think. If you and your community think a business is immoral or contrary to your value system, then you can join together and run 'em out of town. Such an occurence would give proof to the fact that rich doesn't always make right and evidence a healthy society in my opinion. If that doesn't happen and a community doesn't stand up for it's values, then I think the proper blame belongs on the community for not caring enough to defend their values, culture and heritage, not on capitalism per se.
But as a red-blooded American, I get pretty cranky and tend to go looking for my squirrel gun when the 'community' backed up by government guns tells me how I should spend my money or what decisions I have to make in running my business.
Your solution is much the same as saying that if someone is breaking into your house and kicking your ass every week, then you have the 'freedom' to become stronger than he, or to run away from him.
...or install a security system, or purchase a shotgun, or take some self-defense classes.
I am saying that we, as a community, should stop him from breaking into your house and kicking your ass.[/QUOTE]
I'm saying that man needs to learn how to take care of himself and his household. When he does that the entire community is better off and ultimately stronger, both morally and physically.
Is it better to give a man a fish or teach him how to fish? I think the latter.
2005-08-26 17:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Well, right or wrong I'm hard pressed to think of when it has ever been otherwise. Freedom of association is critical I think. If you and your community think a business is immoral or contrary to your value system, then you can join together and run 'em out of town. Such an occurence would give proof to the fact that rich doesn't always make right and evidence a healthy society in my opinion. If that doesn't happen and a community doesn't stand up for it's values, then I think the proper blame belongs on the community for not caring enough to defend their values, culture and heritage, not on capitalism per se. This is exactly the paradox that makes capitalism incompatible with conservatism, in my opinion. In the above statement, you say that the community should run off anyone who is using their wealth and/or business to harm the community. I agree with this completely, by the way. But then, you go on to say --
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]But as a red-blooded American, I get pretty cranky and tend to go looking for my squirrel gun when the 'community' backed up by government guns tells me how I should spend my money or what decisions I have to make in running my business. So, now you are saying (or at least implying) that it is illegitimate for the community to run you off if they think you're using your wealth and/or business to harm the community. Which is it?
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident] I'm saying that man needs to learn how to take care of himself and his household. When he does that the entire community is better off and ultimately stronger, both morally and physically. I completely agree that a man should learn how to take care of himself and his family, but he must also recognize obligations to the community at large.
2005-08-26 17:29 | User Profile
Barter is always a good fall-back position.
Got skills/knowledge: Trade it for what you need.
2005-08-26 17:32 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Quantrill]So, now you are saying (or at least implying) that it is illegitimate for the community to run you off if they think you're using your wealth and/or business to harm the community. Which is it?
At bottom it's the freedom to move elsewhere, absorb that as the cost of doing business in that particular place, or change my own business practices to be in line with said community values.
I completely agree that a man should learn how to take care of himself and his family, but he must also recognize obligations to the community at large.[/QUOTE]
I agree. I just think that a man best comes to recognize those obligations to the community in the process of striving to take care of his own. You can't force it from the top down. Well, you can, but it invariably becomes self-defeating I think.
2005-08-26 18:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE][Happy Hacker]Capitalism means letting me make my own business decisions. It does not mean protecting me from liability that arises from those decisions. Limited Liability has nothing to do with Capitalism.[/QUOTE] It depends upon how one defines the term "capitalism." I use the term in what I suppose to be its commonly-accepted meaning;i.e. basically the system we have now, with its most salient features being that of publicly traded corporations, stock markets, all-pervasive usury, massive governmental intervention in market relations, and anything-goes advertising, to name but a few.
You seem to conflate "capitalism" with the "free market." I'm all for a free market system, where people are free to trade in the market place, with the government acting as referee to insure full internalization of costs.
This is really Chicago School stuff. I think that most conservatives would agree with this general view of the free market: freedom to make economic choices balanced by the responsibility to assume the full costs of your choices.
If you want to call that "capitalism" then fine, I'll go with that. But like I said that's not how the term is currently understood in modern parlance. For example, our current economic system is very much based on the limited liabiltiy of the corporation. Limited liability is a wholly artifical state intervention in market relations, allowing passive investors to externalize the costs of investment risk. In fact, this is the whole basis of the corporate form: to encourage passive investors to take risks they otherwise wouldn't take if they were required to bear the full costs of their economic choices, as in a fully funcitoning free market system.
Another example is advertising. Calvin Klein, for example, polluted the moral commons with its kiddie porn ad campaign, thereby externalizing the costs of social capital.
[QUOTE]I also don't know why you object to Limited Liability. Could you give me a specific example? If you have no control of a company, and no inside knowledge, why should you be liable for loaning them your money, at least beyond the amount you loaned them? If you do have control, then you shouldn't have liability protection and usually the courts agree. [/QUOTE]
As I've said above, a free market is free choice combined with full liability for those choices; in other words, full internalization of all costs, including social costs. The corporation is designed for the specific purpose of avoiding the full costs attendant upon investments.
At the heart of every investment decision is a risk-benefit analysis. In the case of the corporation, the state comes in and in a wholly artificial manner allows investors to limit their risk of loss to the amount invested. But the amount invested might well not be full liabilty for all the costs attendant upon the risk assumed (as is often the case, e.g. Enron, Waste Management, Tyco, etc.). Now, the economic value of risk may be hard to quantify, but it is real. The economic value of that additonal risk doesn't simply vanish with the state waving a magic wand. Those additional economic costs of risk that passive investors avoid has to come out someplace, again Enron, Waste Management, etc. are symptoms of this unspoken problem of HUGE economic costs of risk put off on society at large.
[QUOTE]If advertising is done in the public commons, it ceases to be your business to control. So, it is not about capitalism. It's the local government's obligation to pretect minors from public exposure to obscenity. Capitalism doesn't change that.
Morality is necessary for all forms of freedom.[/QUOTE]
That's exactly what I'm saying.
The term here is "social capital." The moral milieu in which alone the free market can function (and this is directly from Adam Smith) has a real economic value. The problem is that the value of social capital is very, very difficult to quantify, and since it can't be clearly quantified the beancounters who run the world (and accountants do run the world) illogically choose to simply ignore the costs.
The costs of corporate limited liability, anything-goes advertising (have you seen Sex and the City's product placements?), fiat money and endemic usury all share one common denominator: all of these defining institutions of capitalism allow investors to sleeze their way out of full liability for thier economic choices by first denying that they exist and second by putting them off on the social captial account.
These are the true causes of our social decline. We as a people like prosperity without full liability for our actions. We've been mining the social capital account formed by our illustrious ancestors, and frankly I think it's about run dry. We can't on the one hand decry the loss of general morality while supporting the very instutions undergirding modern capitalism that are each specifically designed to privatize the social capital commons, while cleverly denying such a moral commons even exists.
We desparately need a new economics - one that can count the social capital beans.
The good news is that there are great attempts being made.
I respectfully suggest that you review the threads under the Distributism section. See especially the threads on corporations by David Korten, "Munger Goes Mental," and the link under "Social Capital."
2005-08-28 04:34 | User Profile
To misquote the Matrix: "There is no Capitalism."
This of it like this: most liberals say they oppose the Iraq War because it is just about oil. What they really mean is that if it were about oil, they would support it, and their opposition would be a sham. They want the big bad Government to do their dirty work and keep their cars running with a clean conscience. Mark my words--the day Liberals figure out that oil prices are going up is the day they will stop pussy-footing around and really oppose the war. More specifically, the Dems will engineer the requisite palace coup. Why not sooner? They figured the gummint had the oil angle covered.
See how that works? "Big Bad War" is a projection of Liberals, who full well support the war in practice. Capitalism is a similar mental construct. Modern Socialists (Liberals, Marxists, whatever) want there to be big, evil money-grubbing Daddy Warbucks. It is, after all, what they would do. And as long as the State Committee of Evil Capitalists can do its bounden duty and line their pockets too, it's all one to the Socialists whether Big Brother or Emmanual Goldstein pulls the strings.
If we stick to the real world of politics, we have no such beast as Capitalism. There is only the Jacobin Revolution of 1776/1789 and its various progeny. Certainly, there was a brief period of maybe 50 years a bit over a century ago when the sub-aristocratic allies of the Liberals held power--but that all went bust in the 1905-1910 time frame, and what survived that got broken up by Teddy R., Wilson, WW1, and such. Since then, it's been Socialism, all the way down. Liberalism. Marxism. Bushism. Whatever.
Capitalism never existed and can never exist--just a feverish projection of Messrs. Marx, Engels, and compatriots, and hardly a ripple even in the history of ideas. Markets? Free Trade? Har there's a funny one--show me someone with real property and real money and a willing seller and willing buyer and a real law court to back up their contracts and I'll show you Trade, if not exactly Free. Today we just have Rapine and Looting, at every cash register.
So sure, if by Capitalism one means Socialist Slavery, Worldwide, well then, there might be "something else". What else might there be? Let's start with real property before we Distributize it, but first you gots to hold on what you gots, and that takes--oh, Aristocracy, Power, Hierarchical social organization, not to mention guns, ammo, and food, and a culture . What is the alternative to Capitalism? I'd try children, myself. That and lots and lots of Time--works wonders in these cases. Worked for all the other slave societies, in the end.
2005-08-28 18:15 | User Profile
Capitalism is another "pretty" idea like Marxism, it just dosen't work. All the stuff most of us on this board hate, like multiculturalism, race-mixing, affirmative action, busing, Jew worship and feminism are all pushed by our big business masters. Those dopey idiots called Liberals have had very little to do with advancing those things. If they weren't in the interests of big business they never would have survived as ideas.
I believe in private property and I believe that the profit motive can be a good thing, but both can be abused. I have no intention of bowing down to either of them as my god, as most of the chattering classes do. The capitalists are ruining the country based on creating in people's minds a false dicotomy between Socialism and Capitalism. IF you are not in favor of "tooth and claw" "let the poor starve in the streets" capitalism then you are a Red, Commie, Socailist ect. ect. That's a lot of bull.
2005-08-30 13:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE=CornCod]Capitalism is another "pretty" idea like Marxism, it just dosen't work. All the stuff most of us on this board hate, like multiculturalism, race-mixing, affirmative action, busing, Jew worship and feminism are all pushed by our big business masters. Those dopey idiots called Liberals have had very little to do with advancing those things. If they weren't in the interests of big business they never would have survived as ideas.
I believe in private property and I believe that the profit motive can be a good thing, but both can be abused. I have no intention of bowing down to either of them as my god, as most of the chattering classes do. The capitalists are ruining the country based on creating in people's minds a false dicotomy between Socialism and Capitalism. IF you are not in favor of "tooth and claw" "let the poor starve in the streets" capitalism then you are a Red, Commie, Socailist ect. ect. That's a lot of bull.[/QUOTE]
You might find Distributism interesting.
I urge you to check out some of the threads under the Distributism sub-forum, if you haven't done so already.
2005-09-13 02:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]As ive heard in other discussions, captialisim seems to be the target of criticism as much as communisim. So what then ? Seems to me that capitalisim is a good thing, but limits must be put in place to promote the betterment of our own people.[/QUOTE] I don't think the problem is economic system.
If there were cultural values held at a higher level than capitalist values, a capitalist system could work.
That requires ethnic and cultural uniformity however.
International trade of any kind is destructive, however, as is international ownership. The solution is Nationalism, which would naturally moderate capitalism.
2005-09-13 07:59 | User Profile
To me, capitalism is merely an economic system where the capital is privately owned. That simple definition allows for many possible interpretations and varieties of capitalism.
I freely admit that economics is a subject I have never read about or studied much. But my opinion is that capitalism with certain key restraints is the best system available.
Even if we set aside certain relevant issues such as basic freedoms that not all of us will agree upon, I think capitalism makes a nation stronger by providing near-maximal encouragement of innovation and growth. In a system where the smartest innovators and the hardest workers are not allowed to receive the greatest possible benefits of their labor and insight, there is simply less incentive for those people to do their best. Few people are going to be as motivated to work "for the people" or "for the state" as for their families and themselves.
I think that much of America's current immense strength in certain important areas (e.g., science, medicine) stems directly from the fact that the cleverest and most creative two percent or so of the population is rewarded handsomely for their efforts. After all, what else sets us apart? There are other nations that have plenty of natural resources like we do. Other nations have just as many bright and creative people as we do (maybe more) and proportionately far fewer parasites. Maybe there are other factors I'm failing to consider, but my best stab at this point is that a great deal of America's strength comes straight from its economic system.
On the other hand, I don't believe that capitalism should be wholly unrestricted. In order to safeguard the nation's identity and even its security in a very tangible sense, outsourcing and hiring of resident non-citizens should be tightly controlled. Export laws would also have to strike a balance between increasing profits and selling out the nation's citizens. But all in all, I think such restrictions wouldn't eliminate the primary strength of a capitalistic system, again meaning its unique ability to encourage innovations that benefit the entire country.