The problem of Capitalism

Well, racketeers don’t earn, they steal; however, drug lords certainly earn theirs—nobody forces anybody to buy drugs. As for their violence, notice how the bootleg killings ended when prohibition did? The same will happen when all drugs are legalized.

 

We don't need a gun to protect our lives here in France, which is why hunters have rifles but NOBODY can buy an automatic weapon except on the black-market.

Where did children get the idea of shooting other people. From the movies!

Freedoms* can be taken too far, and the US is proof-positive of that notion ...

The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution (passed in 1791) reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Well are now more than two-centuries later - and guns are a Big Problem.

Frankly, given the number of guns in the US it is silly to ban them. But, what we do to get the gun-murder rate down to reasonable proportions is almost Mission Impossible ...

 

I disagree. Morals have to exist independently of whether or not they are empowered, protected, or respected by established law or the governing body. You have to have a moral basis for your positions otherwise the wicked and the evil have the same claim to power as you do. Power cannot make the immoral moral and the moral immoral. We're not beasts.

I think bringiton is right about morals having a biological basis to increase our survival chances as an individual as part of a society. I don't have a background in the natural sciences, but I've always been rather materialistic in the way I think about philosophical issues.

All manners of different societies which have developed independently from each other for thousands of years have attempted to established systems to respect claimed moral principles. There has to be a materialistic neurobiological basis to this process. It's deep in human nature.

Attempts at codifying moral rights, or at least claimed moral rights, have of course not always resulted in actual moral rights being properly protected, and at times lead to bad outcomes (witch hunts, slavery, etc.). This is not a good reason however to deny that moral rights do exist whether we can perfectly close in on them or not.

This is one of the reasons I find geoism so compelling. The claim that a moral property right can only be derived from an act of production while respecting competing interests equal rights within society to land and other natural resources used in this process. It's pure, honest and so far to me seems to be the only good spirited and logically consistent justification for property rights.

There ideally has to be an act of production and a consensual chain of transactions from its producer to the current owner, with everyone's natural rights to liberty in society being respected in the process. Capitalism and socialism both fail at this. It's of course not possible or plausible to start tracing back everything everyone owns to see whether or not there such a chain. We cannot change the past, but we can change it for the future.

 

Agreed. They can be quite ambitious and hard working though which demonstrates that being ambitious and working hard do not truly earn one anything. Working hard and ambitiously AT WHAT?

Drug lords need drug prohibition to gain enormous amounts of wealth through the drug trade. They are willing to bribe, blackmail, intimidate, and kill to gain control of the market.

I'm for liberalization of the drug laws.

 

Well, I guess it is hard work to slice up bodies, encase them in cement, and drop them in the river, but morally equal to building skyscrapers, jets, and spaceships. That is some real intellectual dishonesty.

 

Before capitalism, life was hell, disease rampant, early death guaranteed. After? Heaven on earth with autos, jet skis, skyscrapers, penthouses, spaceships, jets, penicillin, vaccines, end of polio, organ transplants, super markets, HD TVs, computers, and chocolate ice cream cones on a sunny Sunday summer afternoon with grandchildren at the beach in Atlantis.

And none of it created by a Progressive bureaucrat or a statist wannabe dictator’s executive orders. All by independent minds selfishly exercising their creativity to build a wondrous life for themselves and those they love.

WTF is the btch? Cheats, liars, thieves, and slackers can’t prosper under capitalism? Well thank goodness. Who cares.

 

The true intellectual dishonesty is you pretending I ever morally equated building skyscrapers, jets, and spaceships to organized crime. My position, in fact, respects property rights to what one gains through productive contribution more than your position.

I merely checked you for logical consistency. You failed. Being ambitious and hard working can help in being more effective at what one does, but they do not justify the proceeds. If one is ambitious and hard working at being a parasite, then it doesn't make the parasitism not parasitic. One also cannot assume that currently legal ways of gaining wealth are automatically a "something for something". Saying that giving up something that has to be created (products of labor) for something that is not created (land) would be disingenuous.

 

You are a Marxist, right? You do believe muscle power is superior to brain power, yes?

In capitalist society, a hard working productive honest soul can earn a living by his own effort and for his own sake. In a collectivist society, he’s meat for the political pigs and the demented dogs. Or haven’t you read Animal Farm?

 

Goebbels? Aren’t you dead? You oughta be with a mind that foul.

 

Capitalism works; nothing else does. And it works because it's reasonable. As in: From each, their best; to each, what their best creates. That's morality. That's justice. That's the reality of capitalism.

 

That would be a reasonable conclusion.

 

You are rambling, would you like to try to make this into a intelligible sentence?

 

No. I'm merely smart and honest enough to know that rights precede property and can result in morally valid property, but something being considered property doesn't automatically make the claim of ownership morally valid. There are clearly a lot of things which we have rights to that cannot be owned, which hopefully not even you would deny, such as atmospheric air, the sun, the ocean etc. So, ownership of whatever is considered property needs to be in accordance with everyone's preexisting rights in society in order to be morally valid property.

"The most comfortable, but also the most unproductive way for a capitalist to increase his fortune, is to put all monies in sites and await that point in time when a society, hungering for land, has to pay his price" -- Andrew Carnegie

 

Not buying it. There is something devious in your quibble over the concept of property rights. Its as if you are using the concept of property rights to destroy the concept of property rights. The source of property rights is simply that it must be created by thought and action. That's an attribute of the individual. For example, Microsoft didn't exist until Bill Gates created it. Because it is his creation, the right of use and disposal is totally his. That's it. There's nothing more.

Now, if what you are asserting is that identity exists before causality, agreed--something must be before it can do. (Though really, it's simultaneous--it behaves as it does because it is what it is.) But what that has to do with this incomprehensible statement "property doesn't automatically make the claim of ownership morally valid", escapes me. If there is property, there is ownership; if the ownership of the property is fraudulent, then it's not the property or ownership that's immoral, it's the fraudulent act in obtaining the property. It's the action of the actor that's immoral, not the thing nor actor themselves.

No one owns the air, or the seas, or the airwaves, they own the right of pursuing the right of usage. In the air, it would be air routes; on the sea, sea lanes, over the airwaves, the frequency.

The only rights the individual has are the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the only way to implement those rights is through property rights. Without property rights, individual rights are nothing but floating abstractions chasing ethereal spirits in a world of mystical delusions.

Ayn Rand: "Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality—to think, to work and to keep the results—which means: the right of property. The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of “human rights” versus “property rights,” as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that “human rights” are superior to “property rights” simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle. Whoever regards this as human and right, has no right to the title of “human.”--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/property_rights.html


Yaron Brook: Property Rights Lead to Progress


So, are you playing mind games to pass the time of day, or are you seriously seeking to enlighten while being enlightened?

 

There is nothing devious about about knowing that property isn't always right. As proven by chattel slavery.

I'm not against having property rights. I merely think that not everything should be allowed to be property: Land, natural resources, or patents and copyrights, for example. Man made things such as factories, cars, food, or houses should be protected as property of whoever made them or obtained them in a consensual chain of transactions.

Land and natural resources weren't created by thought and action. They already existed and by claiming them as one's property one merely takes something from people that was already there anyways and then expects them to give up portions of their productive activity for permition to use what would've been there anyways: LAND.

"A portion, in some cases the whole, of every benefit which is laboriously acquired by the community is represented in the land value, and finds its way automatically into the landlord's pocket. If there is a rise in wages, rents are able to move forward, because the workers can afford to pay a little more. If the opening of a new railway or a new tramway, or the institution of an improved service of workmen's trains, or a lowering of fares, or a new invention, or any other public convenience affords a benefit to the workers in any particular district, it becomes easier for them to live, and therefore the landlord and the ground landlord, one on top of the other, are able to charge them more for the privilege of living there." - Winston Churchill

"He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare; he contributes nothing even to the process from which his own enrichment is derived." - Winston Churchill

I'm opposed to intellectual property. How can one honestly make use of freely available ideas like the alphabet, mathematics, and other previous discoveries and inventions which are necessary for the development of new ideas and products but then turn around and claim one has some sort of intellectual property over ideas or software, like Microsoft, and use the guns of the government to prevent and punish the making of copies or improvements upon the software. I wonder how many brilliant computer scientists who would've loved to work on their own projects were forced to work alongside Microsoft in order not to get in trouble. Another problem with intellectual property is that there is always a very good chance that somebody else develops the same idea independently from you. Is it in any way justifiable to prevent that person from making use of the idea? Also, copying clearly isn't theft other than by some completely absurd redefinition of the word. If I make an illegal copy of Windows, I haven't taken that copy from anyone. Bill Gates merely made sure that people's options to function without his "help" are limited and used the guns of the government to do so. That's my layman's take.

Purchase, inheritance, winning, or changes in the law can all be ways to obtain property. One could obtain chattel slaves by purchasing them, inheriting them, by dint of the law, or by breeding new ones. How you obtained the chattel slaves is completely irrelevant to the fact that the chattel slaves' liberty rights were being violated. It doesn't matter whether the chattel slaves were purchased according to the rules or their previous owners were scammed or robbed of their property.

What currently is and isn't considered property is not relevant when discussing the moral basis of what should and shouldn't be considered property. Laws can change.

I'm not against property. There just isn't a good justification for considering land and natural resources private property, just as there wouldn't be a good justification for considering the sun, atmospheric air, or the oceans property.

What gives you the moral right to land as property?

????? Ayn Rand clearly made a blunder:
Chattel slavery was abolished because we learned that human rights are more important than some so-called property rights. Morally valid property rights could be considered a subcategory of human rights, but this cannot be decided by whatever the law currently allows. The law can merely be designed in such a way as to hopefully best reflect those rights.

Here's a dose of enlightenment for you: http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html

 

It is all true, and you know it.

I have an absolute right to take any property that anyone else owns if that property consists of my rights. We have already established that indisputably by the examples of slaves, the earth's atmosphere, the spring in the desert, etc. Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely, and you have not refuted, and will never be able to refute, a single one of them.

Wrong again. I have, and have always had, an absolute right to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of my labor. Any claim by anyone else to own any of those rights is invalid, and rightly resisted by force.

<yawn> Is that what happened when one after another, governments took away the property of slave owners? Is that what happens when a local government takes back land for property tax arrears?

You are a joke, nothing but a swaggering blowhard who doesn't understand -- or maybe understands too well -- how weak and pathetic he is.

Yes, in fact, you do, which is why we have governments in the first place. See how that works?

No, you can't. You are just thumping your chest like an ape. Without government to protect you, you would not last five minutes against me, let alone experienced criminals.

I've already proved multiple times that it is perfectly valid, and you know it.

 

Such self-evidently false and absurd claims hardly need to be answered.

It's usually shorter than that.

In Finance 501 you learn they don't.

The claim that returns to all asset classes are the same is refuted by empirical fact. Thomas Piketty said returns to "capital" exceed economic growth over the long term, but Matthew Rognlie of MIT showed the excess return was all accounted for by exorbitant returns to housing -- i.e., land.

 

Something someone is entitled to by law. IOW, the police will make sure he gets it.

Sure there is. That is why privilege holders like landowners get millions -- even billions -- shoveled into their pockets without lifting a productive finger.

No, that's the premise of privilege, which is even more prevalent in capitalist societies than socialist ones.

 

Which is why it should be funded by those who benefit from it, mainly landowners. If government charged landowners the market price for what it gives them, it wouldn't have to pick anyone's pocket. Landowners just want something for nothing. That is very much the point: the productive pay for government TWICE so that landowners can pocket one of the payments in return for doing and contributing nothing whatever.

Government has to be funded somehow. If not by those who benefit from it in proportion as they benefit, then how?

"Tis true government cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys a share of the protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it." -- John Locke

What kind of soul thinks anyone needs a privilege holder to satisfy their needs?? We need land, not landowners; money, not banksters. The landowner's only function is to DEPRIVE us of what we need, and would otherwise have, unless we meet his extortion demands and fill his pockets for him in return for his gracious permission to use what was already there, ready to use, with no help from him or any previous owner. Hello?

It is time for you to stop typing and start thinking.

 

Bankster-created debt money is effective demand.

There is no such thing as intrinsic value. All value is relative to a specific market at a specific time.

Only if the regulation stops private banks from issuing new money as loan proceeds without withdrawing an equal amount of money from circulation and putting it into reserves.

If they issued debt-free fiat money faster than debt money was erased by principal repayments, it would eventually work. But that's not what they are doing.

MMT won't solve the money problem unless it stops private banks from increasing the money supply.

 

False. Capitalism is by definition private ownership of the means of production: capital goods and land.

What do you mean by "complaint of rights"?

The right to liberty, the same right our remote ancestors exercised to survive for millions of years.

Accounts of rights are very confused by equivocation fallacies. It is generally conceded that individual persons have rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. I can show (it would take a while) how these rights, specifically, are natural in the sense that they arise from our human nature, our biological identity.

No. What the community owes its members is respect for their rights. That's how communities function.

No. There is also the question of who benefits from both the natural and the publicly created advantages available at each location.

You may think you do, but you do not.

The liberty to use land is definitely a right. No one can survive, can even exist, without using land.

That is self-evidently false. Land CANNOT be a product, as it is not produced by labor.

Apologists for landowner privilege inevitably resort to obvious falsehoods. That is a natural law of the universe. There has never been an exception to that law, and there never will be.

Refuted above.

Huh? Obviously false.

Those four activities -- owning, eating, caring for and picking -- are intimately related, especially under capitalism. Duh.

Why are you pretending there is no difference between appropriating a natural apple tree and owning one that you have grown?

Conclusively refuted above. Capitalism gives ownership of land to private interests, which inherently forces everyone else to subsidize landowners.

No. Capitalism gives rewards to landowners in return for no effort or contribution of any kind.

They come from production. The landowner takes a reward from production but does not contribute to it.

It self-evidently does not.

Could you try stating that in English?

I have stated that land cannot rightly be owned, any more than the sun, the oceans, the earth's atmosphere, etc. But government inherently administers possession and use of land because that is what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land.

I have said neither.

I understand it better than you.

Oh, go and read the Declaration of Independence, and get back to me when you have learned some history.

There is a difference between how the world works and how it could work better. You simply decline to know such facts, because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.

The system has been modeled to serve the desire of the privileged to get something for nothing.

 

Sorry, it is perfectly grammatical, and I thought readers were up to parsing it. Let me try to make it simpler. The right to life is meaningless if you have to pay someone else for permission to sustain it, given that the means to sustain it would otherwise have been available anyway. For example, you don't have a right to life if somebody else can legally stop you from breathing atmospheric air unless you pay him for permission to do so. Similarly, if Crusoe claims to own his island, and when Friday washes ashore Crusoe tells him he will have to either work as Crusoe's unpaid servant or get back in the water, Friday does not have a right to life. Does that make it clearer?

 

Wrong. See Hong Kong and China, which are not capitalist because all land there is publicly, not privately, owned, and are outstripping capitalist economies.

How is landowners owning everyone else's rights to liberty reasonable?

When did any landowner create the land he is privileged to charge others full market value for, hmmmmmmmmmmmm?

<yawn> Oh, really? Then why can't any capitalist ever answer The Question: How, exactly, is production aided by the landowner being legally entitled to demand that HE be paid for what government, the community and nature provide?

Good luck answering that, btw. You are going to need it.

 

Good analysis.

Note the acceptance by mainland Chinese of their <continuously higher living standards for all> "totalitarian" government (though some on the mainland desire 'democratic' government).

OTOH, most in Hong Kong want to keep their social democracy, while some will be pleased when China formally takes control in 2049.

Meantime, some people in Hong Kong only have access to a rented coffin sized space to sleep in. All other requirements are supplied in the street (public space). Plenty of cause for protest there.

Question: are not the people "sovereign" in either case?

And how will the "sovereign" people of Britain, who are strongly divided half and half over Brexit, finally settle the issue? By an election that neither Corbyn nor Johnson want, and which is not likely to achieve a decisive result?

Your points re social democracy are valid, of course, and the US does have a particular problem with it's identification of 'social democracy' with socialism (relating to a 'triumphant' US after WW2).

However, one problem now for Left governments in particular is this: while labour unions, who are the natural constituency of Left governments, seek to improve wages and conditions for their members, governments of all persuasions are constrained by the current mainstream macroeconomic neoliberal orthodoxy, which plays into the hands of the Right eg in the form of the question: "how are we going to pay for it"?.

So Left governments, whether in the US, Britain, France, Australia and notoriously Greece, rarely produce any better outcomes for unionists, even in so-called social democracies (where the basics like universal health care and, less widely, 'free' education already exist).

So not surprisingly, in France under so-called centrist Macron, the unions are in revolt.….​

That's why the Left is so dispirited and cannot consistently win elections or maintain government. (The Italians are currently trying to form a government made up of two diametrically opposed parties!)

At the same time, Right governments have a field day demonizing labour unions.

And yet, as an orthodox economist, you are determined that the neoliberal "invisible hand", competitive 'free' market model - based on the economics you teach - is the ultimate truth re economic 'reality'.

….which cannot be so:

Exhibit One: NAIRU is pure fiction, given that no mainstream economist can actually establish its value.

Exhibit 2: in 2006, the IMF - all orthodox economists to a man - was arguing that the increase in banks' securitization and derivatives' business etc etc was consistent with a spreading of risk which would make the financial system more stable....yet less than 2 years after this IMF 'gem' of a report was released, Lehmann was gone, and governments (the G20) were forced to come together, to agree on some pretty fancy footwork in order to avoid another Great Depression......

Problem?

 

"Sovereignty": its just a euphemism for greed, particularly strongly claimed by the Right (who could have guessed?).

And so long as the Left pay lip service to "sovereignty", they undermine the Left's values based on just and sufficient access to vital resources, by all (not the same as equality of outcome).

Needless to say, most mainstream politicians appeal to an "international rules based system" ….so long as it suits their own cultural prejudices, and/or economic interests, of course.