The problem of Capitalism

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by stan1990, Mar 13, 2019.

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Do you agree that the main problem of Capitalism is of moral nature?

Poll closed Apr 12, 2019.
  1. Yes

    33.3%
  2. No

    50.0%
  3. Maybe

    16.7%
  1. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The problem with capitalism is we don’t have enough.
     
  2. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    We've diverted our minds to think of new energy systems, but we've over looked the economic system and wonder how any new energy source will sell because it's needed.

    If, instead of trying to look for free/clean energy (which would be so awesome by the way)! - Why not have our best minds work on a new economic system instead, to replace the a market based economy of Capitalism or Command economy with Socialism and Communism.

    Do rich bankers control the media so invent global warming to make sure no one questions Capitalism?
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2019
  3. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It’s like asking, why can’t we make a circle a square. The perfect system has been devised. It’s called capitalism, and it’s made Earth into a human paradise, and one day they’ll make it a human paradise without mosquitoes, flees, ticks, and flies.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2019
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  4. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    It's the best system going, but it's not perfect; people who don't or can't earn depend on the state to survive, and sometimes, that's not an option.
    When we're content, we stop trying; thinking it's perfect means we don't have to think of a better system.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2019
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  5. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No it doesn't, because it has nothing to do with ownership of the means of production.
    It doesn't control prices, only the value of money. Two different things. And having debt control growth can't work, because its positive feedback effect is inherently destabilizing. That's why we have had the boom-bust cycle ever since banks started creating most of the money supply as debt.
     
  6. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    I said State capitalist ( is that the modern form of mercantilism?)

    In re the bolded; they seem at least closely related.

    How does the banks creating money cause boom/bust? I've always seen that as caused more by the feedback loops of consumer and producer spending rather than anything else.
     
  7. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Property IS the means of production.
     
  8. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    State capitalism is an oxymoron.
    Controlling prices means controlling relative prices: price controls. Controlling the value of money means allowing relative prices to change according to market forces, with the average price level kept within an allowable range.
    No, banks create money primarily to fund asset purchases. This additional money fuels asset price increases, which make asset ownership more attractive, stimulating people to borrow more to buy the assets in order to get in on the capital gains, which increases the money supply still further. This is positive feedback. When asset prices rise so high that their returns can't pay the interest on the debt used to buy them, the process reverses: scheduled repayments of loan principal remove money from the economy, reducing economic activity and asset prices. This makes asset purchases unattractive, so people borrow less from banks, which means the money supply contracts even more. Positive feedback again.
     
  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, that's false. They simply used it, and never dreamed that they might charge someone else rent for it when they moved on.
    Brute, animal possession is not property or law.
    You sure don't...
     
  10. sec

    sec Well-Known Member

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    do you own/rent your own place? I'm being sincere, have you outfitted an entire domicile?

    If yes, I bet that you've enjoyed televisions, tablets, white goods, smartphones, whole-home wifi, bluetooth, streaming video, fitbits, low cost clothing, high speed Internet and more, online gaming, all affordable on modest salaries.

    Capitalism
     
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  11. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Of course its perfect. It's free trade by free man. The purpose of capitalism is not to feed the hungry, house the homeless, or cloth the naked. It's purpose is to make money. It does so perfectly.
     
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  12. Quadhole

    Quadhole Well-Known Member

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    Why should anyone waste their time showing you facts if you cant find them yourself ? You don't even have a CLUE that GOLD is Shorted ? That is a JOKE in itself if you are looking for a serious conversation.

    Who do you think would short Gold ? Jim down the street ? JP Morgan, and other BIG Banksters. They dont do it for the profit either, they do it to suppress the prices. There is a whole world of Information out there. You should start by watching Max Keiser videos, ep.1406... Then watch Lynette Zang, you can scroll thru her site and read the header, then determine what you "WANT TO LEARN" or if you want to just watch regular Fox news, CNN, whatever it is and let them mislead and manipulate you. Don't fret, that is what 90% of the people do anyway, so you can be one of the herd.
     
  13. Quadhole

    Quadhole Well-Known Member

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    Yep, this worked well until the mid 80s. Proper regulations were in place to prevent corruption, Greed, theft, and much of that has been deregulated. It is only Positive when it helps the Masses, today's Capitalism only truely helps those that can borrow and build. That doesnt include the 90%
    I guess it is possible to start from nothing and become rich. that is now a 1/25,000 proposition. vs the good times when the rich were controlled and 50% or 12,500/25,000 would work up to a really great comfortable income. They now allow that one guy to block out 12,499... Or as in most situations now, the son of a billionaire starts his own WEWORK corp. never makes a profit takes the company public and passes off the losses to 401k and pension funds. Just like they did in 2008.

    This is a wash rinse repeat situation. Many up to the age of 35 think it is NORMAL for a country to run a deficit and create debt year after year. Sooner or later you have to pay that debt. THey have destroyed the dollar, the Petro dollar, helped other countries into a power situation. Then along comes Trump to piss on all of them, now they are fuking over our country. And people here watch the dumb news on TV and think we are doing great.
    We are in so so much trouble. But as in 2008, which I was ready for, I seen it coming and see this one too. It is never bad when it is good, then one day ! The hurricane hits, and as all of south florida was covered in blue tarps, I was out making money cutting down trees, wife was home comfortable. Not because I was rich, but because as a group we were smart.
    this is not xanadu... it is coming and will crush this country this time. Go ahead and ignore it...

    Big problem is those in charge pay so many to post on sites like this to continue the Tyranny as a "GOOD THING" telling lie after lie
     
  14. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    But people need to be fed and clothed, and Capitalism doesn't always do that, so it's perfect at what it does but it's not perfect and feeding and clothing people.
     
  15. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Oh, so so wrong. Here’s what happens when money is made, ( wealth created)

    “... basic food items in America have become almost eight times cheaper relative to unskilled labor over the last 100 years.”

    “Joseph Schumpeter, the famous economist who served as Austrian minister of finance in 1919, observed that the “capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably also means production for the masses … It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as a rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls.”



    To those silk stockings we can now add food.



    https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1798

    There it is—only capitalism that makes life possible for the masses to live like queens and kings. And what do they do? In a fit of blind envy and jealousy, they elect an AOC to butcher the golden goose that enriched their lives.

    What can one say when the goose is murdered and poverty again becomes the norm? Laugh and tell them, “Brothers, you frigging asked for it.”

    Those who hate capitalism are not friends of we, the living.


    ”In Western Europe, in the preindustrial Middle Ages, man’s life expectancy was 30 years. In the nineteenth century, Europe’s population grew by 300 percent—which is the best proof of the fact that for the first time in human history, industry gave the great masses of people a chance to survive.”--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ecology-environmental_movement/3.html
     
    Last edited: Jul 11, 2019
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  16. Socratica

    Socratica Well-Known Member

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    Economics is about satisfying everyone's unlimited demands with limited resources. Your expectations of Capitalism is unreasonable.
     
  17. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And yet, capitalism has exceeded expectations, time and time again.

    Are Malthus's Predicted 1798 Food Shortages Coming True? (Extended version) In 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus famously predicted that short-term gains in living standards would inevitably be undermined as human population growth outstripped food production, and thereby drive living standards back toward subsistence.

    Answer: only in the socialist nations.

    In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb and declared that the battle to feed humanity had been lost and that there would be a major food shortage in the US. “In the 1970s … hundreds of millions are going to starve to death,” and by the 1980s most of the world’s important resources would be depleted. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980-1989 and that by 1999, the US population would decline to 22.6 million.

    And what happened? More people, cheaper food, rising standard of living, except in the socialist nations.

    Capitalism makes life possible; every other system is a living hell on earth.
     
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  18. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Capitalism’s main problem is moral—few realize it’s the only moral economic system, all others are state sanctioned slavery and robber. If the purpose of morality is to teach us how to live the good and happy live, then capitalism is the morality we need to practice.
     
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  19. Socratica

    Socratica Well-Known Member

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    Not sure how this is related. Capitalism has left people out of poverty, but StarJet's contention is that some people have fallen through the cracks, which is a non-argument. As long as we live in a world of scarcity, we will always have an inability to satisfy everyone's demands completely.
     
  20. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Starjet, me, doesn't contend any such thing. Furthermore, Starjet, me, rejects completely any such notion as an "inability to satisfy everyone's demand's complete" as being morally relevant, or that we live in a world of scarcity. What Starjet, me, is saying is that the only system that is moral is capitalism; and what makes it moral is not any altruistic notion of serving the public good, nor the greatest good for the greatest number but because its the only economic system that respects Individual Rights. And by respecting the rights of the individual, it has freed the human mind and created an abundance of clothing, jewels, machines, food, and housing at a level that even 50 years ago many progressives, socialists, and environmentalist couldn't begin to imagine, and thought was impossible.

    The only souls that capitalism rejects are the souls of fraud, theft, rape, and murder, i.e., the evil ones--those that think because they breathe they have a right to another's life's earnings, achievements, property, or wealth. And these scumbags, in a capitalist system, don't fall through the cracks, they go to prison.

    I hope this clarify's my position.

    Ayn Rand: "The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/capitalism.html

    Yaron Brook - Why Capitalism is the Only Moral System

     
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  21. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    I said Capitalism lacks in that regard.
     
  22. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Not in a First World democracy we don't. We have all the safety nets (welfare and healthcare) and opportunities we need to feed and clothe ourselves.
     
  23. Socratica

    Socratica Well-Known Member

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    That issue is not exclusive to Capitalism. Resources are just finite; that is just a fact of reality.
     
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  24. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    Hmmm, if we could synthesize resources, then there would be plenty for everybody.

    I mean, in Science Fiction things like replicators boast of doing away with capitalism.

    If humanity can provide however with a less fictional method, could be a perfect system.
     
  25. The Rhetoric of Life

    The Rhetoric of Life Banned

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    IDK about America, I know UK is a 'nanny' state with its Socialism... but....


    In the developing world without safety nets, Capitalism fails those without and there is no safety net to catch them.
     

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