The Capitalist System Is Decaying Because Of Its Own Contradictions

Ja, Ich versteh.

I just always want to know what the critics of capitalism mean when they criticize it.

 

There has to be a chance of alternatives on which to place a bet.

 

I have faith in my ability to reason.

 

If expectations are low that may explain why Danes are happy ??

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...ish-dont-have-the-secret-to-happiness/384930/

 

Then you have no idea what reason and faith are. They are opposites, to have faith in reason is to confess to a contradiction. Check your metaphysical premises, especially the axioms of existence and the laws of identity. In essence to say I have faith in reason is to say I believe circles are squares.

 

Great reply. A tip of the hat to you.

 

Bitte Schön.

 

I absolutely do. I have faith in my ability to reason. There is no contradiction in that.

 

Honestly, you'd have to personally ask them to get an answer.

 

I believe that has been done by the author of the piece published in the Atlantic.

 

Well there is your answer.

 

Proves the old saying "You Can lead a horse to water, but you can't make the SOB drink." So you have no knowledge if your reason works, you just accept whatever your subconscious or conscious tells you. And to hell with worrying about the scientific validity or the logical consistency of a conclusion. You just know your right based on blind belief. Fair enough. I'm willing to let reality be the final judge of your epistemological self-induced blindness and how effective it is. Then again, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.

 

I have a clear understanding of how my reasoning works. And I have faith that my capability for making correct and accurate conclusions is sound.

Your post is absurd.

 

FUNDAMENTAL NECESSITIES

Let's try learning first-'n-foremost what the word means:
Capitalism (sociological)= an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

Note that the key-word is Wealth, not Income. Of course, Wealth is merely the result of Taxed Income. Which is why there is such a hullaballoo about taxation and levels thereof. Because, without a sociological definition of what is the purpose of an economic system, then one can easily think (wrongly) that it is all about the accumulation of Wealth.

The purpose of an economic system is most certainly not that, regardless of the fact that such happens when taxation is manipulated specifically for precisely that purpose. Which is the awful case that afflicts America today.

The US today, like most developed countries, is a capitalist market-economy the purpose of which is taxation that benefits the accumulation of value by a select group of individuals. The consequences of that fact are what differentiates the US from Social Democracies. In Social Democracies, the capitalist market-economy institutes high-taxation to assure the guaranteed benefits of certain key political objectives.

Foremost of which are National Healthcare Services as well as very low-cost Tertiary Education, and in general the provision of societal benefits indicated in the first two levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

Foremost of the above sociological needs are the monetary-means for assuring at the very least the first two layers. Which means that basic economic rules must be made/implemented to assure that the most people in the nation are assured at the very least those two fundamental necessities - physiological and safety.

Post Scriptum: The above Hierarchy of Needs was first proposed by Maslow in the 1940s, which is now, today, 75 years ago. And we have still, as a nation, not found the means to implement the basic first two levels ...

 

More one-liner rubbish sarcasm ...

 

Where do you read that?

When responding to comment on this site, quote your source!

That's how debate forums work .... !!!!!

 

Ayn Rand on faith: "Faith” designates blind acceptance of a certain ideational content, acceptance induced by feeling in the absence of evidence or proof."
"The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.----http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/faith.html

Merriam-Webster is America's most trusted online dictionary for English word definitions, meanings, and pronunciation. #wordsmatter; Faith = firm belief in something for which there is no proof--https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith

Starjet's Definition: Blind acceptance of the unprovable.

Notice the similarity of all three definitions. To say you have faith in your mind's ability to reason is to say you have no evidence that your mind's reasoning power work's. Its stupid, It's a contradiction. If you can reason, that's the proof, that's the knowledge.

For example, if you reason the earth will keep rotating tomorrow, then that's knowledge. Furthermore, that the earth will is your proof. And if you logically deduce this conclusion and empirical evidence backs your conclusion up, that's not faith, because faith requires no evidence, no logic, no proof--which, by the way, is why Christians say they have faith in God and assert that God is unprovable and unknowable except through faith.

However, I do agree that you, at least still in America, somewhat, are free to think as you please, and I have the same right, and I think what you state is utterly nonsensical.

Best wishes and good luck.
Starjet

P.S Space Shuttles aren't launched on faith, except maybe the Challenger, which is why it crashed. There were men who knew the empirical evidence said: "Don't launch". But they had faith all would be well. They were wrong.

In any event, we have gone way off topic of this thread. So I will no longer debate this issue with you. As I said, you certainly are free to think as you please. and I am certainly free to disagree. Let's leave it at that.

Again, Best of wishes and good luck.

 

Bollocks! ONLY if you measure "individual freedom" in terms of Wealth Accumulation.

And most economists are not so stoopid as to do so ...

 

Ayn Rand is not the best person from which to quote understanding on either faith or societal-systems. She was a refugee from Communist Russia and because her family was dispossessed of all its wealth, she became virulently anti-communist - even if, at first, she was attracted to it.

From WikiPedia, an excerpt:

Most Americans today have never undergone such devastating conditions (since 1939 and the Great Depression). It is no wonder she became virulently anti-communist. But what happened to Ayn Rand and the subsequent writing of her key philosophical work "Objectivism" is highly unique to her circumstance at that time.

Most Russians today would not sympathize with her, despite having seen first-hand the ravages of Communism as a political faith in Russia. But, many Russians today have good reason to believe their current version of capitalism is not what it should be. (Most of Russia's national wealth is owned by a small clique of Putin's friends - beginning with his daughter's husband Shamalov.)

Here is an encapsulation of the Ayn Rand's Objectivism:

All well and good, but it is perfectly apparent that it was written by somebody who lived under Communist Rule and who never saw her family again once she had the great good-fortune to immigrate to America in 1926.

The reality of our existence, I suggest, is somewhere in-between what Ayn Rand thought was "Objectivism" and abject-communism where her parents suffered from in Communist Russia. Which is what Europe has moved on to in the form of Social Democracy.

But her "having found the light-of-freedom" in America's version of a capitalist economy is not per se an obvious outcome. What happened is that she fit right into an existing belief-pattern (in the latter half of the 1920s) that had already great faith in capitalism. (Of course, when the entire system collapsed from "overheating" in the Great Recession, much of that unbounded faith suffered greatly.)

Capitalism is what one believes in simply because they live in such a system and refuse the belief in governmental intervention to correct its societal shortcomings. (Which are myriad.)

The shortcomings of capitalism abound - particularly as regards the accumulation of Wealth by manipulating tax-systems such that the shift upwards from Income to Wealth is favored to a highly select minor percentage of the population...

 

Wallerstein didn't say that this was his definition. But let's say it is. Where is the limit he contends exists?

 

The limit to what?

 

The limits to capitalism referenced in the OP.

What are these limits?

 

Sorry, but I cannot find the text from my post in which that quote supposedly derives.

Still, there are no limits to capitalism except bankruptcy and depression. And those incidences are not happening even though we are just coming out of the worst recession since the Great One in the 1930s.

What we saw in Europe when the euro was being quoted at outrageous interest-rates in some countries was due to the governments' increasing difficulty (at the time) in balancing their budgets for purely political reasons. They did not want to fire staff to avoid being voted out of office due to high employment.

The countries then understood that there was no future in keeping government budgets high in order to avoid being voted out of office from extensive lay-offs. They could no longer do both - keep people working AND maintain high debt by borrowing euros from the central-bank. And Germany had told the European Central Bank that it would no longer be lending the bank money to fund Euro-country deficits elsewhere. (Ask not for whom the financial bells toll ...)

Those countries, mostly in the southern arc from Portugal across to Greece are just coming out of the pits of a monstrous recession with high unemployment.

But the euro still prevails as a functional currency even if the EU's unemployment rate was higher than that of the US during the worst period (2009) ...

 

You've completely missed the point of the entire discussion. I'm a retired engineer who has based an entire career on faith that my capabilities to develop products and test them is sound.

Space shuttles are launched on the faith that the design and reliability calculations are correct.

 

Depressions/panics/busts only occur as a result of government meddling in the capitalist economy. Why would one blame capitalism for the actions of government?