Three disasters, one cause: profit by SignyM

Geezer,

I don't think that Europe is a good comparison.

1) European counties are capitalist democracies, and are increasingly so. The US is arguably more socialist than Europe now, judging by the breakdown of our economy, on a percentage basis and the number of american social programs currently running.

2) Europe's population is and has been well off and educated, and has been benefiting from imperialism for centuries. The economic edge of Europe is fairly undeniable if you look at the world stage, regardless of what local govts. decided to do with that edge.

3) european states are smaller in their centralization than America. Very few european social programs are EU based, or federal, most are state based. Large scale centralization tends to be much more conducive to creating a permanent peasant class.

4) many american states are already as "socialist" as europe's, and have large scale costly social programs, some with very dubious results and serious side effects, but it's still nothing on either side of the Atlantic which classifies really as socialism. The European parties involved are generally not socialist parties, and this sort of stuff tends to fall much more into the category of social safety net more than social engineering.

A fair comparison would be a like comparison. For the US you would need another large scale federal system like the USSR to compare it to, a comparison the proponents never care to make. For small states, comparing statewide policies of Hungary vs. Iowa or something like that would be fair, I don't know if it's been done. I know that there's a mobility problem in Iowa that has been the result of farm subsidies, say what you will about that.

But the most obvious comparison to me would be one where capitalists have complete control vs. one of similar demographics whirr socialists have complete control, and particularly where this has been true for a while. Neither side gets credit for inheriting someone else's success.

I think North Korea vs. South Korea; East Germany vs. West Germany; North Yemen vs. South Yemen; Zimbabwe vs. Tanzania or Botswana; the D.R. Congo vs. The Rep of Congo; SSR China vs. SE China vs. Japan; Syria vs. Turkey or Iran; Albania vs. Italy. Sure, I'll grant Haiti vs. Cuba in the other direction, but then consider Cuba vs. Miami. I'm pretty sure of where the balance of this one falls.

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 2:43 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:
Better not be Socialism.
Why not? That would be a big improvement over what we've got now!

Oh come on!

Socialism, the Marxist 'state owns the means of production' version you must be espousing if you desire the downfall of Capitalism, has never worked. In countries where it has been applied, it has generally led to a concentration of both political and economic power in the hands of a privileged few that even the most greedy capitalist couldn't dream about. It's led to planned famines, labor camps, purges, round-ups of dissidents or just those not sufficiently doctrinaire, massive forced relocations, massive secret police forces and a large percentage of the population informing on the rest, betrayal of allies, crappy industrial products, and bad science.

SignyM, I get the feeling that you are hauntingly like the progressives and intellectuals in the U.S. and France preceding and following WWII, who were so in love with the ivory tower ideal of Socialism that they categorically refused to believe that there were purges, forced labor camps and gulags in Soviet Russia, despite the testimony of folks who'd been there, because it spoiled their fantasy.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 3:04 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Which is pretty irrelevant to anything I posted, but if you feel the need to grasp at straws to defend capitalism feel free.

Actually you're doing pretty well for me. The European welfare states you cite as so successful all have largely Capitalist, free-market economies. Many are reducing state ownership of the industries the government once had. Not one has what could be called a Socialist economy.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 3:31 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Which is pretty irrelevant to anything I posted, but if you feel the need to grasp at straws to defend capitalism feel free.

Actually you're doing pretty well for me. The European welfare states you cite as so successful all have largely Capitalist, free-market economies. Many are reducing state ownership of the industries the government once had. Not one has what could be called a Socialist economy.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

I see we're playing the game where you make things up and claim them to be true

. It is, for the record, very telling that rather than react to what I said, you strawman it and go off on a tangent. Did I mention anything about Socialist economies? I believe I did not. Thanks for acknowledging I'm right on just about every point I guess...

The States you claim are capitalist are in fact mixed economies. For all your hand waving and evidence-less claims, not a one of them has a Capitalist economy, rather a mixed economy, which is by definition a mixture of capitalist and socialist economic principles.

Still you haven't answered my question, how is that national debt, the one that had to be expanded to stop capitalism collapsing under it's own weight?

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 4:28 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

CIT: Straw-manning is Geezer's stock-in-trade.

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 5:20 AM

I probably don't need to point out that nowhere is a free-market in place anymore. Which, honestly, would have it's own brand of problems. Businessmen/women in general will have more money than the consumers/employees in the population, and more money means more ability to suppress any bad information that might discourage the public from buying. Even on a local level this can be true, so the trick is figuring out how to keep businesses small enough and local enough to make them answerable to market forces. Or, if you remove the idea of a market from the equation, democratically answerable to the public.

I don't necessarily think a mandate on how big a business can be would be the answer, granted that would get it done in a hurry, but I think large businesses are ultimately unsustainable. I think eventually that better understanding of economic forces will have people opt for smaller, more community friendly business. If the end goal is to make sure your family and future generations are taken care of for a long time, that's really the only way to go.

Regulations protect the public, and are important, at the same time they might prevent the business world from having the necessary epiphanies that would stop these abuses from happening. And when regulation fails, when regulation becomes friendly or slip shod, well. We are stagnant, and we don't seem to be learning from our mistakes. But we also don't have any really good methods to limit damage to the public when something does go wrong, economically, mechanically, or product-wise.

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 5:49 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So anyway, to answer your question: I think I know what we SHOULD do, what I'm not sure about is exactly how to get there from here. As I have said many many times over, I think the interim economic answer is "cooperatives" and the interim political answer is "democracy", and the backbone is "non-commercial communication" (I know Geezer will dismiss as quickly as he dismisses "socialism".) But the long answer is more complex.

First of all, you cannot eliminate "government". Government performs functions which a "marketplace" never can and never will: broad-scope vision, conflict resolution, blue-sky research. And sometimes that government is going to have to be "big" government solving "big" problems like global climate change and open-ocean depletion. Even if the economy consisted of cooperatives operating in a competitive environment, cooperatives would STILL tend towards maximally-efficient monopolies. But efficient monopolies are unstable: they concentrate capital and are sensitive to even small disruptions (like the fire in a plant in Japan which caused the world supply of capacitor resins to disappear for three months). So there has to be a "firewall" between the economy and its own worst trends, because that "firewall" doesn't naturally exist in a capital-based economy.

In the best sense, government would represent community working groups dedicated to solving specific problems, even if that working group is international fishermen solving open-ocean depletion.

BTW: There is a book which details how working groups manage the problems of the commons- in one example how Swiss herder cooperatives manage common-pasture rights. The title and author escape me but I will try to find it. The key to problem resolution is direct communication. However, I'm not sure if this model applies to problems which have more than a monkey-sphere of actors, so more procedures would prolly have to be created.

There are still many remaining questions:

How do we get "there" from "here"? And what are the long-term solutions to capital concentration and hierarchy formation?

As far as cooperatives are concerned, the biggest problem right now is that private banks control the flow of money. Having worked with a guy who was in several cooperatives, he says even cooperatives with solid business plans have a hard time getting loans bc banks rightly see cooperatives as a long-term threat to their business model. One of the reasons why Mondragon is so successful is because it has its own bank. So cooperatives need to create alternate funding: perhaps their own cooperative bank. Ultimately, they might even create their own Nonbank International Capital Exchange. (NICE.

) Ultimately, the problems of monopolism and concentration of capital might be found in better ways to create and exchange capital, or do away with it altogether.

In terms of government: You DO have the power to gain control of government. Unlike China, this is a democracy. Rather than tearing government down right away, you should use government to reform corporations FIRST. Sequence is important. Like the old joke says It's not ready, fire, aim. And trust me, if you can successfully use government to chip away at corporations, you will have ALREADY solved many of the problem that we currently have with government!

Finally, communication. There is something both seductive and dangerous in broadcast media (and alas, also in the virtual world as a whole, which distances people from authentic experience).

Anyway, I'm kind running out of time. I'll have to pick this up later, but I want to leave you with this thought: What I'm proposing isn't a long-term solution to the problem of relentless economic integration, collectivization, and concentration of capital, which is as a permanent trend in any capital-based economy. The only "natural" firewalls to these trends are distance and disaster. As fuels become more scarce, distance may re-localize economies. (Goods and people need to move as freely as capital for fully-integrated economies). As far as disaster is concerned... that would be the hard way to hit the reset button. All of my ideas here are aimed at disaster-avoidance.

If you have better ideas on how to diffuse capital and power and how to firewall our economies, I'm all ears.

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 6:23 AM

Quote:
Government performs functions which a "marketplace" never can and never will: broad-scope vision, conflict resolution, blue-sky research.

Most of these go towards military applications. :x

Probably why space travel research is petering out. That, and they realized that sending people away from earth eliminates commercial control over them.

In a non-market system I would expect you'd still end up with a lot of advances just being made with people who have the curiosity and interest in the field.

I also wonder just how much of the current scientific advances were private versus government. There's some dispute over which invented the internet, for example. Both sides of the debate seem to have a vested interest in claiming they did the most work: seems to have been more of a joint effort, really, or analogous work being done at the same time to address similar problems.

Calculus was invented twice in history, and supposedly with no overlap in the research involved. Sometimes there's just a need that comes up in the course of scientific/technological progress.

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 6:24 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

In a democracy, there is no excuse for letting government get away from your interests and your goals. The mechanism is there for change.

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 6:31 AM

And again, we're not a democracy. An oligarchy is probably closer to what we have in practice.

Quote:
BTW: There is a book which details how working groups manage the problems of the commons- in one example how Swiss herder cooperatives manage common-pasture rights. The title and author escape me but I will try to find it. The key to problem resolution is direct communication. However, I'm not sure if this model applies to problems which have more than a monkey-sphere of actors, so more procedures would prolly have to be created.

Why not? Even in government, you only have a monkey sphere of actors involved, the problem is they're making all the decisions and they've got all the power and they're more than a little in bed with the corporations they're supposed to regulate.

The only way this does work is if every monkey sphere has approximately equal say so in the decisions they make. Which to me means no government.

Take down the corporations, you take down the government. This at least we agree on. They're propping each other up.

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 8:36 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
I see we're playing the game where you make things up and claim them to be true

Oh. Hi Mike.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 10:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Oh. Hi Mike.

Hi Rap.

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 11:41 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
First, few European social welfare states have higher GDP per capita that the U.S. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_percap-economy-gdp-per-capit
a

The U.S does very well in these tables for a country of its size I've always thought (all the countries above it are very small), so there's something in U.S-style capitalism.

But looking at social mobility statistics (or any social statistics: prison populations, health/obesity, abortions/teen pregnancy etc.), there is something in European style social-economic policies.

Irresponsible spending is irresponsible spending, whether Southern EU welfare states do it, or Ronald Reagan and George W Bush does it...

I personally think Germany (West) is a good model: excellent public/social services, and the social justice that comes with that: but still a competitive, vibrant, diverse economy. Note that the statistics are skewed against the West German capitalist model because of the large burden it has had of absorbing the weak socialist East German economy.

So I personally pine for something like Germany. Citizen as a Guardian reader, probably pines for something like Sweden. I'm not sure what liberals in Sweden pine after.

Heads should roll

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 4:58 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Why not jack the open-source community's social dynamic and apply it to government ?

-F

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Sunday, June 13, 2010 9:46 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

You mean, a meritocracy? Problem is, there is no accountability to the general public. In addition, the coordinators (those who take care of version control and basic philosophy) are actually few and far between. Linus STILL has a big say in how Linux is implemented.

But maybe if you give me some examples of how you see that working, I could give it some more concrete thought.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 12:10 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
The U.S does very well in these tables for a country of its size I've always thought (all the countries above it are very small), so there's something in U.S-style capitalism.

It does, but I'd argue that's it's more to do with the fact that the US was the only industrial power completely untouched by the Second World War at home. So while everyone else was rebuilding, the US was the only country with a manufacturing base capable of supplying materials to rebuild with. The US has been riding that wave ever since, and now that countries are recovering from the War it's lead is diminishing. I'd also say that if all the GDP is really held by the top 1%, and everyone else gets next to nothing, and can't hope to improve their social standing, then GDP per capita is pretty much completely meaningless.

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
I personally think Germany (West) is a good model: excellent public/social services, and the social justice that comes with that: but still a competitive, vibrant, diverse economy. Note that the statistics are skewed against the West German capitalist model because of the large burden it has had of absorbing the weak socialist East German economy.

East Germany was Communist. Communism and Socialism are equivalent in the same way that Corporatism and Capitalism are equivalent. And I agree mostly, but West Germany has more regulation of it's private sector than Britain or the US, and plenty of Social Programs as well.

I'd be perfectly happy with a German system, I worked out there for awhile with British Forces: if I can get 3 litre bottles of Vodka and 85 pence packs of cigarettes on NAAFI rations again I'll be even happier. There are a fair few cultural differences between us though, which could change the outlook. People in Germany dig snow out from the pavement in front of their homes because they think it's their responsibility, not because the Government tells them too for instance. Or how long do you think a cigarette vending machine bolted to a lamp post would last on a British street?

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
So I personally pine for something like Germany. Citizen as a Guardian reader, probably pines for something like Sweden. I'm not sure what liberals in Sweden pine after.

I don't read the Guardian, actually. If I read any newspaper it's usually the independent.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 12:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

Why not jack the open-source community's social dynamic and apply it to government ?

-F

It's not exactly the root of all perfection. It works great for FOSS for the most part, but there's also times it doesn't work well at all *cough*The GIMP*cough*.

I've heard plenty of times when someone has made a bug or problem with a GPL program known, they're shouted down because the developers "don't owe them anything". I think that would be a step down rather than up from democracy where the politicians at least have to throw a few breadcrumbs the electorates way on occasion.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 4:52 AM

>_>

I use the GIMP. It's not the best ever, but it's functional.

And free. Monetarily and hassle-wise.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 5:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
>_>

I use the GIMP. It's not the best ever, but it's functional.

And free. Monetarily and hassle-wise.

Lots of things aren't the best ever, but Functional. Windows for instance.

The Gimps interface is backwards, tools don't do what they should (Move doesn't move things, for instance), there's glaring omissions (no layer groups for one), and it's a pig of a program to use on a platform with a single desktop. To be fair the next release is supposed to be addressing those issues, but it's taken years for the developers to listen to the people who use it to get it done.

Not in the least it's support from graphics tablets is awful, on Windows I found myself having to set up my Watcom every time I started the damn thing, on Linux it doesn't like moving from the painting area to the menus. Every other program I use, Closed or Open Source, just works with graphics tablets, so I don't buy that it's really that hard.

You point out these issues and the Developers either tell you their way is better, they owe you nothing, or "you'd realise why it works that way if you looked at the code". It's a brilliant example of the wrong attitude in FOSS development.

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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 5:15 AM

Quote:
Communism and Socialism are equivalent in the same way that Corporatism and Capitalism are equivalent.

Cit, I see where you're coming from on this one

IMHO,, corporatism comes about when you have a large scale socialist govt. And a large scale corporate private sector, and nothing keeping the two apart. Since we know corporatism is corporation+govt, and that this si driven by corporate greed (or govt desire to dodge accountability by morphing into corporate form, ie blackwater security) then there has to be a govt budget worth stealing, and a fair power base there.

Communism IMHO happens when socialism has no competition, which is typically because it has used govt power to force out any possible competition.

Capitalism has some very very serious flaws, but it doesn't auto morph into corporatism.

Its a conundrum. Capitalism run amok isn't stopped by govt regulation because govt powerful enough to regulate is govt worth taking over via corporatism. Communism is govt. Run amok, and without a working private escort, or even private sector (ipad also runs amok, converting sector to escort;) ) without a working private sector with the protections of something like the 14th, you're back to govt. Takeover again.

We have a problem right now with "mountaintop removal" and also "franking." the thing is, the companies doing the mining that is destroying the land don't even own the land they're mining. It's much like the ocean drilling, fishing, etc, and other things such as logging in national forests. There's no strong concept of law here, because govt will look the other way. This seems to go on regardless of govt structure, with socialist leaning capitalism in brazil, or pure socialism like in Venezuela, or Chinese communism or whatever it is that we have here in the US. Listening to the lies of Rand Paul, moron du jour, we would likely have this problem in pure capitalism

Anyone have any ideas on this?

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Monday, June 14, 2010 5:17 AM

Frem

Re, open source govt, have you read aristideds "eyes of the heart"? It's a good take on human economy.

There is a problem with the idea, which is such a society would only go as far as it thinks it has to, and you likely wouldn't get the kind of disaster preparedness you see in japan.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 5:29 AM

KANEMAN

Wow. This thread is one big liberal circle jerk....Carry on.....

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Monday, June 14, 2010 6:09 AM

Really? I thought it was more like intra-faction warfare, only they're kind of just throwing erasers at each other.

Liberalism is technically pro-capitalist, or at least in the classical sense. This is an argument between an anti-capitalist cross-section of the left wing spectrum, with you and Geezer throwing in the occasional pro-capitalist right wing comments, and DT is fairly centrist.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 7:30 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

dbl

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Monday, June 14, 2010 7:30 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Capitalism has some very very serious flaws, but it doesn't auto morph into corporatism.

Of course it does. I know you're a small businessman... a farmer to be exact, and you quite naturally think small business is important.

If we could have small-business capitalism that STAYED small-business capitalism, there wouldn't be any problem. But capitalism has already morphed in the corporatism... it started roughly 150 years ago in the USA... and has steadily marched on ever since, towards bigger and bigger business... regional, then national, then international. And while small businesses exist and indeed employ large numbers of people, it is large businesses like auto manufacturers, banks, insurances, utilities etc. which dominate our daily lives and the overall health of the economy.

Ignoring the presence and effect of corporatism/ monopolism in capitalism falls pretty much into the realm of "wishful thinking". If you really want to do something about the worst excesses of capitalism, you have to take control of the biggest players. I know that's a tough assignment and a lot of hard work, but until you accept that you'll be leaving the field to them and contenting yourself with playing outside of the ballpark.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 9:22 AM

Sig,

Read my earlier post on how communism and corporatism happen, it was addressed to citizen, I think we were reaching an accord there.

Also, re the first post on this thread, I am going to hedge my bets on item 3. Hospitals are not strictly speaking free market enterprises, they are already some sort of business government merger like universities. On drug companies, you have a point, but i think most of the damage, or at least an equal share is being done by hospitals. If socialized medicine is the alternative, we need to more closely examine the death rates in some of the large scale socialized operations, since that's what we would get here in the US. Remember I posted in the last healthcare debate, and all previous ones, that I have no problem with healthcare being given over to the states. It's the Feds I don't want in my healthcare. Ideally, id want it to be small and local, or self driven, or both.

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Monday, June 14, 2010 9:25 AM