The problem of Capitalism

We are talking about 1931, how are those Coffee farmers subsided by the Brazilian government? And as far as it goes with the fast-food industry, they can afford vacation houses in Florida, fine dining restaurants, yachts and all the luxuries with that little margin. How is that Margin was little bigger?

 

What is exactly worth the study?

 

I don't agree with you

 

Not true. Many people can't afford their prescription drugs or hospital care because they are not insured.

 

That notion is the kind of blindness that afflicts extremism on the Left or the Right, whichever in power.

Go do "what else"? Have you not (in Australia) learned how Communist China (just to the north of you) have carved-out entire product-lines for exportation simply because they shattered comparative production-costs with western nations (the US, Australia, NZ, Europe)?

And we-the-sheeple let them do it! We just spectated the event and allowed low-skilled production-jobs to disappear. So low-skilled that the workers do not even show-up any longer in the unemployment surveys.

To exist, these lower- or un-skilled people either went back to school to apprentice or they moved on to much lower-paying job-scales, but jobs nonetheless. Like taking away YOUR garbage. In the US, the consequence has been catastrophic to some families that could not handle the downturn in salary levels. The societal-impact has been tremendous.

Fortunately, Chinese production-costs have creeped up to a point where, for many products necessitating low-cost and low-ability, they are shipping production to Vietnam. And of course many Vietnamese are now once again living decent lives because of that work.

As the saying dictates: What goes around eventually comes around ...

 

So back in the day when there was a thriving horse industry, would YOU have preferred
using horses over the internal combustion engine? By changing to the engine you were
putting lots of people out of work, and horses too. And you were supporting oil companies
and automotive factories too. And you saw your landscape cut up by roads. And whole
communities drifted apart because of better transport.
There's good ethics in keeping to beasts of burden. Where would YOU have stood?

Now transfer that to the rise of the big shopping malls and supermarkets that did away
with mum and pop shops. And now the on-line industry doing away with the malls. Where
are you on all this?

I suspect you go along with it all, despite disagreeing with where we might be heading.

 

I suggest that Africa will be the last to lift itself up. And given its burgeoning population
Africa could be a powerhouse that frightens even China. Give or take a century.

 

Yes and no to that one. A subsidy (or not) depends upon the nature of the market. What is its dynamic? That is, is it monopolistic or oligopolistic? Or is it truly competitive?

And the problem of America today is that any number of Attorney Generals under Replicant of Dem presidencies in the postwar years (from 1950 on) have not given the pertinent laws enough attention. Why?

A LESSON IN OLIGOPOLY PRICING

Because those laws were passed at the turn of the 20th century (from the 19th)? And so? Those laws were called when passed at the time of "anti-trust". So, what's a trust? This:

Can you imagine when a "trustee" overseeing multiple companies all in the same market across multiple geographies decides non-competitive pricing? No? Well imagine it! Because that is what was happening in the latter part of the 19th century!

Which is why Congress outlawed "trusts". From Wikipedia here:

The law forbids "monopoly power", but says nothing about "oligopoly power"! That is, "Yes, let's outlaw monopolies where there is NO COMPETITION.

BUT WHAT ABOUT OLIGOPOLIES WHERE COMPETITION IS MINIMIZED?

And the above is the marketing-conundrum facing the US and most modern countries today! Howzzat?

There has been a massive effort (called "buy-outs") of companies in the same market - or just about the same market. That is, markets over the past half-century have been consolidated into a smaller number of competitors (called oligopolies) - each independent, but each satisfied with a market-share based upon "unacknowledged price-fixing". That is, three, four or five companies all self-agree (without the slightest consultation amongst themselves) to price-fixing in a non-competitive small pricing-band! A limited number of companies settle into this pricing-arrangement without any mutual-consultation - which is illegal - but also with limited competition. Meaning what?

Meaning this:
*Customers can pay a higher or lower-price for virtually the same products due to limited competition. Most often, the product-range within an oligopoly is self-arranged. That is, the a prime-store has total product-coverage at higher prices but also in the same market the owner-company also has "budget-stores" with limited product-range but lower prices. And, often enough, the products in both stores may be produced by the same manufacturer! (Just the producer-names on the packaging changes.)
*This pricing "arrangement" can be easily managed by larger-companies that have the means to "survey market-pricing" across various geographical markets.
*And prices can be fine-tuned. That is, the same company can have, for instance, the same hamburger at 15% fat-content on sale at both stores, but at a lower price at the budget-store. Which provokes within customers a sense of "cheaper-pricing" that they may be seeking with preference. (Not everybody really wants cheaper pricing, which is often a matter of just a small percentage lower-pricing, so not all customers go to the supposedly cheaper outlets.)

Meaning further a circumstance of limited competition in which a market is shared by a small number of producers/sellers. Thus, within which, higher product-margins can be applied. The outcome of which is well-known Super-Brand Market-outlets that are in virtually all markets whether city-or-suburban - but real competition is under tight-control ...

 

I'm sorry, but I must disagree.

They are not sufficiently educating their people, and what I suspect by "they" is that a class of individuals (well educated at European or Americans universities) in any given African country have decided mutually that they will manage their country amongst themselves. (This cabal of families may not be formal. It may exist informally. But I am almost sure it exists in reality.)

The latest of this pattern was acknowledged by the death and internment of the once head-of-government in Tunisia. He was forced to flee to some country on the Arabian peninsula where he was buried last week. There was no way he was going to be buried without Great Consternation in his home country. His family will wait for "better times" and then bring him home surreptitiously.

(And let's not forget Franco in Spain who was buried in a public mausoleum - from which he will be quietly "deposed" this or next week.)

Single-man Rule is not dead - yet ...

 

"The" problem (if it were possible to reduce the matter to a single source) with 'capitalism' (something which itself is rather amorphous) is simple; exaggerated materialism.

 

Ownership of property, universal suffrage, liberal values...
these are the things I associate with Capitalism. Saying
it's "greed" is quite offensive and misses the point.
How do you explain Capitalists who are not greedy, or
give it all away?
I put it to you that SOCIALISM IS GREED. Socialism
is about the concentration of power. And power is a
pure and naked form of greed - money buys power,
but pure power is delivered through Socialism.
The richest men of the 20th Century must include the
likes of Stalin and Mao - they had the resources of the
entire nation at their disposal. And it was the ultimate
materialism.

 

Well, the first word (capîtalism) is an economic-word presently distorted in the American/British language. Whilst the second-phrase (Exaggerated Materialism) is sociological in nature. You can intermingle them, if you like, but I doubt of any real consequence from their joining. They are distinctly separate as they should be.

Capitalism does not breed selfishness, but it does help-it-along with amazing efficiency. Selfishness is innately learned during childhood - if not corrected. Exaggerated Materialism is a societal-sickness. People think that respect for the person is enhanced if they have plenty of money and they show it to the word distinctively. Nothing could be further from the functional-truth.

Flatter yourself by exaggerating how well you show your wealth, and sooner or later you'll be had. Or someone will try to take advantage of you and perhaps repeatedly. Like a woman overflowing in a bikini and men thinking "Wow, is she ever asking for it !"

If you are really rich, you have two options:
*Show the world you are really rich and you're "old friends" left behind will suddenly disown you - thinking you're no longer "one of us".
*Keep it to yourself, live well but modestly, and the world is more than likely to leave you alone. I'm told its a dull life. (I would not know personally) ...

PS: There is a third option. Move to Europe, which is far less obsessed with amassing wealth (and showing it to everybody). Europe has its rich but curiously they keep to themselves and are not the least bit splashy on TV. Of course, American wealth was built by migrants. Whilst European wealth tends to stay in families. (Of course, there are the "newcomers" who are making a bundle on the Internet. They are more like the former than the latter class. IMO.)

 

BIWATS

A capitalist is someone/anyone who makes a fortune and keeps it in capital. That can be anybody, but you seem to want to qualify them as the "filthy rich". One can be a decently wealthy person and have made it in a lottery. Are they or do they become "filthy rich"? That depends upon their character, which they nonetheless had before they won the lottery.

It seems to me that American capitalists who "make it big" like very much that the world knows of their feat. And they "bump it with a trumpet" (BiWat). I suggest that rich Europeans are far more modest. (From a habit of hiding from the taxman!)

To answer your question above I would say most of the Really-Rich in Europe are not greedy but neither do they give it all away with bombast. A typical manner here of "giving it away" is to build a school library or museum, and bequeath it to a university or town. Which admittedly many do in the US as well ...

 

[QUOTE="Poohbear, post: 1071087142, member: 78497
I put it to you that SOCIALISM IS GREED. Socialism
is about the concentration of power. And power is a
pure and naked form of greed - money buys power,
but pure power is delivered through Socialism.
.[/QUOTE]

What pathetic nonsense. Neither Capitalism nor Socialism nor any other "ism" - like Catholicism - is about "greed". Unless you-singular want it to be. (In which case you are talking to yourself.)

You are ascribing qualities to isms that simply have no relationship.

What taxation must do is level-the-playing-field such that all people are treated not only EQUALLY but FAIRLY. After all, it is our work that generates the income that is taxed.

It is a precept of Social Democracies that the more you earn the more you are taxed - which is not just a mathematical formula. It is to assure that the money taken from one group is provided for usage by the entire-group (by means if necessary of providing services that some groups might not otherwise be able to afford).

I, for one, think there should be a maximum amount of money earnable and thus taxable as well. Just like we have traffic speeds on highways because supposedly "speed kills". The accumulation of too-much-wealth has no intrinsic benefit to anyone - neither the person who amasses such a fortune nor all the rest that may not.

And, in that sense, so does the accumulation of capital by only one group of people because of faulty taxation. If what you mean by impoverishment is the fact that one cannot earn enough money to live decently. So, they must live indecently. Therefore we have collectively very good reason to avoid that such a situation should befall any of us..

The reasons are not religious except for some, which is their right-of-belief in some God who told them to "love thy neighbor". (Which is not at all bad advice.) The reason is purely human. We must avoid abject-poverty and the reason is societal. We do it because it is (or should be) a political ideal for all communities. If you can ask someone to give up their life to protect the nation from invasion, that country also should be primarily interested in providing for all Social or Societal Equitability (or call it Fairness, if that word suits you.)

And if that requires that we take more from the rich by taxation and literally give it to the poor - in form of housing, food, whatever - then so be it ... !

 

What pathetic nonsense. Neither Capitalism nor Socialism nor any other "ism" - like Catholicism - is about "greed". Unless you-singular want it to be. (In which case you are talking to yourself.)[/QUOTE]

So you hold the seizure and accumulation of power is not greed?
In Communist societies there exists no power base outside of
The Party. You can't even start a scout group without approval
and control of The Party.
And the guy at the top gets more privileges than what The Party
enjoy - his power is essentially absolute, "totalitarian" in fact. He
is totally outside of the law that Capitalists have to live by, more
or less.
So that's greed to me.

If you want a billion dollars become a Capitalist - offer people
something they want, like Elon Musk - his rockets and electric
cars. If you want to be a trillionaire and be above the law then
become a Communist leader, and offer people the reverse of
what they are going to get.

 

I live in a Social Democracy called France. The accent here on materialism is the same as anywhere else.

Materialism is NOT a political venue. It is personal and highly a matter of fitting-in to a social-context. Aka, "Keeping up with the Joneses", which is a fundamental economic force. See here: The Psychology Behind Keeping Up With the Joneses - excerpt,

It manifests itself as an urge that perhaps afflicts all of us to a greater or lesser extent depending upon the nature of the individual ...

 

What are you talking about? the "coffee barons" after the great depression was in bed with the Government, as they understood that the coffee industry is huge in Brazil.

Really? as I dont see many franchise owners of these "fast food" places affording these luxuries
please post the names of these people .

 

justice in land tenure and taxation.
at no time have you ever had the right to property someone else owns. This is reality. Your georgist bullshit has been repeatedly proven to be bullshit, and contrary to reality. And you know this.

 

But that is not true.

No, I am correcting your false claims. The ones who have enough assets to be rich own land, one way or another. You do not know anyone with that level of assets who does not own land. Stop making false claims.

 

That is what I advocate, which you inaccurately call, "georgism." And you hate justice, because you know that justice would mean you getting a lot less. You prefer injustice to justice because injustice is profitable to you financially. You prefer evil to good. You want evil to win and good to lose. I'm not sure there is any clearer, simpler way to explain that to you.

I have always had, and always will have, an absolute right to TAKE any "property," owned by anyone, that consists of MY RIGHTS. I have already proved, repeat, PROVED that to you by the examples of Crusoe's island, the spring in the desert, the earth's atmosphere, slavery, etc. THAT is reality. And YOU KNOW IT.

I know you say that over and over again, but can never offer any facts or logic to support it. And you also know that.

 

Fat people aren't recorded as dying of malnutrition.

They don't have generous pensions. In China, they can't even get unearned wealth by owning land.

In which country?

 

Many poor people can only afford a room, not an apartment with a kitchen. Read Ehrenreich and get a clue.

Not as unhinged as your maniacal blaming of the victims for "choosing" to be victims.

They do. Then one of them turns out to be a thief, and they are back to Square One. Or their landlord notices that they are crowded in over the legal limit, and raises their rent in exchange for not kicking some of them out. Rent devours everything they do.

Read Ehrenreich. Your claims are false and absurd.

Thanks for proving your ignorance of economics again. Frozen is often cheaper because it doesn't spoil so quickly, isn't bruised in shipping, etc. You self-evidently don't know anything whatever about it.

Where are they going to get it, living on the deserts and mountainsides you say they have to live on to save rent?

Such claims are absurd and despicable. Your victim-blaming really knows no limits, does it?

No $#!+, Sherlock...

It's not expensive if you live in a city where the electric power utility can operate efficiently -- but of course, you have to pay a landowner for access to cheap electricity....

GARBAGE. Lots of people have died in heat waves because they couldn't escape. Your victim-blaming is despicable.

Your disingenuous speculations about me are of no interest.

Unless the humidity is so high they don't. I have lived in such a place.

They aren't expensive to run unless you are living out in the boonies because you cant afford to pay a landowner rent for access to cheap electric power.

You need some serious thinking effectiveness.

I see. So, if you back is killing you from working all day, you still have to stand stooped over the sink and wash the dishes by hand in order not to be "choosing poverty"??

Your victim-blaming is despicable.

No. I am most particularly not confused about the fact that you choose, wherever possible, to blame the victim rather than the perpetrator.

That's YOUR "bad choice."

They aren't poor choices. They're just the victims' faltering attempts at self-defense.

Choosing to be a perpetrator is better for the perpetrator, but not for his victims, or for society.

It's about liberty, justice, and truth, which would definitely elevate the impoverished, among other benefits. You know: the things you hate.

Disgraceful ad hominem filth. I am very willing to respect others' rights, and that is all I demand of others. You just prefer to be legally entitled to rob, enslave and murder others in pursuit of your own narrow financial interests.

 

Whatever. Some do well, some don't.

Fact is: MMT describes how the state can ensure no-one lives in poverty, without negatively impinging on your prosperity - which of course is your real concern through all of this debate.

btw, 50% of the Chilean population are on the streets today, protesting their poverty in the face of the inequality and corruption of the moneyed class. Their mad president said they are the enemy of the state … half the population, no less. Fortunately, the chief of the army said he has no enemies, so Chileans may be spared the horrors of a return to a Right Wing military dictatorship....

Unemployed, poverty-demoralised parents ('kin') are not good teachers.

Of course early public schooling can help correct existing ills, especially when the problems are systemic...eg, all those crap images on TV urging crap consumption that saturate young minds from the earliest age.

Public sector sponsored employment is a necessity, to complement purely "invisible hand ", competitive free market, profit seeking, wealth generating activity. Obviously.
eg assisting the elderly to remain in their own homes for as long as possible....no one will pay such workers above poverty wages, in the private sector.

Nonsense. ...half the world is rioting at present, many economies are going backwards. Educated people are demanding the right to employment everywhere. A systemic problem, by any chance?

Note: the IMF sits by and tells us World economic growth is slowing, but they offer no solutions; they think governments have to balance their budgets like households do (or rather, governments have to issue debt...they don't. )

 

at no time have you ever had the right to property someone else owns. This is reality. Your georgist bullshit has been repeatedly proven to be bullshit, and contrary to reality. And you know this.

 

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