Why can't capitalism stop its excesses, greed, and other damaging characteristics?

Piffle 'n drivel. Still more one-liner sarcasm ...

 

You misrepresent capitalism when you omit mention of appropriation of private profit from the value created by workers.

 

All well and good, but none of that addresses the problem of the most successful and richest capitalists buying political favors and corrupting even the best-intentioned politician, and thus depriving the public of all gains, hope, and promise of such a system over time and to do it gradually, like a frog in a pot of water coming to a boil. This what what happened to The New Deal and even now the socialist-type gains of the people of Scandinavian countries are gradually being chipped away as right wingers and conservatives connive and scheme to gain the upper hand and take power.

Are you opposed to working from the bottom up as I described?

BTW, your Wikipedia link begins by saying "Social democracy is a political, social and economic ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy". The capitalist economy is the problem.

If I'm understanding you, you are advocating fusing capitalism with socialist-type reforms, but your Wikipedia article also says "The Third Way, which ostensibly aims to fuse right-wing economics with social democratic welfare policies, is an ideology that developed in the 1990s and is sometimes associated with social democratic parties, but some analysts have instead characterized the Third Way as an effectively neoliberal movement."

Neoliberalism is a right wing capitalist movement.

 

Lafayette, the capitalist class has had a long time to consolidate their power, their laws, their culture, their methods, their strategies, their ideologies, and so have a very strong position now. The working class is up against all that and must find a way to perform against it successfully. Boring from within with workers' cooperatives is a way to do that and to avoid all the power of the capitalist class while building their own power and strength.

 

The moron who dreamed them up.

Like I said.

Because he dreamed them all up.

That his cretinous fantasies could actually come true.

Is there anyone with any brains who thinks it could happen any other way?

 

No, it's sometimes called, "geoism," meaning an economic system in which all have equal individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor, and the equal rights of all to use what nature provided for all -- i.e., the earth (geo) -- is secured by ensuring everyone has free, secure tenure on enough of the available advantageous location of their choice to access economic opportunity, and those who want to exclude others from more of the earth than that make just compensation to the community of those whom they exclude. The implication of equal individual rights to life and liberty is that IP monopolies are eliminated, and money issued by the community of those who use it rather than by privileged private parasites.

 

Two things. First, your only interest is in attacking and being offensive, and second, you show that you know nothing about that which you are pretending to criticize. But what's worse is that you don't want to know anything about it. At least that is how it appears.

 

So it's more of a philosophy that an actual economic plan that can be explained on an economic level. Kind of a shangri la utopian dream world.

Edit: I googled geoism and it looks like communism in sheep's clothing.

 

THE EUROPEAN WAY

The use of the word "working class" makes one think of people putting together cars for Henry Ford. We've come a long way since then, and the word-usage that was predominant last century no longer really has any meaning in our society today.

We have essentially two classes of workers - those who are educated at a post-secondary level and those who are not. The distinction in income is stark. The post-secondary class is earning 2, 3 and up to 100 times as much as the other lower-class (incarcerated in a range around the median wage of $54K yearly).

The "capitalist class" did nothing without the consent of the people. Even in America. It has however convinced the lower classes that it can assure "jobs", which is why Americans so readily vote for the Replicants. The lower-class refuses to believe that in order for most people born there to exit into the upper-classes requires the government subvention of post-secondary education.

Barely 45% ou kids are getting a post-secondary degree, the other half blocked by the inability to pay for one. And nobody seems to give a damn in the US. Whereas in Europe, a post-secondary degree is almost free, gratis and for nothing.

The fundamental difference between the European Union and the US is that the population of the former have a well founded notion of "equitability", or what some call "fairness" - and that demonstrates itself in terms of government subsidies of societal perquisites (like a nearly free post-secondary education).

The US remains fascinated by the accumulation of Wealth, which is why this sort of graphic has no real punch in the US:


People take the above for granted.

Any country that permits a distortion of Upper-income Taxation such that the top 0.1% of families obtains as much Wealth as the other 90% has done something fundamentally wrong.

And taxation is at the heart of that "something wrong". Because it is by means of taxation that such "perks" as a Post-secondary education and nearly free National Healthcare are sustained.

But that notion cannot seem to anchor itself in the American mentality.

Money isn't everything ... !

NB: Except here in Europe, where mostly all the Americans who live here and have families have come to understand the more advanced benefits of the "European Way" ...

 

That's the power of propaganda. Given just a bit of effort and intention, it can be overcome. I did it. So can you. An accountant is a worker. An engineer, actuary, manager, and a systems analyst are all workers because they earn an income. They are of the working class by virtue of their relationship to capital. The class they choose to align with is a personal choice. We see plenty of working class people on this forum who side with the capitalist class.

Such an analysis only serves to divide the working class and pit one section against the other, and that is only in service to the capitalist class and their "divide and conquer" strategies. Which side are you on?

That is all about the degree to which individuals succumb to propaganda. We need to overcome our propaganda.

Umm.... -yeah.

To what do you attribute that difference?

....

Or fundamentally right for the top 0.1% and done by them and their agents in government.

Yup.

Really? Here. Look at the categories for 62% and 63% support for proposals: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Polling_PDF-1.pdf

 

Overcome? I doubt that - it aint easy. Why?

Because the US has become fascinated by riches. It is The Money Country. I can see that on French TV when I watch the dialog of movies. I see it in this blog from the commentary.

All people can aspire to a decent income with which to live comfortably and bring up a family. But life in the US is all about da muney. And those who have it are lionized in the press and especially on TV. The money-gentry prance about in the nightly TV-shows - and these shows have a high incidence of watchers.

Your world circulates around a central thesis: How do I obtain enough income to live grandly and show the world I am doing so!

It so childishly obvious - because Americans "bump it with a trumpet". But the economic fact of the matter is very different seems oblivious to most. More than 45 million Americans live below the poverty-threshold, eeking out an existence in abject comparative misery - whilst the TV focuses on "the winners" ...

PS: Bernie was right. Get national Healthcare and Tertiary Education "right" (meaning provided wholly by the government), and watch that poverty diminish virtually in one generation. That can only be done by altering fundamentally Upper-income Taxation and definitively reducing DoD expenditures that presently gobble 54% of the Discretionary National Budget.

 

I find nothing wrong with anything you said, but what you said didn't address my quote which was that a working person can get past the narrow notion that a "working class person" is a "laborer", and an accountant, an engineer, an actuary, a manager, or a systems analyst is not.

 

to earn lots of money!!! thats why we invent 70% of the new drugs and medical devices on the market that provide health care for the lazy French who vegetate in near poverty over wine and cheese while Americans support them and defend them.

 

our poorest have the average income of the French and live in bigger apartments. They get free education health care housing food etc worth $40k per person which is more than an average French person makes. So we should take lessons from the French who take poverty as normal?

 

I am definitely interested in attacking dishonesty, tyranny and injustice. If that offends you, tough $#!+.

But I notice you have not been able to identify anything I have actually got wrong about it.

I don't have to make an exhaustive study of Mormonism to know it's crock of $#!+, because the basic premises are enough. Same with Marxism.

Whatevs.

 

No, it's definitely a practical economic plan, but it is based on a philosophy of equal individual rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor. If you have questions about its economic implementation, ask.

Nope. It has worked in practice everywhere it has ever been tried, to the extent and as long as it has been tried. Most of the world's economic "miracles" have in fact been the natural and expected results of modest practical movements towards geoist ideals: Augustan Rome, the Mughal Empire after Akbar the Great, Kang Xi's China, the 19th century USA, Meiji Japan, modern Hong Kong and Singapore, post-Mao China, the list goes on and on. And when they weakened or abandoned geoist policies, they began to fail.

No it doesn't. That's just you makin' $#!+ up. Communism is abolition of private property. Geoism is private property in what an individual produces, equal individual rights of all to what no one produced. Socialists pretend capital is land to justify stealing capital; capitalists pretend land is capital to justify stealing land. Only geoists tell the truth: that land is not capital, capital is not land, and they cannot in justice be treated the same.

 

Socialist don't pretend capital is land. You're fantasizing.

 

You got everything wrong about it. You offer nothing but illogical theories. You even suggested that the only way communism could occur is if it were imposed on society. How do you know that? You pulled it out of your . . . uh . . . . bunk. What is your evidence? You said Marx is the known source and reference point for what Marxism, socialism, and communism would be. How, then, can communism be imposed? Do you even know what communism is?

 

obviously because free people have never freely imposed it on each other

 

They most certainly do. They pretend that like land, capital is available to the market unconditionally. They pretend that like land, forcibly transferring it from its owners to others will not affect its supply. They pretend that like land, its value is socially, not privately, produced. They pretend that like land, its owner does not contribute to production. They pretend that like land, owning it enables one to capture and retain the value not only of the additional production private investments in tools and equipment enable, but of public investments in desirable services and infrastructure. Their very use of the concept, "the means of production" to denote both land and capital proves they are pretending capital is land.

 

I doubt that. Let's see:

No. I have identified the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their inescapable logical implications.

Because I am willing to know the facts: the unanimous history of actual attempts to implement it; the avowed intention of its founder and all its serious advocates to foment violent revolution and seizure of private property; and the near-term immutable nature of human beings as products of biological evolution.

No, the evidence is conclusive.

See above. What is the communist's evidence that human nature can be substantially altered from how it has evolved through natural selection as devoted primarily to self and family, not serving the dictatorship of the proletariat? Blank out. Marx can at least be excused his ignorance of human nature: he was writing before Darwin. Anyone born after the middle of the 19th century can't claim that excuse.

By force of arms, as its most successful exponents have all tried (and failed) to do.

Oh, yes. I've read its Manifesto, as well as more of its theory and history than any mentally healthy human being should be asked to endure.

 

I'm a socialist and I'm active in socialist organizations. And while what you say is one way of understanding Marx, socialist today don't agree with what you said.

 

Me: "You even suggested that the only way communism could occur is if it were imposed on society. How do you know that?"

Oh, then you know what Marx said about communism. Then why do you so dreadfully misrepresent him and his words? Clearly you are like the Child in the White House who claimed "I'm like a really intelligent person." The truth is that you claim to know about Marx but you know almost nothing about Marx.

Marx said first there would be socialism - "the dictatorship of the proletariat". And that in time (probably several generations) under socialism, the classes would vanish and the state machinery would "wither away" and the society produced by this natural evolution of society would be communist society. Communist society would be the result of the state machinery "withering away" and classes would no longer exist. And that has never happened, anywhere, at any time, EVER. And no one, ever, anywhere, ever attempted to impose communism. They attempted to impose socialism, but I doubt you know the difference.

If that is how communism would happen, -and Marx said that is how it would, -then communism cannot be imposed because such imposition and maintenance of communism would prove the state machinery has not "withered away" since the state machinery was, in your false case, necessary and required in order to impose communism and maintain it, completely contrary to what Marx said (which you claim to know well).

So this is the "empty barrel" syndrome.

 

THE SHORTCOMINGS OF "SOCIALISM"

I'm not looking for agreement. I don't even care where you are coming from (politically) or even where you are going. This is just a debate forum, a means of exchange between supposedly intelligent people.

I do believe this, however: The definition of socialism incorporates fundamentally the fact that the government owns the means of production. Period!

Which is why I adhere to the more modern version called Social Democracy, largely centrist in nature but leaning leftwards. Which understands that the means of production must remain in private hands and that the principal means of exchange in the market-economy is "capital" and not "barter". But governments have a pivotal role is providing key Social Services necessitated by any modern socioeconomic entity (called a "country") today.

I don't know how many times I must repeat the above message, which is key to understanding that "socialism" like "communism" is no longer a major political force in the world, due to its inherent shortcomings as regards the means of production, where it has proven to fail miserably.

Social Democracies that constitute the make-up of the European Union are the model worth following. And the US has a lot of catch-up to be done, languishing as it is in a purely capitalist system of "What's best for me, me, me is all that matters and the rest of you can go to hell ... !"

If pure selfishness were the devil, he'd be right at-home at present in the White House and both chambers of Congress ...

 

Capitalism doesnt stop it for the same reason that Communism doesn't either- its human nature.

Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.