This can´t be so simple: If you make profits, somewhere, someone is becoming poorer.

This is just an attenpt to celebrate ignorant tabloidism.

 

If you knew any economics you wouldn’t find the statement dumb at all, in fact is shows insight. The statement is not universally true, but there is some truth to the statement, especially as applied to certain type of profits.

The statement as applied to the profits of productive efforts is false. This is because production increases the supply of goods available to society, making everyone more prosperous.

However, the statement as applied to the profits of privilege is true. The returns to privilege are not earned, they fall under the category of rents. These types of profits do not increase production, but rather just alter the distribution of wealth. Individuals who seek to capture the profits from rent are said to be engaged in rent-seeking:

Clearly the profits of rent-seeking make others poorer.

Finally, the whole idea of free markets is that profits are to be a temporary phenomenon, as competition is suppose to eliminate profits while raising wages. If profits of a singular idea or business plan are sustained, one can conclude that some form of privilege must be at play, and that indeed these profits are making someone, somewhere poorer than they would be if competition were not being hindered.

 

In regards to outsourcing. It is not neccessarily a bad thing. Really an ideal sitaution that we've been partially able to achieve is where you have people in your country doing interesting design related jobs, and then the crappy low paying manufacturing work gets done elsewhere. It's part of why our GDP per capita is so very high. I don't think we're the highest in the world anymore. But it isn't like the other countries got up there by making iPhones in sweatshops (actually I think those ahead of us are there because of small populations and lots of oil).

Of course for that to really work you've got to be able to get the outsourced people into other jobs, ideally better ones, and that hasn't always gone so well. I think we might have outsourced too fast, not giving the market and people time to adjust.

Though we also conflate things with the bizzare situation during and after 'nam where people had been going to college or Canada to avoid war and many others were fighting or dead and for a while you could make more money as an unskilled laborer in manufactoring (if you were white) than in a job requiring a college degree. That isn't the gold standard to compare against. It was a freak occurance that hadn't happened before, and will never happen again barring some situation like that.

And yet there have been a number of countries with communist in their name or communist in the name of their ruling party.

They are what attempts at the utopic version of communism actually get you.

But that's off topic. And we've been over this before, I just can't resist.

 

Poor sentence structure. Outsourcing is typically a positive thing

 

Did you not see the post Reiver was referring to?

The post was inundated with ignorance about how trade works (post #13) and that the long run impact of offshoring (the poster called it outsourcing, but we'll make some assumptions) is generally positive. This post, in light of post #19, seems very odd.

 

There hasn't been a country to date which has called itself communist, only ones that have claimed to be 'building socialism'. I suspect that when you think of communism you think of Stalinist Russia, Peasant-Stalinist China, or the various once independent countries that became their satellite states - not Yugoslavia, or pre-Stalinist Russia which happened to be more democratic than any country today. You're probably not trying to be disrespectful but when you claim that "socialism failed there because it's utopian and unrealistic" or whatever you disrespect the memory of the thousands of genuine communists that died at the hands of Stalin's thugs in the great purge, and the majority of Russia's population at the time that was pro Bolshevik that suffered from Stalin's repression and police state that grew from his anti-communist counter-revolution.

 

Which identifies the problem. Socialism isn't a natural state, there requires a strong government to maintain it. A government that attracts power hungary thugs like Stalin, and Mao, that coo-opt that power and corrupt it. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely....

 

This makes no sense as capitalism exists because of 'strong government'. Its capitalism tendency towards crisis that ensures that result (together with government coercion actually creating the conditions required for markets to develop)

 

Which needs a stronger government, socialism, or capitalism?

Government coersion requires enough strength to have something to offer, meaning weak a government is less subject to coersion.

 

The natural world, untouched by man, has a fixed amount of resources but in such enormous quantity that it would literally take a population 10 times greater than what we have to exhaust the almost limitless uses to which it could be put in order for it to be a benefit. Man made wealth is not static, it is dynamic (meaning that it expands with knowledge and labor and the potential for expansion of such wealth is literally exponential.) Your formulation is literally a contradiction. Profits are the product of mutually beneficial trade between producers so your formulation to be accurate must read: If someone is making a profit then others are profiting as well.

 

Capitalism. Socialism, for example, is compatable with a libertarian outlook. There is no need for nationalisation and government can be limited to two key aspects: protection of property rights and support for publix good provision. Capitalism, in contrast, always requires a coercive government to ensure the reproduction of capitalist profit.

You're not making sense

 

Neither is capitalism a natural state and it also requires a strong government to maintain it.

Capitalism does nothing to eliminate the corrupting power you speak of in your post, it simply shifts that power into the hands of large landowners. As with socialism, this unequal power, now in the hands of large landowners, must be protected. Thus capitalism requires an army of policemen and soldiers, as well as a substantial welfare system, to maintain the inequitable system and stave off the inevitable rebellions which would otherwise result. Basically, capitalism must adopt socialist tendencies because capitalism is beholden to the state for its very existence. At its very core, capitalism causes socialism. Albert Nock explains the demise of capitalism here:

There can be no solution to the problems created by consolidated power. The only sustainable solution is that power must be disassembled and spread as thin as possible.

This is why I support a land value tax and a citizens dividend, because these two policies when applied in conjunction, serve to eliminate not only the power of landownership, by spreading that power thinly to all citizens, but the coincidental power given to the state in order that such an inequitable system be maintained.

 

What is a natural state? Was feudalism a natural state? What about tribalism?
I think a natural societal order is one without class antagonisms, an organically organized society designed to meet the needs of the people through democratic planning, a society where the state has turned into an accountable and transparent service provider and has thus ceased to be a state in the traditional sense - in other words communism. History moves in progressive cycles, moving closer to a natural state - one without real internal contradictions - with each new stage.

And what's this "power corrupts" business? You're trying to argue against a system designed to be truly democratic and thus safeguarded with real input from each individual - a system that's truly organized democratically both politically and economically - by telling us that power corrupts? We already know power corrupts, that's why we want to be rid of this system.

 

Just can't agree here because there's no way to start from scratch, no one can just wipe the slate clean and transition (unless in the wake of some catastrophe) would be horribly messy and not possible without violence. There's no objective understanding of property rights and perception is reality, so what you'd call restoring property rights from the other guys perspective would be theft and whether it's true or not isn't even relevant.

 

On the off chance the OP is still in the thread. While people are drifting regarding the topic, nobody is opposing the idea that in the world we live in trading can be and almost always is mutually benificial, nor do they have an issue with the idea that one can profit without it being to the detriment of someone else.

We've gotten down into lower level of discussions regarding how such profit should be divided up and how society should be organized in general.

You mean the Russian Provisional Government? I can't help but find it funny that you keep pringing up examples in various threads that, when I look them up, turn out to have utterly failed and ceased to exist within a matter of months.

I doubt many people in the many "communist" countries got themselves shot in horrifically bloody conflicts just so their families could eventually get "re-educated" or whatnot. Rather I think many of them wanted something rather similar to what you want. I'll actually cut the Russians a lot of slack in that they were experimenting with new concepts and philosophies.

It's later communists and socialists that come off looking like people who figure this Nigerian is a truely legitimate banker and they will totally be able to get you the millions in inheritance you have coming from your long lost relative if you just poney up the money for a few little taxes and surcharges.

Especially when you don't start off the discussion by covering the entire past history of such attempts as anything but valuable lessons learned in how to do it wrong.

 

Changing property rights within capitalism is a common practice: from enforced nationalisation (sometimes for long term survival reasons) to forcing merger or radically altered boundaries of the firm. There's no such ad hoc behaviour in socialism. Its purely about ensuring the individual is protected (ironically by ensuring the market operates)

The problem is that you don't support the protection of property rights. You ignore abuse when its convenient. Calling it theft makes sense. Compensation is paid, just with that compensation according to value without theft occurring

 

I don't see a cross the board radical shifts in property rights as analogous to anti-trust activities (such as breaking up standard oil). I'm not even arguing whether or not it's the right or just thing to do, only that it would be messy. You act as if there's no long established political alliances that would fight tooth and nail against the change.

Of course I do, I'm just able to see it through both lenses and acknowledge that both the arguments of liberals and socialists have merit. However, my personal feelings about it aren't relevant to my concern above.

 

You see ad hoc decisions inconsistent with the protection of individual rights.

I've always made it clear that capitalism is highly effective in reproducing economic rents. I'm but honest about the nature of those rents and the gains to be had, in terms of productivity gains, from eliminating those rents by protecting the individual from exploitation.

What definition of liberalism are you using? The petty left brigade that crow about welfare whilst ensuring theft is protected?

 

Call it what you want, anti-trust actions taken by the state aren't analogous with a radical, across the board shift.

And there are folks who have strongly vested interests in sustaining the status quo. That those folks would simply capitulate once it's pointed out their exploiting people is completely unrealistic. It ought to be obvious from here that first, convincing anyone that's the case is no simple task and second that those with vested interests wouldn't actively work to undermine the message.

The one that posses that government ought have a limited role in the control over prices, wages and rents.

 

Classical liberalism is long dead. You could refer to the likes of liberal political economy, but that tends to have rather backward understanding of firm behaviour (making the huffing and puffing about government look peevish)

 

This wasn't a conversation about firm behavior though, you accused me of not being interested in property rights and I simply stated that I'm agnostic and that I can see both the socialist and the economic liberal arguments for and against the private ownership of capital.

I do tend to lean towards the latter since it seems the be the emergent outcome but no so much that it blinds me from the counter argument.

 

Of course its a conversation about firm behaviour. Its that behaviour that ensures property rights are attacked.

 

If socialism needs minimal government, then it should be the natural state, and it isn't. Why do you think that is?

If you were right, employee owned businesses would outcompete "capitalistic" companies. Over time, only employee owned companies would exist. I don't see that.

You keep saying that - how about a public link to back it up.

You didn't understand? A government strong enough to charge high taxes, and enact expensive regulation (something to offer) makes the cost to bribe politicians and regulators less than the profits resulting from manipulation of taxes and regulations.

 

You're talking nonsense. There is no 'natural state'. Crikey, economics itself is characterised by the study of multiple equilibria.

Nonsense again! There is a distinction between profitability and productivity. Its that distinction which ensures that inefficiency isn't driven out by the invisible hand

An amusing comment given the current government interventionism following the ugly consequences of neo-liberalism. All we need for government coercion to be a vital element is a tendency towards market concentration, allowing cost-plus pricing. Do we see that? Why yes!

Indeed, I have a problem with drivel.

Influence costs are part of any hierarchical system. Given hierarchy inherent in capitalism, you're just chasing your tail

 

Wow have you got your definitions backwards. Socialism is compatible with a libertarian outlook! Capitalism requires a stronger govt! What a hoot!

"Capitalism, in contrast, always requires a coercive government to ensure the reproduction of capitalist profit." Yep, you dont have a clue what capitalism and socialism are.

Capitalism only requires a govt to protect the border and regulate business. Socialism requires the power to dictate need, allocate resources, and force each and every individual to follow the govt mandates.