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

Are you kidding? I am a straight A student who was called the joe montana of writing by my hs english teacher, a jesuit monk.
I am a published author!!
Never mistake typing and net casualness for english.
You sound like someone with a crony job to be so pedantic.
You probably think garbage like jane eire is better than robert e howard.

 

free trade is always best

milton friedman said it well "if a trade does not benefit both sides it will not happen"

no democrat or other fascist can answer that

 

you seem to be babbling here

capitaism is why usa has highest standrd of living for those who work 40 hours

 

I'll give you a point for liking Robert E Howard. Can't argue against the creator of Connan the Barbarian.

So i'll give you the benefit of the doubt and actually respond to your post with earnest.

Yes, production makes the pie bigger. Not gonna argue that fact, because as an imperialist, I couldn't agree more.

But I don't understand how you can argue that teachers are overpaid or a second rate profession? First of all, teachers get paid a remarkably small salary, which when calculated by typical teacher hours per week spent, adds up to significantly less than those not in public service professions, especially with the level of education they have. The state of our education system needs to be fixed, but that's not a teacher issue, that's an overbearing gov issue. And you think teachers aren't important? Where do you're beloved nuclear engineers come from? fantasy land where magic pixie dust makes well educated professionals appear out of thin air?

Now you don't want to pay your police of firefighters... that's a great idea(/sarcasm)... so because there's no economic merit to these fields, nobody joins them. Now fires go unchecked and there is no law and order... which without law and order enforcement, people band together out of fear and you now have the populace come under management of upstart local warlords. Or do you somehow believe that without law and order people would turn into being good socialist citizens that share and work well with one another?

Then you assume that all these fields like electric commuter trains and nuclear power would flourish under this magic land you say would exist if we just let go and see what happens.

And so many people misunderstand what it is to be a true capitalist... not everybody is one, even in a free market. Some people measure themselves by success and it's not about how much money they make, but what they produce. Yeah these people will continue to dump their money into a market to make more... because it's in their nature to always look for more. There are also people who are whatever you want to call them, but they horde their money. Some are good at making it, but aren't going to return that into the investment. And a lot of people are consumers, any excess they acquire, they spend on themselves.

So in essence, i'm saying... what are you smoking?

 

So, youre saying if I own a small pizza parlor and sell someone a pizza because they are hungry, I am making them poorer. Even if they are middle class or rich? I am trading my labor for their labor. We are exchanging value for value.
For all you know, I could be becoming poorer than the customer because I can't make a decent profit.

 

The important issue is that we're not always talking about straight forward mutually beneficial exchange. Examples that don't fit the 'expected result' include the 'Wal-mart effect' and the 'Dutch disease' (where natural resource discoveries can actually harm economic growth). And then we can factor in the other string of economic analysis: conflict (where we have straight forward redistribution from one to another, often enabled through asymmetric information and assorted moral hazards created through market failure)

 

Great example of that being the Diamond trade, where those who control the diamond trade buy up all raw diamonds and release only a small fraction to keep prices up. If they were to release the stockpile of diamonds currently in possession, the price of natural diamonds would drop below the price of synthetic diamonds (which industries use for various things including drills). Thus two markets would basically fall apart overnight. But this situation is a result of profiteering by the diamond trade, like various other examples of bad practices such as the Electric power scandal in California a few years ago. Collect all the resources, create false shortages, profit.

 

This depends on whether you believe in making cups or trading cups.

If you believe in capitalism in the form of manufacturing and building things, this idea could not be more wrong. If you build cups, then there are more cups for people to have, and everyone becomes richer. See America between 1940-1970 for evidence of this.

If you believe in capitalism in the form of trading cups, where we support our GDP through financial tools, and other methods that create no good or service to speak of, then you are 100% correct. When someone profits off of trading cups, they are just taking from someone else!

 

I don't think this logic is right.
Resources are finite. That's right, but we haven't run out of them yet. Gold and silver, etc. are still mined. There are renewable goods: wheat, corn... We can't run out of them.
Besides gold and silver has slight value of use, they are valuable, because we put value on them.
Wealth is not a finite thing, it can be created by corporations.
There are industries that can't work without big companies. because big capital is needed to start production. Car industry, oil companies, telecommunication. So your friend should try to live without cell phone, car, water from pipeline, electricity? Has she ever tried it?
But I understand that we should diminish our consuming. And we are again at big companies, only they can develop technologies (for example: renewable energy sources) by that we can do it.

 

The problem is that there is too much tendency within capitalism to shift towards oligopolistic competition (rather than the more standard monopolistic competition where we can maintain semi-independence of firm and we can ignore exploitation of market power)

 

Hmmm, perhaps you could explain CDO's to me then.

 

Could you explain what tendency you think of?

 

Its about market concentration. If we just have product differentiatin then that isn't necessarily a problem. Market forces still can drive out economic rents. But, as we shift towards oligopoly dominance, conflict plays a bigger role. Zero sum games cannot be rejected

 

I hoped you would write a concrete example.

 

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

unless the wealth is constantly moving this is true, what seems to be more true now... is every job sent overseas, every dollar spent overseas... is more poor in America, so the money never circulates thus stagnates the economy this is effecting the world, not just us, we have our hand in Pandora's box, are we smart enough to remove it or will we let it destroy us

this has artificially reduced inflation, the real economic current that circulates the money in the system when all else fails

 

I did: I referred to the macroeconomy. Once we have a dual economy, with an oligopolistic sector and a competitive sector, we have all sorts of stability problems (and rent opportunities)

 

In other words, on a global scale, what really matters is trade balance. We get poorer because we buy more from other countries than we sell to them.

 

Trade balance only matters in terms of potentially creating an exchange rate shift that threatens stability. "We get poorer because we buy more from other countries than we sell to them" is just a re-hashing of the mercantilist zero-sum game. Very old hat and completely wrong

 

Maybe if currency is the only object with intrinsic value. And not if it's a appreciating asset.

 

Then reward those High IQs born with the talent to create in a natural and productive manner. Basically, treat superior minds the same way superior athletes are treated now, from childhood on, including having the same social popularity. Finally, give them 50% of corporate patents.

 

How much benefit has Mensa been to society? For that matter, how many of the movers and shakers dropped out of college? (it's not that stupidity is required to succeed, it is just that being told what you can do often enough stick more often than not)

Entrepeneurship has more to do with vision and risk tolerance than information.

Make it easy to start a business (regulations are helping big companies and hurting start ups), make it easy to fail (our approach to bankruptcy has helped business), and stop government subsidies (they are lousy at picking winners).