Cold this have went any different?

[Runlikehorse]

Rhino uh eve oihdfc

[spoonitnow]

This is going to go well.

[OngBonga]

/in

[givememyleg]

yes.

[Sin Uggla]

[x] IHNCWTFIGOH

[MadMojoMonkey]

[x] IHNCWTFIGOH

[x] sussed it in seconds.

[spoonitnow]

No, it cold not have.

[OngBonga]

It cold hot have imo

[surviva316]

NOUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOU
NOUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOU
NOUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOU
OUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOU
UNOUNOUNOUNOUNOUNOU

[Renton]

mother of god stop replying to this i keep refreshing the commune in vain hopes that the latest capitalism thread gets a reply only to find this shit bumped

[OngBonga]

I stopped talking about capitalism in the other thread because it's a huge fucking derail, wuf was originally talking about beating kids or whatever.

Let's derail the fuck out of this thread with me talking out of my arse about how capitalism is to blame for eveything.

[OngBonga]

I dunno if this is a really flawed view, but basically I don't see wealth as something that is "created", in the same sense energy isn't created. Wealth is what happens when resources, time and effort are combined. You're not creating wealth, you're changing if from one form to another. That said, there's a limited amount of wealth, restricted by how much resources there are available, how much time one has, and how hard one works.

That is why we have skyscrapers and billions of tons of food for everyone to eat when we had neither of these things a couple hundred years ago.

No, we have skyscrapers because there are enough resources, and with enough time and effort, skyscrapers happen. We can't have 70 trillion skyscrapers. Food isn't unlimited either. Just because we have more no than we did a century ago, that doesn't demonstrate that capitalism works. There are still a great many people around the world who are going without. Why? They have capitalism in India and Brazil, why are so many people so poor?

It's also why there are currently about 40,000 commercial aircraft in the world and that number is expected to double within 20 years as more people will be able to afford to fly.

Brillaint. I'll forget about all the hungry people because we have planes. How many people, in terms of a % of the global population, actually use planes?

So applying this concept to currency and loans, here's a simple example. Suppose you have an idea to start a business, but no money to realize that idea. I, on the other hand, have a lot of money but no ideas. You come to me with your idea, I like your idea, and I offer to loan you 10 million dollars at 7% annual interest, based on my confidence that your idea is profitable enough that the 7% interest covers my risk that you will default on your loan, plus a profit. The profit is obviously there to cover my opportunity cost and time expenditure, as I could have used that 10 million dollars for a limitless number of other profitable endeavors. Now the decision is back on you: Is your business idea sound enough that the 10 million dollar investment will build equity for you for a return of greater than 7%? If yes, you accept; if no you reject or try to negotiate a lower rate.

This is fine if you actually have the money to lend me. This isn't how banks work though, is it? What should happen is that a bank has x amount of money to lend to people, and then they lend y to someone, leaving x-y remaining funds. That would be a sustainable model, because money isn't being created from nothing.

Now if you accept, that when two parties agree to such terms, that it's quite likely that they both benefit in the long run from that agreement (probabilistically speaking, you'd say its >50% chance of this), then we're already most of the way to proving the statement that wealth has been created here.

Your use of the word "created" is misleading. Wealth has been "created" only because the loanee uses the funds along with resources, time and effort. The "wealth" already existed in another form, it was merely converted, not created.

And this isn't even accounting for the extraction of resources, which continually adds wealth to a society. Those may be physical resources like ores, water, oil, and gas, but they may also be labor. Wealth is continually being created by all of the shit we do every day and all of the shit we pull out of the ground and put to work for us to make our lives more efficient and meaningful.

How much longer can we continue to extract resources? We do not have an infinite supply, which means that there is a limit to the total wealth of the planet. And of course we're ignoring the negative effect that resource extraction has on the environment.

I'm sure capitalism would work a lot better if it wasn't for the problem of people being so fucking greedy. The banks fucked it up when they shifted away from currencies that are based on a resource such as gold. Now our currencies are based on imagined value. That can't be sustainable. It might be working now, but that's only because every nation in the world needs oil, and every nation in the world must trade oil in dollars or face the wrath of USA. That's what all this fucking nonsense is about... it's why Saddam was removed from power, it's why Putin is being labelled as the next Hitler, it's why there's a false flag event pretty much every week. These wars are propping up our economies. We're enjoying the benefits of capitalism at the expense of the rest of the world.

Like I said in the other thread, I hope I'm wrong. I'd rather be naive and full of shit.

[Renton]

Gonna respond to your points with a minimum of snark if I can help it. I geniunely enjoy debunking anti-capitalism and I'll happily elaborate on any point that you find to be unclear.

I dunno if this is a really flawed view, but basically I don't see wealth as something that is "created", in the same sense energy isn't created. Wealth is what happens when resources, time and effort are combined. You're not creating wealth, you're changing if from one form to another. That said, there's a limited amount of wealth, restricted by how much resources there are available, how much time one has, and how hard one works.

I agree. When a society becomes wealthier what is really happening is that it is making more effective use of its resources. You must understand though that the above can be true while the "zero-sum game" theory of economics is not. The more efficiently and effectively resources are used, the better the quality of life for human beings in general. Mutually beneficial trade can occur because scarce resources have alternative uses, and some uses have greater benefit than others. Also a resource can have more value in one person's hands than in another's. A core part of the wealth of the human race, also, is the number of humans there are. See below.

There are still a great many people around the world who are going without. Why? They have capitalism in India and Brazil, why are so many people so poor?

Population growth is a core economic issue. As I just mentioned, the number of human beings in a society is an aspect of its wealth. To be more specific, the collective knowledge, expertise, and labor potential of a group is a big part of that group's wealth.

Choosing to have kids is an economic decision. A big one. Being physically able to have kids without dying young is an aspect of one's economic state. Hunter-gatherer humans lacked for population growth because they didn't have the resources to sustain large families and because they lacked for the healthcare to sustain long lives. Honestly, it didn't get much better until the industrial revolution.





I love this graph because it shows just how fucked we were all the way up until practically yesterday, in large-scale human history terms. As you can see the slope of the line starts to really get steep at about 1850, which coincides with the rise of capitalistic societies. I won't claim a causal link quite yet, because the direct cause can easily be attributed to advances in healthcare. But what I will claim is that there's an economic pattern that repeats itself.

1) When a society is unbelievably poor, as in pre-1850 poor, population growth is difficult to sustain. It is very costly to have children, as they are difficult to feed and shelter. There's also a large risk that the mother will die in childbirth. Conversely, the value that the children will provide to the family is very low because all there is to do is hunt and forage (farm if you're lucky), and it will take a decade or more before the child can pull his or her weight in the family.

2) When a society reaches a certain level of modest wealth, the economic incentives are completely different. The people are still extremely poor by yours and my standards (imagine present-day Bangladesh or Indonesia), but they at least have enough resources to feed themselves reliably. They also have enough resources to provide the absolute basics of healthcare, by which I mean a clean bed to give birth in, a doctor who can perform a cesarean, antibiotics, etc. Capital has developed enough in this society that its actually worthwhile to have children, lots of them in fact. In Cambodia (where I currently live), the poor people here have tons of kids *specifically* as a sort of retirement policy when they get old. When you have just enough wealth to feed your kids cheaply, but not enough to have any modern standard of living, incentives compel you to have kids as your primary objective. This is where we can observe a population explosion in dozens of societies of recent history, including current countries such as India.

3) The population boom creates a sort of "sweatshop phase" of economic development. Supply and demand are real things and they apply to labor like anything else. When a fledgling economy like India experiences a massive population boom, the demand for labor is likely to be exceeded by supply, driving prices (wages) down. England and the U.S. had their sweatshop phases during the second industrial revolution up until WWI. These preceded periods of economic dominance for those countries. India and China are coming out of their's now, and becoming wealth powerhouses. Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Indonesia are having their sweatshop phases currently, and I suspect that in 20 years or so, after some of the their despotic regimes have begun to topple, central African nations will take their places. The important thing to understand is that this is a natural economic phase that results from people "having it good enough" to have lots of children. The default state of human beings is miserable. That significantly more people are being born than are dying is an improvement from that default state, as is having a lifespan > 50 years. We must have patience. Economists call these "emerging economies" for a good reason.





4) As wealth accumulates in a society, population growth curbs. People can make enough money during their lifetimes that they no longer need children to take care of them when they get old. Labor becomes more specialized and more efficient, and the demand for untrained labor decreases, while the demand for resourceful, educated, and trained labor increases. We're observing this in every modern industrialized state. I think there is an excellent case to be made that the world population will trend toward the orange line as economic development continues to snowball, especially in the poorer developing countries.

No, we have skyscrapers because there are enough resources, and with enough time and effort, skyscrapers happen. We can't have 70 trillion skyscrapers. Food isn't unlimited either. Just because we have more no than we did a century ago, that doesn't demonstrate that capitalism works.


How many people, in terms of a % of the global population, actually use planes?

We have skyscrapers because the land in metropolitan areas has become so effectively used that it has increased to astronomical values so high that it's actually economically feasible to pay the tremendous cost of building vertically just for the convenience and proximity that comes with working in a central business district. We're building twice as many planes because twice as many people in the world will have achieved the amount of personal wealth that is necessary for air travel to be a feasible option for them. At the same time, the costs of airfare are decreasing. I dunno about you but I've seen some poor motherfuckers on airplanes, and I doubt those people's parents or grandparents could ever have afforded to fly.

This is fine if you actually have the money to lend me. This isn't how banks work though, is it? What should happen is that a bank has x amount of money to lend to people, and then they lend y to someone, leaving x-y remaining funds. That would be a sustainable model, because money isn't being created from nothing.

The fractional reserve model is only a problem because of central banking. Private banks with private deposit insurance issuing their own private IOUs to people who then spend those IOUs as legal tender in commerce would be perfectly sustainable, because any run on these banks would be covered by their insurer who would then jack up the premiums of that bank. Banks with unaffordable premiums would then fail to compete favorably with the ones that take smarter risks, and everything would be jolly. Money is a scarce resource that has alternative uses, and smart lending fosters economic growth.

Your use of the word "created" is misleading. Wealth has been "created" only because the loanee uses the funds along with resources, time and effort. The "wealth" already existed in another form, it was merely converted, not created.

Okay, I'll agree with this assessment. The wealth existed previously in the form of the less-useful raw materials that went into creating it, along with the expertise, ingenuity, and hard work of course, as the labor that went into that business was displaced from labor that could have been used for something else. The reason I said "created" is because the cumulative value of the system has increased. If the business was successful, it most likely provided something of value that there was a demand for in the economy. And all the while, the venture capitalist was able to make a buck from the interest, being duly compensated for his risk, energy, and time.

How much longer can we continue to extract resources? We do not have an infinite supply, which means that there is a limit to the total wealth of the planet. And of course we're ignoring the negative effect that resource extraction has on the environment.

The resources aren't infinite, but the finiteness isn't even the issue. With most natural resources the barrier is in cost of extraction. We're never going to run out of oil, but the cost of extracting it will continue to increase until alternate energy sources begin to compete. As to the negative environmental effects, that is a complicated issue for economists and politicians alike. Pollution is what economists refer to as an "external cost," meaning its a cost that isn't accounted for in commercial exchange. States are attempting, poorly, to internalize the costs, but I suspect the best answer to this problem is in enhancing people's right to private property. If you, a private individual, create pollution which affects the quality of the air on my privately-owned land, that constitutes an aggressive act against me and you should be liable for damages. When property rights aren't clear, or don't exist at all (see over-fishing the oceans for a good example of this), environmental costs go unaccounted for.

As to a limited supply of the total wealth of the planet, sure. But as I mentioned before, economic development actually increases the value of the existing resources. We can always do more with less, so even though the physical resources are limited (in a technical sense, if not a practical one), the wealth potential is nearly infinite. We also will be mining moons and asteroids and shooting the shit back to earth with mass drivers before too long, so I'm not gonna lose too much sleep over this one.

I'm sure capitalism would work a lot better if it wasn't for the problem of people being so fucking greedy. The banks fucked it up when they shifted away from currencies that are based on a resource such as gold. Now our currencies are based on imagined value. That can't be sustainable. It might be working now, but that's only because every nation in the world needs oil, and every nation in the world must trade oil in dollars or face the wrath of USA. That's what all this fucking nonsense is about... it's why Saddam was removed from power, it's why Putin is being labelled as the next Hitler, it's why there's a false flag event pretty much every week. These wars are propping up our economies. We're enjoying the benefits of capitalism at the expense of the rest of the world.


Like I said in the other thread, I hope I'm wrong. I'd rather be naive and full of shit.

Sounds like you're criticizing nation-states, not capitalism. If you want me to address anything specific from this, let me know.

[OngBonga]

Gonna respond to your points with a minimum of snark if I can help it. I geniunely enjoy debunking anti-capitalism and I'll happily elaborate on any point that you find to be unclear.

Don't hold back, I wouldn't post this shite if I had a problem being slapped down. I realise I'm an uneducated stoner, I can only emphasise I am not an economist. I just see a lot wrong with the way the world works.

I love this graph because it shows just how fucked we were all the way up until practically yesterday, in large-scale human history terms. As you can see the slope of the line starts to really get steep at about 1850, which coincides with the rise of capitalistic societies. I won't claim a causal link quite yet, because the direct cause can easily be attributed to advances in healthcare. But what I will claim is that there's an economic pattern that repeats itself.

How interesting that you point to this graph like it's a good thing, while I see an exponential depletion of resources. Population growth is now a problem, it's not a good thing at all. Of course, growth is the result of improving living conditions. So technology takes us into new realms, until eventually we overrun the planet and there are no longer enough resources to ensure a high quality of living for everyone. Just because our Western lives are great, the average global quality of life is decreasing, not increasing. There are more people becoming poor. Eventually population should decrease as food and water become more scarce.

I dunno about you but I've seen some poor motherfuckers on airplanes, and I doubt those people's parents or grandparents could ever have afforded to fly.

I've flown once. Air travel is not something I can afford, nor do I have the need for air travel.

If you, a private individual, create pollution which affects the quality of the air on my privately-owned land, that constitutes an aggressive act against me and you should be liable for damages.

So I can sue car users for forcing me to inhale their fumes? That would set a very dangerous precedent.

We also will be mining moons and asteroids and shooting the shit back to earth with mass drivers before too long, so I'm not gonna lose too much sleep over this one.

Well this would also be unsustainable over a long period of time unless it is managed properly, and I don't trust humans to do that because that involves cost. For every kilogram we take from a moon and bring here, we need to take a kilogram of something else to replace it with, otherwise the mass of the planet and moon will change. I'm not going to pretend to know what would happen if we just imported a shit load of titanium from one of Saturn's moons without taking anything there to balance out, but I do not for a minute think that nothing will happen. Our planet's overall mass will slowly increase, meaning its gravity will increase, meaning our solar interaction will fluctuate. Gravitational balance seems essential, and when profit comes first, I don't have confidence that it would be managed properly.

Sounds like you're criticizing nation-states, not capitalism. If you want me to address anything specific from this, let me know.

Like I say, I'm no economist. Something is wrong, I blame capitalism because it encourages greed, an every man for himself mindset. Maybe the problem is nation-states, or maybe it's just human nature, that the fact we are still essentially monkeys competing for bananas means I shouldn't expect anything else.

I just feel like there has to be a better way. Capitalism has had its day imo, now it's time for the next stage of economic development, one which encourages community over individuality, where greed becomes part of humanity's shameful past.

[OngBonga]

I wish I was an economist so I could argue my case better.

[Renton]

How interesting that you point to this graph like it's a good thing, while I see an exponential depletion of resources. Population growth is now a problem, it's not a good thing at all. Of course, growth is the result of improving living conditions. So technology takes us into new realms, until eventually we overrun the planet and there are no longer enough resources to ensure a high quality of living for everyone. Just because our Western lives are great, the average global quality of life is decreasing, not increasing. There are more people becoming poor. Eventually population should decrease as food and water become more scarce.

It's pretty safe to say that we aren't even close to overpopulated, taking the world as a whole into consideration. There's a reasonable case to be made that there are localized pockets of overpopulation in the world, though. Population growth is generally a universal good for the economy because it results in more output. More ideas, more research, more innovation, all of this scales with population. As I addressed my last post, depletion of physical resources is not a major issue. As population continues to increase, and our needs for energy, metals, potable water, etc. increases in turn, the incentives for conservation will increase as well. In capitalism, prices do all of the work of this. For example, as countries like India and China emerge to become rich economies on the level of the U.S. and U.K., the demand for oil for increase. As the demand increases, the price will rise. As the price rises, consumers will bid for less of it than they would otherwise. Eventually alternative sources will begin to be competitive with oil. This is how electric cars will become completely mainstream. You don't need a government mandate to do this, you just need to let prices do their job. This applies to every other natural resource.

There's also not factual basis for the claim that we're running out of food or potable water. Starvation has sharply declined since the industrial revolution and continues to do so. Potable water problems are largely due to a tragedy of the commons, as the water sources tend to be owned by states and not private entities. States corrupt everything they touch, so you can't call this capitalism. Drinking water is handled in a damn near communistic way in most countries in the world. As far as running out of it, though, just as with oil, the price of it will increase until desalinization becomes an economically competitive extraction method, and then we've got oceans.

I've flown once. Air travel is not something I can afford, nor do I have the need for air travel.

Okay... Are you suggesting that commercial air travel isn't beneficial to societies? I merely brought it up as a good example of how the poor are getting richer and not the other way around.

So I can sue car users for forcing me to inhale their fumes? That would set a very dangerous precedent.

Actually you would sue the owner of the road, technically. But probably (warning: theoryland) in a futuristic free-market economy, it would already be worked out what you're entitled to financially for having a road adjacent to your front yard with bumper to bumper traffic and you'd be receiving that money as a matter of course. Also, in an economy where people/companies are accountable for the pollution they cause, pollution-mitigating tech would stand a much greater chance of emerging and being implemented. This is just one of the plethora of problems that governments are royally fucking the dog on. Don't blame capitalism.

Well this would also be unsustainable over a long period of time unless it is managed properly, and I don't trust humans to do that because that involves cost. For every kilogram we take from a moon and bring here, we need to take a kilogram of something else to replace it with, otherwise the mass of the planet and moon will change. I'm not going to pretend to know what would happen if we just imported a shit load of titanium from one of Saturn's moons without taking anything there to balance out, but I do not for a minute think that nothing will happen. Our planet's overall mass will slowly increase, meaning its gravity will increase, meaning our solar interaction will fluctuate. Gravitational balance seems essential, and when profit comes first, I don't have confidence that it would be managed properly.

If you're mass driving such a volume of resources that you're significantly altering the mass of the earth, I think we're already 50k years into the future and colonizing other planets and stuff so I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume they will have worked out the logistics and sustainability of that.

Like I say, I'm no economist. Something is wrong, I blame capitalism because it encourages greed, an every man for himself mindset. Maybe the problem is nation-states, or maybe it's just human nature, that the fact we are still essentially monkeys competing for bananas means I shouldn't expect anything else.

Well the one thing that needs to be understood about capitalism is that it isn't immoral, but it is amoral. Morality is a separate part of human nature that DOES influence economics but there's nothing to suggest that capitalist actors must be moral. I would strongly disagree with the claim that capitalism has an "every man for himself" mindset, though. Collaboration is incredibly important to functioning capitalist society. People who share information and team up will always have a competitive advantage in commerce over people who are lone wolves.

I think what you mean to say is that capitalism is based on self-interest, and that I would agree with. Acting in self interest is different than "every man for himself," because mutual self interest is possible. Lefties give free trade an unfair shake when they criticize it as being parasitic, when it's actually quite symbiotic. Greed is generally quite healthy. According to webster, greed is defined as "a selfish and excessive desire for more of something than is needed." I would define greed less pejoratively as "a desire for a better life."

The webster definition is flawed because it uses the quantifying terms of "excessive" and "more than is needed." Who the hell is to say what constitutes excessive or what is needed by another subjective person? We have as a race been sharply increasing our standards of living for hundreds of years and I hope we continue to do so for thousands more. I think that if people in Victorian-era England knew of all the incredible luxuries even relatively poor Americans circa 2014 enjoy, such as televisions, central air conditioning, refrigeration, and supermarkets with 100,000 items in stock, they would decry those people as being "excessively greedy." But its hard to deny that progress has been made. Capitalism leads to increased living standards for all, including the very poor, and there're mountains of physical evidence that prove it.

I just feel like there has to be a better way. Capitalism has had its day imo, now it's time for the next stage of economic development, one which encourages community over individuality, where greed becomes part of humanity's shameful past.

Maybe command economics will work once we invent AIs that are capable of making objective on-the-fly adjustments to economic policy. With humans at the helm it will continue to be a perpetual catastrophe that squanders all our resources, including human lives.

[OngBonga]

Population growth is generally a universal good for the economy because it results in more output.

Yes population growth is good for the economy, but I'm arguing it's bad for the world, and hence a capitalist economy is fundamentally flawed. I disagree with you, I feel we are reaching saturation point. It's not just about humans... for us to thrive, we need to live in harmony with nature... we are failing. There's plenty of room left for more people, but there isn't all that much room for more people, and more animals, and more farms, and more forests. Something has to give, and currently it's forests, which means less animals, less oxygen, and more CO2.

Eventually alternative sources will begin to be competitive with oil. This is how electric cars will become completely mainstream.

Well I hold the belief that if it wasn't for capitalism, or more to the point the private interests of powerful people, we'd already have electric cars, we'd already have phased out fossil fuels. But there's too much money to be made from oil. Why stop using oil when we haven't used it all? This is why I was talking about Tesla and Edison... Edison dominated because he had powerful capitalist friends who preferred him to hold patents, rather than allow some clever Serb with a girl's name to dominate. There's a clear example of capitalism holding back our progress. Tesla was way ahead of Edison.

There's also not factual basis for the claim that we're running out of food or potable water.

Well, the problem is clean water. Obviously there's more than enough water to cater for the population, it's just distributing clean water so people aren't getting ill. And if we're not running out of food yet, we will as population increases, because food comes from animals and plants, which means farms. Farms need space, and so do people.

States corrupt everything they touch, so you can't call this capitalism.

Ok we're finding common ground here. Only, I'd argue that states corrupt capitalism. Maybe my problem is with corrupted capitalism.

Drinking water is handled in a damn near communistic way in most countries in the world.

This would be true if water was free, which it should be, certainly in developed nations such as ours. The fact I have to pay for tap water, this is one of my problems with capitalism. Why should a private company profit from water? It's crazy. Water should be provided to the masses at cost, because it is essential for survival. That's why the state should control important resources such as water... when it's controlled by private companies, then people's needs at at the mercy of shareholders whose only concern is profit, and the cost of water rises above inflation.

This is just one of the plethora of problems that governments are royally fucking the dog on. Don't blame capitalism.

Why not blame capitalism? The problem is cost, the problem is that noone wants to take responsibility because it impacts on profits, and those whose profits it impacts are the people who have the power to make things happen. Why would those who stand to lose the most make the decision to pay off those who are impacted negatively?

I would strongly disagree with the claim that capitalism has an "every man for himself" mindset, though. Collaboration is incredibly important to functioning capitalist society. People who share information and team up will always have a competitive advantage in commerce over people who are lone wolves.

Well the basic mentality remains every man for himself. Why would two people collaborate? Mutual benefit. Not because it's the right thing to do for a healthy society, but because it is personally advantageous.

Greed is generally quite healthy. According to webster, greed is defined as "a selfish and excessive desire for more of something than is needed." I would define greed less pejoratively as "a desire for a better life."

I would redefine to... "a desire for a better life, with disregard for the negative impact on others".

Striving for a better life is fine, and natural. Doing so at the expense of others creates an unhealthy society.

Capitalism leads to increased living standards for all, including the very poor, and there're mountains of physical evidence that prove it.

I would argue that evolution is the reason we're so better off today than we were. Capitalism gets the thumbs up because it has been the de facto economic system. If communism was allowed to work properly, how can you say with any degree of certainty that we would be worse off than we are?

[Renton]

Yes population growth is good for the economy, but I'm arguing it's bad for the world, and hence a capitalist economy is fundamentally flawed. I disagree with you, I feel we are reaching saturation point. It's not just about humans... for us to thrive, we need to live in harmony with nature... we are failing. There's plenty of room left for more people, but there isn't all that much room for more people, and more animals, and more farms, and more forests. Something has to give, and currently it's forests, which means less animals, less oxygen, and more CO2.

When I say something is good for the economy, I'm essentially saying its good for society. When a new human is born and then contributes to the global economy, the net happiness of the human race increases. This is even true if the new person isn't able to contribute as much as the average. This is due to a basic economic concept called comparative advantage, for which I'd direct you to read this wikipedia article.

As to the environmental load caused by population growth in modern society, this is simply an issue that is tricky territory for economists no matter what your belief is, capitalism, communism, ?ism, whatever. My copout answer would be that capitalism stands the best chance of addressing the environment in the long run, for reasons I'll get into in a second.

Well I hold the belief that if it wasn't for capitalism, or more to the point the private interests of powerful people, we'd already have electric cars, we'd already have phased out fossil fuels. But there's too much money to be made from oil. Why stop using oil when we haven't used it all? This is why I was talking about Tesla and Edison... Edison dominated because he had powerful capitalist friends who preferred him to hold patents, rather than allow some clever Serb with a girl's name to dominate. There's a clear example of capitalism holding back our progress. Tesla was way ahead of Edison.

First of all, there are many non-capitalistic forces that are keeping us on the tit of oil. Many of the biggest oil-producing states are controlled economies that intervene heavily in the production of their cash crop. Similarly, many of the biggest oil-consuming states subsidize the oil industry. Remember when I said that in free trade, prices do a lot the work to promote conservation of resources? With regard to oil, states have completely subverted this mechanism. Oil in the U.S. has always had an artificially lowered price. U.K. this is less the case but probably you have your own subsidies. People squander resources more quickly when the price is low.

Second, oil isn't being overused because there's "too much money to be made." It's being used because its by far the cheapest and most convenient source of energy we have. The state has had a corrupting influence on the price of oil, but on an individual basis, people use oil because it is cheap. I suspect that in a pure capitalist world where states aren't manipulating the industry, it would still be the cheapest source of energy in many cases, and remain that way for another 10-20 years. And again, we will never use it all, we will just use it until the price of extraction becomes high enough that it isn't feasible to choose over alternatives.

As to your Tesla vs Edison stuff, in anarcho-capitalist circles there's a debate over the concept of intellectual property and whether it is beneficial to society. Edison was a crony capitalist of the third degree. He didn't have powerful capitalist friends, he had powerful gangster friends in the form of government executives and legislators.

Well, the problem is clean water. Obviously there's more than enough water to cater for the population, it's just distributing clean water so people aren't getting ill. And if we're not running out of food yet, we will as population increases, because food comes from animals and plants, which means farms. Farms need space, and so do people.

This would be true if water was free, which it should be, certainly in developed nations such as ours. The fact I have to pay for tap water, this is one of my problems with capitalism. Why should a private company profit from water? It's crazy. Water should be provided to the masses at cost, because it is essential for survival. That's why the state should control important resources such as water... when it's controlled by private companies, then people's needs at at the mercy of shareholders whose only concern is profit, and the cost of water rises above inflation.

I think you need to think long and hard about what happens when a scarce resource is deemed to be free as opposed to freely traded. I've already outlined in basic terms why states have had a corrupting influence on the market for petroleum. That is, oil-consuming countries aren't allowing prices to naturally emerge based on supply and demand. I've also already explained that prices compel people to squander or conserve, based on the underlying scarcity of the resource.

Free clean water would be a human catastrophe. Clean water is a scarce resource with alternative uses. I can drink water to sustain my life, I can use it to irrigate crops, I can use it to turn a steam turbine, I can use it to fill my swimming pool, or I can use it to wash my nutsack. If clean water is free to an economy, no one has any incentive to bid for all of these uses. They just turn the faucet on and fill their buckets. 90% of the water could easily be used for nutsack sanitation while humans in a different locale are thirsting to death because their aquifer has been drained by others upstream. There would be no incentive for anyone to conserve, so conservation would need to be mandated onto society from on high. You'd have some government cunt passing out vouchers for water to where *he personally* decides they ought to go. This system is laughably corruptible. And its not even that far of a stretch from the way public water is handled currently.

Ok we're finding common ground here. Only, I'd argue that states corrupt capitalism. Maybe my problem is with corrupted capitalism.

Absofuckinglutely.

Why not blame capitalism? The problem is cost, the problem is that noone wants to take responsibility because it impacts on profits, and those whose profits it impacts are the people who have the power to make things happen. Why would those who stand to lose the most make the decision to pay off those who are impacted negatively?

Because class-action litigation would compel them to do so. Scandal and reputation harm would as well. Private polluters are remarkably more accountable for damages than governments are, because they have a greater economic risk. You don't see states going bankrupt very often, but you see companies go broke all the time.

Well the basic mentality remains every man for himself. Why would two people collaborate? Mutual benefit. Not because it's the right thing to do for a healthy society, but because it is personally advantageous.

True. However, I think if you asked a few people what their idea of a healthy society is, you'd get a few different answers. It's kind of an arbitrary distinction, don't you think?

I would redefine to... "a desire for a better life, with disregard for the negative impact on others".

Striving for a better life is fine, and natural. Doing so at the expense of others creates an unhealthy society.

Yes, the "greed is bad" story is always when some greedy person hurts someone else for the sake of his greed. There's nothing in capitalism that says that its okay to kill, rob, enslave, or defraud others for personal gain. I think anyone on any part of the political-economic spectrum would agree that those things are wrong. The question is does capitalism, in a vacuum, promote such behavior? And the answer is no it does not.

In competitive commerce, companies are very well aware of the importance of reputation and of the importance of playing the long game. Those that aren't aware of this will not be competitive for long. You just don't see the type of large-scale fraud in free markets that capitalism nay-sayers predict, because it's not in the self interest of businesses to commit fraud. Fraud is more common on a small scale, by players in the game who are trying to make a quick short-term buck and don't care about the big picture. The more an economy matures, the faster these types evaporate.

I would argue that evolution is the reason we're so better off today than we were. Capitalism gets the thumbs up because it has been the de facto economic system. If communism was allowed to work properly, how can you say with any degree of certainty that we would be worse off than we are?

I could write books about this, but I'll just say that the odds are overwhelming that a poorly implemented pseudo-capitalist economic system will outperform even the most well-functioning communist one, in terms of net quality of life of people.

[OngBonga]

You're a beast. I'm just about to go out, this will have to wait.

[a500lbgorilla]

Where are the rest of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Not a true law, but so swole I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

[wufwugy]

I wish I was an economist so I could argue my case better.

If you were an economist, you would be a capitalist. They're about as much the same thing as physics and engineering are the same thing.

[wufwugy]

Where are the rest of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Not a true law, but so swole I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

I feel like because I'm not studying econ academically, I miss out on tons of these. They're so great they can be applied to the rest of human interaction.

[MadMojoMonkey]

[OngBonga]

Yeah I pretended to forget this thread because I was losing.

I don't care.