Every system has problems. Capitalism is the best we have found at managing resources at scale. The problem of course is that wealth tends to create wealth, which causes wealth to accumulate at the top. This leads to a completely distorted economy, civil unrest, and eventually a crash. The usual solution is to task a government with making sure that wealth is taken from the top and reinjected at the bottom to keep the system from crashing. It's an ugly hack, but it's the only thing that has worked. The big problem with this is that wealth also tends to accumulate political power which weakens this check on capitalism. There's no easy solution, but the first place to start would be strengthening campaign finance rules and conflict of interest rules. The legislators should never be cozy with industry. In fact the heads of industry should be angry with government pretty much all of the time, if they are not then the government is probably not doing its job. Apple should be on a massive propaganda campaign about how cruel and unfair it is that all of the world governments are taking away their profits and giving them (indirectly) to poor people. They should be crying about how greedy governments have stolen like three quarters of a trillion dollars from them. Hedge fund managers should be angry about how the government is always there when they make huge windfalls. It should seems super unfair what the government is doing, because what capitalism does to the poor is just as unfair.
Oh, but business interests are always complaining. They face no price or consequence for griping. They set up TV networks to do 24 hour pissing & moaning, and they call it "news."
What blows my mind is that the middle class and the poor who should know better, are simply to damned lazy to stand up for themselves. And many of them simply want a strongman to tell them what to do. That is, when they're not fantasizing that they'll be allowed into the club of the rich if they only provide enough fealty. It's a completely warped populace.
The big danger, IMO, is the sheer frustration that the modern social and economic system puts on the demographic mentioned (18-29 year olds). "Maybe we should start smashing stuff until things are better" is really unappealing when you have a meaningful job, a spouse and children, a house, or are otherwise invested into the system. And when you're frustrated enough to have a negative view of markets, well, the field is ripe for extraordinarily dangerous mass movements.
Millennials are infantilized until later in life and, by and large, haven't been allowed to hold real responsibility until 22 or ever later. The affordability of passing gate-keeping milestones - such as owning a home, or getting a degree, or affording a stay-at-home wife and children - in terms of available opportunities has risen drastically. The divorce rate has risen tremendously, having an unprecedented rise in adults raised in broken homes.
Like, congratulations Baby Boomers, you successfully made housing and education expensive enough that your loans and real estate let you retire off the proceeds of people working to pay off their crushing debt. That just means a generation of angry single men in their twenties working pointless jobs, living with their parents, and frustrated with their inability to fulfill their social needs. If you're not scared of creating this demographic, you haven't studied history and psychology.
I think the deeper problem is that labor has no pricing power. Capitalism works for more people when people who earn a salary can buy things that increase real demand for companies. But workers are strapped for money, and have no real political assistance or prospects for a better future. Earning a living is increasingly a sucker's game.
Unfortunately, America's political system doesn't allow for a nuanced solution that gently puts the brakes on rampant globalization. Instead, talking heads who only play for ALL THE MARBLES see this as an either/or situation. I believe in the inevitability of globalization. The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we need to get there next week? Can we get there just a tiny bit slower? Can we create an economic space where people not living on space station Elysium (the 2013 movie) can have a life not defined by exasperating financial anxiety?
Aren't unions the way to give labor pricing power? Of course the problem with Unions is that they are a big Prisoners Dilemma game. You need everybody in the union or the people outside of it undercut the whole system.
Globalism makes it extremely difficult to maintain unions without significant government support. Can you imagine a scenario where every textile worker in the world was a member of a union? How horrible would it be if they couldn't be kept as wage slaves and paid pennies per hour out in Bangladesh? Your clothes would cost more for sure.
but, it's more than that because true competitive capitalism would allow prices to come down, but technology companies designing system that don't pass wealth on to consumers. google advertising costs a fortune who pays for it in higher prices? why do companies need to keep upgrading excel?
This article reads to me like a long list of problems caused by government and blamed on capitalism.
I'm biased though - I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and I've spent orders of magnitude more time considering these sorts of questions than the vast majority of people who are not so politically involved.
Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you has spent less time considering these sorts of questions than you have?
As a counterpoint, I'd suggest the thousands of political-science, economic, and philosophy scholars who all disagree with you (as do the vast majority of humans who have ever lived and appreciate the social contract).
You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong, but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have.
> Do you think that everyone who disagrees with you has spent less time considering these sorts of questions than you have?
Of course not, that's why I qualified that statement; to be clear that I was speaking about the general public, not those who hold a contrary worldview that merely disagree with me.
> You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong
I actually don't think it's a matter of "correct" or "incorrect" so much as one of values. I value individual liberty over all else, while others are more utilitarian in their approach.
> but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have.
Of course not - that's why I enjoy talking about political and economics. One or both of the people involved are likely to learn something in the process :)
Overall you make a good point. In the context of this article, I tend to think the OP comment has thought about it harder than the author. These articles like "Down with capitalism, didn't you hear 51% of millennials don't like it! And what about that fire in london?" are invariably written by radical left-wing disciplines where the authors have no evidence of deep understanding of the issues - here anthropology.
Sorry, but sounds like something straight out of /r/iamverysmart
Do you have any historic evidence that countries with smaller governments are wealthier & more efficient than countries where government spending is a large proportion of the GDP? (hint: it's all the western developed democracies)
> Sorry, but sounds like something straight out of /r/iamverysmart
Yeah, I was afraid it would come off that way and tried to soften it by qualifying my last statement. Apparently, it didn't work.
> Do you have any historic evidence that countries with smaller governments are wealthier & more efficient than countries where government spending is a large proportion of the GDP?
I didn't make that assertion. All I was trying to do is say that from my perspective most of the points raised in the article appear to be caused by government involvement, not by capitalism.
There's a quip in the show "Archer" (forget exactly the words) where Mallory tells everyone something along the lines of "move up to my tax bracket and see if you keep spouting that socialist propaganda". I found it hilarious because it is true for many out there that if you suddenly find yourself moved from your minimum wage job with Obamacare insurance into a position of making a huge salary with legit benefits, you suddenly shift your position on the fairness of Capitalism and whether or not people are getting too much from the government and how they should do what you did to get ahead.
Additionally, while it certainly appears that the richer get richer and it does nothing to help those that are struggling, you have to ask yourself whether or not you'd do anything different if it were you in the position of wealth and power to change how people earn money for the work they contribute. Then you'd have to wonder if people could truly come together and share everything under extreme government over site, but why wonder when there is decades of data to prove that it doesn't work?
yes, people are always motivated by self interest, even for what seems like altruistic actions the underlying motivation is that it makes them feel good about themselves.
I'm sure there's a name for this but a modern day label could be the "Facebook Syndrome", where seemingly endless goals of altruism is at its core, motivated by self interest and feeling good about oneself, to the detriment of the people you profess to be helping.
Everybody knows that capitalism has problem. The trick is figuring out what the next better bad system would be. And as far as I can see the richest, smartest and most powerful people are currenlty all thinking hard exactly about that question. So far nobody has found the answer, but suggestions are welcome.
No one has a concrete answer, but capitalism could work better if the market were freer -- and by "freer" I don't mean less regulated. I mean that people have more freedom to make choices.
For example, we don't currently have a free labor market because it's extremely expensive (in terms of time and money) for a low-wage worker to find a new job. Those people are trapped. If we had a better safety net for people at the bottom, the labor market could be more competitive.
Another example is lacking knowledge. The market could (and should) stop buying products that harm them, but sometimes the only party who knows the product is harmful is the producer. Cigarettes were an example for a long time because the tobacco companies buried their own research. The government now forces health disclosures on cigarettes, which makes the market work like it's supposed to.
There are tons of examples where a "socialist" policy actually leads to more personal freedom, more efficient markets, and less need for government intervention into individuals' decisions.
(I would include universal basic income as a social policy, but it's actually not! It's supposed by both libertarians and socialists. It might be the "next better bad" adjustment to our current system.)
Everyone complains about capitalism. Is there an actual solution? Is there an alternative that benefits the community as much as Socialism does? And then, what do we do with the crap parts of Socialism? Do we just TRY it and hope it works? There's never been a real plan set forth other than "Capitalism sucks!" or "Capitalism is the root of all our problems!" How do we solve for it?
Then... how do we get people to buy into it on a global scale without it falling apart under the weight of social discussions?
I'm pretty sympathetic to the ideals behind Distributism[0]. I just don't know, particularly, how to make it work usefully with sectors that benefit from economies of scale (like ISPs)
Readit News
What blows my mind is that the middle class and the poor who should know better, are simply to damned lazy to stand up for themselves. And many of them simply want a strongman to tell them what to do. That is, when they're not fantasizing that they'll be allowed into the club of the rich if they only provide enough fealty. It's a completely warped populace.
Millennials are infantilized until later in life and, by and large, haven't been allowed to hold real responsibility until 22 or ever later. The affordability of passing gate-keeping milestones - such as owning a home, or getting a degree, or affording a stay-at-home wife and children - in terms of available opportunities has risen drastically. The divorce rate has risen tremendously, having an unprecedented rise in adults raised in broken homes.
Like, congratulations Baby Boomers, you successfully made housing and education expensive enough that your loans and real estate let you retire off the proceeds of people working to pay off their crushing debt. That just means a generation of angry single men in their twenties working pointless jobs, living with their parents, and frustrated with their inability to fulfill their social needs. If you're not scared of creating this demographic, you haven't studied history and psychology.
Unfortunately, America's political system doesn't allow for a nuanced solution that gently puts the brakes on rampant globalization. Instead, talking heads who only play for ALL THE MARBLES see this as an either/or situation. I believe in the inevitability of globalization. The question we need to ask ourselves is, do we need to get there next week? Can we get there just a tiny bit slower? Can we create an economic space where people not living on space station Elysium (the 2013 movie) can have a life not defined by exasperating financial anxiety?
Globalism makes it extremely difficult to maintain unions without significant government support. Can you imagine a scenario where every textile worker in the world was a member of a union? How horrible would it be if they couldn't be kept as wage slaves and paid pennies per hour out in Bangladesh? Your clothes would cost more for sure.
The problem we have is that people consider existing policy agnostic.
I'm biased though - I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and I've spent orders of magnitude more time considering these sorts of questions than the vast majority of people who are not so politically involved.
As a counterpoint, I'd suggest the thousands of political-science, economic, and philosophy scholars who all disagree with you (as do the vast majority of humans who have ever lived and appreciate the social contract).
You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong, but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have.
Of course not, that's why I qualified that statement; to be clear that I was speaking about the general public, not those who hold a contrary worldview that merely disagree with me.
> You may be correct and everyone else may be wrong
I actually don't think it's a matter of "correct" or "incorrect" so much as one of values. I value individual liberty over all else, while others are more utilitarian in their approach.
> but I don't think it's accurate to dismiss other people as not having considered things as much as you have.
Of course not - that's why I enjoy talking about political and economics. One or both of the people involved are likely to learn something in the process :)
Do you have any historic evidence that countries with smaller governments are wealthier & more efficient than countries where government spending is a large proportion of the GDP? (hint: it's all the western developed democracies)
Yeah, I was afraid it would come off that way and tried to soften it by qualifying my last statement. Apparently, it didn't work.
> Do you have any historic evidence that countries with smaller governments are wealthier & more efficient than countries where government spending is a large proportion of the GDP?
I didn't make that assertion. All I was trying to do is say that from my perspective most of the points raised in the article appear to be caused by government involvement, not by capitalism.
Additionally, while it certainly appears that the richer get richer and it does nothing to help those that are struggling, you have to ask yourself whether or not you'd do anything different if it were you in the position of wealth and power to change how people earn money for the work they contribute. Then you'd have to wonder if people could truly come together and share everything under extreme government over site, but why wonder when there is decades of data to prove that it doesn't work?
For example, we don't currently have a free labor market because it's extremely expensive (in terms of time and money) for a low-wage worker to find a new job. Those people are trapped. If we had a better safety net for people at the bottom, the labor market could be more competitive.
Another example is lacking knowledge. The market could (and should) stop buying products that harm them, but sometimes the only party who knows the product is harmful is the producer. Cigarettes were an example for a long time because the tobacco companies buried their own research. The government now forces health disclosures on cigarettes, which makes the market work like it's supposed to.
There are tons of examples where a "socialist" policy actually leads to more personal freedom, more efficient markets, and less need for government intervention into individuals' decisions.
(I would include universal basic income as a social policy, but it's actually not! It's supposed by both libertarians and socialists. It might be the "next better bad" adjustment to our current system.)
Then... how do we get people to buy into it on a global scale without it falling apart under the weight of social discussions?
Giving it the old college try.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism