Your Thoughts on Capitalism
- Thread starter DrDeath3191
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All for it, but it needs to be heavily regulated. Otherwise the world will become inundated with shite. Kind of like now.
I like capitalism as an economic system. But it has to be regulated so corporations don't go nuts like they did back in the days of the Robber Barons of America during the late 1800's during the Industrial Revolution. Capitalism when left to it's own devices tend to get a little out of control. Lots of the little people get screwed over. I also like the idea of having all government services provided for in a Socialized manner including Health Care. Leave the markets with regulation to do as they will with in reason and provide for the people with Socialized services.
See? Like this.Skeleon said:
Heh. I prefer Civilization, but that's just me.SimuLord said:
/half-hearted joke
Anyway, it's worked thus far, and will probably work for a while, though we'll need some new industries if we want to save our economy. That's really all I have to say on the matter.
A socialist scheme however rids that capital system. The minimum wage will rise double or more so that everyone has more money and more free time to themselves. Of course with the body of government having to fund more things such as businesses, tax would be raised a lot. Pretty much, things stay the same but the weak and the strong are equal as well as arts and social bonding grows stronger other then this 'lone survive' attitude. Shareholders hold back too many good things that companies can do.DrDeath3191 said:
We should increase fair trade rather then attempting to increase capital so that we know that war/arms/poverty isn't going to strengthen in other countries.
A country is as good as it treats its worst. Capitalism stands on them as a podium. I find that disgusting. I hate money and I hate how it's power is used so hideously. Fuck Coke and controlling what we see on TV. Fuck the media having to sell themselves to advertising so we can watch the news. Fuck Nike and how the fund the shit in this world.
Mixed to be truthful.
I personally don't think the people who call for 'free markets' or worship capitalism have rationally thought things through. With the absence of any regulatory body comes a hell of a lot of predatory, greedy, individuals who have no qualms about causing pain to make a buck. Many, MANY, examples can be found in history under either free markets that have existed in the past, such as the frontier towns where the law was one guy on a horse too busy to regulate the market himself, right through to mercantile systems where the merchant lords where untouchable by the law. All systems where there wasn't a viable system there to protect the consumer has led to the old saying:
Caveat emptor... let the buyer beware.
The idea that the market would self regulated is folly, having as much success as communism or democracy does in today world... ie: collapsing outside of small communities where you can kick the arse of people who try and break it. With marketing campaigns, corruptible media and the incestuous twists and turns of companies owning other companies it is ridiculous to believe a little bad press would stop those profiting off the harm of others. HELL... even with regulations in place we still see massive amounts of harmful products being passed through these systems. The bad press generated causing only limited loss of sales, worse case. At best... the very systems the 'free market' worshippers want to get rid of finally step in to remove the defective product from shelves.
A monopoly, or even just a good add campaign, seems able to trump 'rumours.'
YET!
Regulated and controlled, Capitalism is a driving force that can be very beneficial to the world at large. If the markets are too completely controlled, either by a monopoly force or governmental intervention, then we see a massive decrease in the in the economy of a nation and hence the quality of life. Without Capitalism many of us would still be nothing but serfs living with a dozen people in a shack the size of a small shed. It was the idea that selling things to us, Capitalism, that allows for a good deal of growth in a nation even if we don't really like the way some of that growth has gone.
So no matter how much we might hate the idea of large, super greedy, corporate bodies doing anything to make a buck we have to realise they are a minority... a rich and destructive minority but a minority. We should go after them tooth and nail ever chance we get, never ending our vigilance against the next big scam they will pull, but in doing so we shouldn't trash the whole idea of capitalism. It is a force that creates far more good in the world then evil... and as a socialist telling you this that should mean something.
After all every business that exists out there is part of the capitalism structure! The vast majority are more then willing to act within the law. Willing to exist not just to benefit the owner of a business, but to do so while providing a product or service that we require. The trick... finding the right balance between freedoms and control of the world economies.
Doubtful leaving them in the hands of the richest 1% of families is a good idea though....
I personally don't think the people who call for 'free markets' or worship capitalism have rationally thought things through. With the absence of any regulatory body comes a hell of a lot of predatory, greedy, individuals who have no qualms about causing pain to make a buck. Many, MANY, examples can be found in history under either free markets that have existed in the past, such as the frontier towns where the law was one guy on a horse too busy to regulate the market himself, right through to mercantile systems where the merchant lords where untouchable by the law. All systems where there wasn't a viable system there to protect the consumer has led to the old saying:
Caveat emptor... let the buyer beware.
The idea that the market would self regulated is folly, having as much success as communism or democracy does in today world... ie: collapsing outside of small communities where you can kick the arse of people who try and break it. With marketing campaigns, corruptible media and the incestuous twists and turns of companies owning other companies it is ridiculous to believe a little bad press would stop those profiting off the harm of others. HELL... even with regulations in place we still see massive amounts of harmful products being passed through these systems. The bad press generated causing only limited loss of sales, worse case. At best... the very systems the 'free market' worshippers want to get rid of finally step in to remove the defective product from shelves.
A monopoly, or even just a good add campaign, seems able to trump 'rumours.'
YET!
Regulated and controlled, Capitalism is a driving force that can be very beneficial to the world at large. If the markets are too completely controlled, either by a monopoly force or governmental intervention, then we see a massive decrease in the in the economy of a nation and hence the quality of life. Without Capitalism many of us would still be nothing but serfs living with a dozen people in a shack the size of a small shed. It was the idea that selling things to us, Capitalism, that allows for a good deal of growth in a nation even if we don't really like the way some of that growth has gone.
So no matter how much we might hate the idea of large, super greedy, corporate bodies doing anything to make a buck we have to realise they are a minority... a rich and destructive minority but a minority. We should go after them tooth and nail ever chance we get, never ending our vigilance against the next big scam they will pull, but in doing so we shouldn't trash the whole idea of capitalism. It is a force that creates far more good in the world then evil... and as a socialist telling you this that should mean something.
After all every business that exists out there is part of the capitalism structure! The vast majority are more then willing to act within the law. Willing to exist not just to benefit the owner of a business, but to do so while providing a product or service that we require. The trick... finding the right balance between freedoms and control of the world economies.
Doubtful leaving them in the hands of the richest 1% of families is a good idea though....
Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Adam Smith greatly favour Regulated markets? That while he favoured leaving businesses, particularly smaller ones, alone he was very vocal against the idea of a completely unregulated market system. Is it not true that he saw within such a system a force that would control and dominate the economy for selfish gains, eventually crippling and destroying that very market and with it the nations wealth?Gildan Bladeborn said:
Adam smith must be rolling in his grave, I am sure, to see how that 'ownership class' uses his words today. Much like the way fundamental nut jobs take individual passages from the bible and discard the rest, which doesn't fit into their closed minded vision of how the world should be, these 'free market worshippers' are more then willing to take what things Adam Smith said that benefit a free market vision and discard the rest. Their own small minded vision of the way the world should be can never, ever, incorporate the WHOLE of a teaching that came from a mind that saw the greater economical picture.
In reality, when looking over what sort of person Adam Smith was and what he wrote on the matter we see more then just blindly letting the markets do whatever they want. We see a man who understood the basic nature of humanity was to be a greedy self centred bastards! Yet a man who realised that is both a good and bad thing, for in serving ourselves we may very well serve the greater good, if as nothing more then a by-product.
He then went forth and spoke, saying the market place would encourage the good while we should be vigilant against the bad that will follow... by JUSTLY regulating that market!
Firstly, I am largely pro-capitalism. I think it's generally good for growth and responsiveness to consumer needs and desires. However, I think people can get a bit unrealistically dewy-eyed about capitalism.
If the likes of Enron, the banking collapse, or even people like Madoff and Conrad Black have taught us anything, it's that capitalists can screw the place up as well as anyone if they aren't being watched over very carefully. Top businessmen can behave like tyrants, arranging vast benefits for themselves whilst the bulk of their workers get nothing. I read some top execs in the UK had a deal going where the company paid for all their transport costs, by which I mean even their own, personal travel. Why, as a shareholder or a worker, should I have my earnings limited so that someone who earns 200 times what I do gets a load of his personal, non-business expenditure covered by the company? Why should I pay proportionally more tax to the government than someone who earns 200 times more than I do, just because the company arranges his remuneration so that most is non-taxable? Why should I get taxed 30% of my income for my hard work, when some guy doesn't do any work and inherits several times my lifetime earnings tax free - how is that "rewarding" work? And yet vast amounts of media inches and internet forum databases are full of people complaining about welfare scroungers, with very little attention being paid to the fact they are getting screwed from the other direction.
Capitalism is also massively dangerous to egalitarianism. Even 300 years ago or so, John Locke realised that vast wealth imbalances cause social disorder and inherent inequality.
Imagine a system whereby a minimal state only provides the law, law enforcement and the army. It's pretty much true that the more you spend, the better you'll get of something. Let's consider education. Poor parents could only afford worse (if any) education for their kids, this would severely impair their ability to be successful. You'd simply lock a cycle whereby the poor and their descendants stayed poor, whilst the rich stayed rich. They'd also be impaired by worse healthcare, and whatever else they couldn't afford. In such a country, there's not even any meaningful equality of opportunity.
Currently in the USA, the top richest 1% of the country's population owns about 40% of the USA's total wealth; the top 5% own about 60%. Wealth is often dependent on wealth - you can't make money via investments (property, shares) unless you have the wealth to invest in the first place. This also makes it easier for the rich to stay rich, and harder for the poor to become rich.
Also importantly, consider the role that wealth plays in politics. One rich man can fund a massive campaign single-handedly; a poor man has to convince thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to back him before he even runs. In any developed country, the legislature and executives are massively and unrepresentatively full of people who were independently wealthy before they entered politics, and most of them were from wealthy families, rather than being "self-made". It stands to reason many of them will legislate with the interests of themselves and their social circle in mind. If they are being bankrolled heavily by a few individuals or organisations, we could reasonably consider them "bought" to represent the interests of those individuals. In this sense, the nation is at risk of increasingly representing an oligarchy or plutocracy, where the government acts in the interests of the privileged, rather than the population as a whole.
Capitalism needs to be clamped down on in many areas.
If the likes of Enron, the banking collapse, or even people like Madoff and Conrad Black have taught us anything, it's that capitalists can screw the place up as well as anyone if they aren't being watched over very carefully. Top businessmen can behave like tyrants, arranging vast benefits for themselves whilst the bulk of their workers get nothing. I read some top execs in the UK had a deal going where the company paid for all their transport costs, by which I mean even their own, personal travel. Why, as a shareholder or a worker, should I have my earnings limited so that someone who earns 200 times what I do gets a load of his personal, non-business expenditure covered by the company? Why should I pay proportionally more tax to the government than someone who earns 200 times more than I do, just because the company arranges his remuneration so that most is non-taxable? Why should I get taxed 30% of my income for my hard work, when some guy doesn't do any work and inherits several times my lifetime earnings tax free - how is that "rewarding" work? And yet vast amounts of media inches and internet forum databases are full of people complaining about welfare scroungers, with very little attention being paid to the fact they are getting screwed from the other direction.
Capitalism is also massively dangerous to egalitarianism. Even 300 years ago or so, John Locke realised that vast wealth imbalances cause social disorder and inherent inequality.
Imagine a system whereby a minimal state only provides the law, law enforcement and the army. It's pretty much true that the more you spend, the better you'll get of something. Let's consider education. Poor parents could only afford worse (if any) education for their kids, this would severely impair their ability to be successful. You'd simply lock a cycle whereby the poor and their descendants stayed poor, whilst the rich stayed rich. They'd also be impaired by worse healthcare, and whatever else they couldn't afford. In such a country, there's not even any meaningful equality of opportunity.
Currently in the USA, the top richest 1% of the country's population owns about 40% of the USA's total wealth; the top 5% own about 60%. Wealth is often dependent on wealth - you can't make money via investments (property, shares) unless you have the wealth to invest in the first place. This also makes it easier for the rich to stay rich, and harder for the poor to become rich.
Also importantly, consider the role that wealth plays in politics. One rich man can fund a massive campaign single-handedly; a poor man has to convince thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to back him before he even runs. In any developed country, the legislature and executives are massively and unrepresentatively full of people who were independently wealthy before they entered politics, and most of them were from wealthy families, rather than being "self-made". It stands to reason many of them will legislate with the interests of themselves and their social circle in mind. If they are being bankrolled heavily by a few individuals or organisations, we could reasonably consider them "bought" to represent the interests of those individuals. In this sense, the nation is at risk of increasingly representing an oligarchy or plutocracy, where the government acts in the interests of the privileged, rather than the population as a whole.
Capitalism needs to be clamped down on in many areas.
It really doesn't. I can't think of a more common misconception about capitalism, it's almost as widespread as "communists hate freedom". Perhaps (which of course means not really) the first generation of capitalists in a society will get a return in some way proportional to their work input, however luck is more of a factor.DrDeath3191 said:
In a strictly capitalist society people are born into money, and money makes money, sure one in 10 million might get exceptionally lucky and have their excruciatingly hard work pay off, but the significant proportion of people who work hard (and smart, working smart is equally important) will not have wealth that mirrors their work ethic. Once you get to a certain point of rich it doesn't matter what your family do, they aren't ever going to lose that wealth.
Total capitalism (as in completely free market), over a long enough timespan will end with an incredibly small proportion of people holding all the wealth, and thus we end up back at square one with what is effectively a fuedal system. This is why government is necissary.
Capitalism cannot work long term by its very nature, elements of it are definately needed within a society but it is madness to advocate any pure form of it.
I've got one thing to mention here: Would you imagine the videogame industry being monopolised by corporate companies like Activision and Microsoft?
Sure it's an extreme example but while capitalism rewards hard work and determination it may as well be called an oligarchy.
Sure it's an extreme example but while capitalism rewards hard work and determination it may as well be called an oligarchy.
I think capitalism is necessary for the advancement of technology. Only if people are individually striving to make the best of themselves are discoveries made.
However, once we're living in a futuristic super-civilisation, I imagine capitalism will die out on its own.
However, once we're living in a futuristic super-civilisation, I imagine capitalism will die out on its own.
I think a pragmatic approach is required here. Plus a look at which countries on earth seem to outstrip all others when it comes to general quality of life. By this, I'm not talking about wealth, but other things as well. Crime, health, enviroment, levels of stress, the sorts of things that make life tick. Time and again, one little area in Northern Europe comes out on top again, and again, and again.
We are talking here about Norway, Sweden, Demark, Finland, Holland, and Iceland. Little countries tucked away from public eye. It really is strange when you think about it, since these places really have got it cracked. So what did they do right I hear you ask? Well they certianly aren't purely Socialist if that's what you want to know. Yet they aren't free-market capitalist either.
What we are talking about here are Social Democracies, capitalism with the leash on. These are places that have learned the lessons of the first Great Depression and have never forgotten them. As much private initiative as possible, as much government intervention as necessary. Though that seems a rather glib, obvious statement, it does lead onto a very important question - what exactly is 'necessary'?
First and foremost is the financial sector, the heart of any capitalist state. It is after all the provision of credit (and thus the creation of debt) that allows firms (and countries) to function in the modern sense. However, the power that they wield is (or can be) enormous. In the aftermath of the Great Crash (and the Great Depression that followed it) it was held, for at least a while in certian quarters, that there needed to be a limit on what a bank could do. However, from the 1960's onwards, the safeguards that Roosevelt put in place were gradually dismantled. Thus we had a return to Wild West environment of the 1920's.
That such a disaster occured in 2007-08 should be no surprise to anyone. Sadly, it did not seem 'bad enough' for any real reform to take place. I look forward in trepidation to the next Great Crash, when (not if) it happens.
Allowing such a relaxation of laws seems bad enough. Basing your economy on such a system doesn't bare thinking about. Yet Britain did it, and now it is reeping the whirlwind even as we speak.
We are talking here about Norway, Sweden, Demark, Finland, Holland, and Iceland. Little countries tucked away from public eye. It really is strange when you think about it, since these places really have got it cracked. So what did they do right I hear you ask? Well they certianly aren't purely Socialist if that's what you want to know. Yet they aren't free-market capitalist either.
What we are talking about here are Social Democracies, capitalism with the leash on. These are places that have learned the lessons of the first Great Depression and have never forgotten them. As much private initiative as possible, as much government intervention as necessary. Though that seems a rather glib, obvious statement, it does lead onto a very important question - what exactly is 'necessary'?
First and foremost is the financial sector, the heart of any capitalist state. It is after all the provision of credit (and thus the creation of debt) that allows firms (and countries) to function in the modern sense. However, the power that they wield is (or can be) enormous. In the aftermath of the Great Crash (and the Great Depression that followed it) it was held, for at least a while in certian quarters, that there needed to be a limit on what a bank could do. However, from the 1960's onwards, the safeguards that Roosevelt put in place were gradually dismantled. Thus we had a return to Wild West environment of the 1920's.
That such a disaster occured in 2007-08 should be no surprise to anyone. Sadly, it did not seem 'bad enough' for any real reform to take place. I look forward in trepidation to the next Great Crash, when (not if) it happens.
Allowing such a relaxation of laws seems bad enough. Basing your economy on such a system doesn't bare thinking about. Yet Britain did it, and now it is reeping the whirlwind even as we speak.
Yes.Threesan said:
Trust me if I was a staunch Republican in this day and age I'd either be too busy trying to get my party back to be on a forum, or calling everyone to the left of hitler an evil marxo-nazi-muslim-communist for hating Jesus and the free market.
Rooster Cogburn said:
^for once, some one who knows what their on about^
Firstly I'd like to say that Communism does not work. Boys and girls, the cold war is over, forget that socialism is evil propaganda.
Unfortunately capitalism however has it's ugly side call monopoly, and mega corporations. Great example of a mega corporations is the 'East India Corporation'. They had their own personal army that rivalled that of many nations. Today, you've just got to look at the Black Water corporation, and Shell Oil.
And for your 'freedom loving, Capitalist loving Americans' Monopoly was one of the reason the American war of independence started.
Capitalism has another weak point, and that is that capitalism needs growth to survive. If it stops growing, people go out of work and stave. Economic crisis anyone? These mega corporations are controlling so much, when they hit the wall out of greed, allot of innocent people get hurt, and end up paying for their mistakes (government bailouts), because without them, nobody gets paid.
What we need (the west) is a hybrid between the two. Government should provide free health care, defence, education, law enforcement, and build and maintain infrastructure of a nation. Voting (taking part in democracy) should be compulsory. Everyone should have a say 18+.
Censorship and copyright should also go to hell. Freedom of information! (information should be free!)
Oh, and "capitalism" does not mean "America" ... people, China is a capitalist nation now... and considering their government owns just about everything there, that's some scary S***
Unfortunately I don't have enough knowledge of capitalism to really make a valid opinion about it... but from what I know I think it encourages greed, frankly.
I think we need a better system.
I think we need a better system.