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I have it the other way around. Desire drives the profit motive since profits are what acquire desire. The profit motive doesn't drive you to shelter yourself; the desire to shelter yourself drives the profit motive.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
So it's really a secondary motive.
In my worldview, there are two parts to the profit motive. The first is the short-term in the sense of being able to provide for those needs that you listed earlier (hunger, thirst, shelter, etc.). This is the same as the motive for cavemen to go out and pick berries or whatever the hell they did, and it's tied to the immediate harvest of resources. It's also tied to being driven to reproduce and the behaviors that are needed for that. This is largely genetic/inherent/nature/etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
The second is the long-term, and I'm of the opinion that it didn't really become a "thing" for most people until the agricultural revolution, which started ~12,000 years ago. We haven't had time to really evolve all that much since then, so I don't think there's that much of a genetic component to wanting to stockpile shit. That makes me think that it's purely a cultural/logical/"nurture" component, especially since you see virtually no other species do this anywhere near the level that we do.
Spoiler:To tie this into my usual schtick, this has created two sexual strategies for relationships between men and women. The long-term side (ie: accumulation of resources) corresponds to locking down a provider male in a relationship where he will provide for her and her offspring, and these are what are classified as the "beta" behaviors for men. The short-term side (ie: the genetic component) consists of behaviors that make her want to fuck thanks to how much more time evolution had to work its magic, and these are what are classified as the "alpha" behaviors for men. A woman will seek out both as much as she can, and the ideal man will provide both in the same package.
Now here's where they are tied together. One of the things that we're drawn to do emotionally from the first part of the profit motive is to dominate other people socially and rank higher in the social pecking order. One of the ways that we do that now is by the accumulation of resources, so it has both a logical and emotional component.
yeah i dont know of any who have claimed otherwise.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
I don't know what's going on, but I find myself agreeing with about everything spoony has been posting recently.
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I find it impossible to understand the existence of governments as an "unnatural" event that is happening by chance - or that government is something done "to" humans and not "by" humans.
It's both.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
the state exists by will of humans, but it also has its own agenda indifferent to that will. this isn't to say the state is sentient -- clearly it's not -- but that the bodies that make up the state often end up with different agendas than that of the people.
just look at foreign policy to get this. US foreign policy has very little to do with "the will of the people" and very much to do with the will of the government agents engaging in foreign policy decisions. if you ask voters what the US government's policy on putin is, virtually every answer you get will be different than if you ask that question of the agents dealing with putin.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Renton
The problem here is the socialist left constantly act as if "any profit = greed, and that's bad" (Unless it's them doing it, of course. Then it's just "smart business") Don't confuse the two, PROFIT and GREED.
If your picking another new Jet for your personal fleet and paying for it by skipping Christmas bonuses for the employees of your company, then your greedy.
However, morally wrong to you and I is not morally wrong, period. We try to follow loose guidelines. But what is greed to one is not enough for another, and we should not judge it without knowing all the facts, if possible. What looks like greed is often explained to be that by someone who does not know their azz from their elbow about a business, but thinks a million dollar profit is greedy. Is it? Not when 3/4 of it has to be reinvested.
Im bored waiting for time warner to not be shity, so I'm reviving this thread. You can thank time warner for that!
I saw an add on Facebook featuring a Starbucks Coffee maker machine, and it made me think of our minimum wage arguments. Was that this thread? Idk, it is now.
It made me think of two things tho. 1st, even tho most minimum wages were stagnant, this improvement happened and came to be. It's been my opinion that regardless of the minimum wage, technology will continue to chug forward and find cheaper ways of doing old tasks. Starbucks and others are almost destined to go this route, since it means you just need a security guard and an operator to run the store.
However, it also made me think of the second point. We probably are paying min wage employees way too much. But I wonder what the real effect of that is? With a fast food joint on every corner in even the most sparse locations, we need ppl to work these jobs. But it's all unskilled. It's a crazy amount of unskilled labor. And the unskilled do want to work these jobs. What will happen when this isn't the case anymore? What happens when, as technology chugs on, the demand is no longer there?
I feel like people are stuck in a situation where they don't really see what life is about. They get bombarded with college, and part time jobs, and whatever, and then they miss the bigger picture. They miss that at some point, they need to be worth enough to support a family. That ww are still in the middle ages when it comes to working. You need a skill, and u need to market that skill. But it's hard to see that when there is this giant plan B hanging around. "Worst case, I work at McDonald's for awhile...".
Idk. I'm rambling but I'm bored as fuck waiting and it got me thinking about why it took me so long to realize that I needed to create value. Schooling probably contributed to that, since it's all nonsense like life is a game you can afford to just sit out of.
Here's a question. In spite of college, the internet, and much more free time...is our generation less skilled than prior ones?
I intended this to be no longer than six lines, as I don't have much time right now. But no can do. It's my English professor continually telling me to explain.
You're on to something. One unintended consequence of minimum wage is to reduce incentives to develop skills. If you work hard and get good education to increase your salary and a noticeable minimum wage boost comes along, you see the value of your hard work and education diminish while the value of if you had remained less skilled increases. This isn't to say that minimum wage jobs are not difficult. In fact they become even more difficult as employers are forced to pay more. You gotta cook a whole lot more burgers to remain employed at $15 than $5.
Which is an answer to your question about what is lost by not having lower wages. People with super low skills and even super bad work ethic can make more money, provide more value, and live happier lives if they are allowed to work for a wage that reflects the value they provide.
Note on Time Warner: municipalities and unions have played an unmatched role in having governments use laws and regulatory bureaucracies to make it illegal or cost-prohibitive or both for competitors to enter the ISP space. We see this dynamic in real time in that Google has the capital and motive to enter the ISP place in every area of the country, yet the company is moving slowly and only able to enter markets with super low barriers to entry. It's gonna be a long ass time before Fiber gets into heavy municipalities, and it's because of the law and bureaucracies, not free market behavior.
It can also be noted that unions and municipalities aren't the only players in creation of this cronyism. The incumbent ISPs themselves have also played. It's natural for entities to support what's in their best interests. This is why free markets aren't the same as "pro-business". Businesses are individually as crony as they can be, because it's in their interests. The reason free marketeers like me talk so much about government is because the same principle applies to the average voters, where it is in our interests to vote for policies and politicians who deteriorate this capacity for business cronyism.
As for the skill question, in an absolute sense, we are probably vastly more skilled. In a relative sense, I would argue we are less skilled. I put this blame on the shifts towards academic education and away from on-the-job training. This has made us far more "educated" but still not much more skilled at the jobs we enter. There is a good deal of overlap between education and skills of course, but it's not 1-to-1. Take this example, my father has been a construction contractor his entire adult life. It's a highly technical and skill-based field, and he learned 0% of it through an education system. Contrast this to me, who is going to college to get a degree to open up doors in business fields. The vast majority of what I learn in college is crap I don't use, won't ever use, have already forgotten, and is totally irrelevant to what I will eventually do.
The "more college" mantra we have going on is the opposite of what we need. People are remaining children into their mid-twenties these days and they enter the workforce about a decade behind what they would in a free market (and did back before the school system was federally centralized).
A plus plusQuote:
Idk. I'm rambling but I'm bored as fuck waiting and it got me thinking about why it took me so long to realize that I needed to create value.
No, but you're asking the wrong question. Our generation is certainly exposed to more edifying stimuli per unit time. The average 30 year old today knows FAR more than the average 30 year old of yester-generation. The problem is that the market is not in need of people with an abundance of trivia knowledge. It is in need of whatever it demands. So, locally within populations, there are deficiencies in marketable skills in the current generation that perhaps didn't exist in the last generation. Thirty years ago, there was more demand for unskilled labor. There was more demand for trainable labor. Think of all the (actually quite lucrative) door to door vacuum cleaner salesman type jobs that existed in the 1980s that were supplanted by infomercials and eventually Amazon.Quote:
Originally Posted by JKDS
On the other hand, today there is much more demand for higher-on-Maslow's-pyramid type jobs. Think webmaster, 3d-modeler, video game designer, blogger, columnist, youtube ranter (ahem, content-creator). A lot of this stuff just emerged in the last 20 years and caught the unprepared among us off guard. Chiefly, people who dropped out of school or got degrees in unmarketable shit. Also, I think in this generation the job climate has been a lot less consistent than former generations were accustomed to. History bulls forward at an accelerating pace, and today's workers are a lot more rewarded for adapting with the changing dynamics. If you were adept at weaving baskets in the 1800s, you could be pretty sure that was going to be a profitable venture for decades or centuries to come. People in those days were named for their trades and did them for many generations. Today, there's a shaky transience to every job, and being a jack-of-all-trades is much more rewarded than being a specialist has been in centuries past.
Barry Schwartz blows Capitalism out of the fucking water.
https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schw...dox_of_choice#
Watched this ages ago. It's very good, but can't remember why. Going to re-watch this when I'm back to work next week.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
This is an embittered man who laments the simple life of his memories, and rejects the simple life of today's children's memories.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
At least he's got a pleasant sense of humor to cover up his obvious (and trite) disdain for the world he finds himself in.
His bit about bluejeans is a fine microcosm of his greater point. Even when he got the best fitting pair of jeans in his life, he was sad because they were different from his old jeans. He blames the sadness on the jeans - or rather the process by which he acquired what he wanted. All of this is because the companies who make jeans listened to the feedback of their customers and tried to make less uncomfortable jeans.
His message lacks recommendations for people to live in this morass he purports we find ourselves.
That hollow metaphor with the fish bowl at the end doesn't actually say or mean anything and is full of "do this, but not too much" w/o identifying any sense of what he means by "this" or "too much."
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My thesis:
Some form of this guy has been around for at least 150,000 years in every culture of humans that ever existed.
His message:
"When I was young I had to try really hard to make sense of the world and to find a place and role that I could fill. Having done so, I relaxed my effort to make sense of the world, accepting my place in it. Then the god-damned world kept changing and now what I thought was my place is not what it was, and I'm uncomfortable."
His statement on the thesis for why the element of choice and freedom in capitalism creates welfare is incorrect. It is not "the more choice they have, the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have." Freedom of choice doesn't create welfare. Freedom of choice is a necessary backdrop for people to use other tools to create welfare. Freedom is the sample space. Events outside the sample space cannot happen. The more freedom, the more elements within the sample space that have the potential to be used to create welfare.
He says "we all know what's good about it, so I'm going to talk about what's bad about it" when referencing freedom of choice. No, we don't know what's good about it. In fact this is one of the most misunderstood concepts there is. The good of freedom is hardly available to be experienced on the micro level. Its good is found on the macro level, where it results in what looks like nothing other than magic. Light bulbs, showers, cars, phones, internet, tasty and abundant food, and a billion other things exist because of the invisible magic of freedom.
On his view that we have too many choices that they creates paralysis: we don't have too many choices. The brain does not handle a great deal of choice and it uses all sorts of tools to narrow those down to the normal amount that it evolved for. His list of ~145 salad dressings to choose from at the super market is disingenuous. Nobody chooses from 145 dressings. We choose from 2 or 3 on average, and our brains narrow down to that amount pretty easily through different parameters (like learned preferences, nutrition content, price, etc.). The ironic thing here is that if his claim was correct, stores wouldn't even be selling much variety in salad dressings in the first place since people would not be as apt or capable at purchasing them. If he was right, the economy would look unmistakably different than it currently does. We would see little choice and little variety because that would be a more cost-effective paradigm for producers.
Many of the examples he uses to make his point are not relevant. Nobody selects one salad dressing for all eternity.
He does have a good point about how expectations change based on available data. That's something nobody has successfully scratched the surface of, but it's not a counter to capitalism. It's a byproduct at most. Nobody says "if I wasn't married I wouldn't have to cook for this other person on occasion therefore I'd be better off not being married," but that's basically what he's saying within the context of capitalism.
There are about a dozen specific points I would like to make but this is already too long. I don't think it's correct to say that he has made a connection between these psychological elements and the modern world. Some of his examples are not that meaningful and some others are things that affect people regardless of the elements of their lives. I think his fundamental mistake is assuming the brain handles options differently than it does. He thinks that any new factor is weighed, when in reality they're just not. When Caveman Grog hunt food meat, he has thousands of different options for how to do it, but the choices he makes are actually between just a handful because the rest are all taken care of through heuristics and other mostly subconscious tools.
You hit on something I chose to not mention: he's a trained psychologist who seems to have not assessed his psychology in his anecdotes.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
I'm pretty sure I agree with wuf on this one.
https://media.giphy.com/media/95ZYXmOCd9BBK/giphy.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
I have huge choice paralysis, especially at restaurants
It is not likely that this is caused by quantity of choices.Quote:
Originally Posted by JKDS
People will have the same paralysis of choice when they have only ten options as they do ten million. Give me ten million options and I'll cut that down to five lickety-split. People do that every time they shop on the internet.
The speaker's unintended thesis is that abundance is bad.
It's where we're not starving and we don't have to work for our food and we have ability to select, yet what we evolved to do is to always be at threat of starving, always work for our food, and always eat the most available product.
Sure, an unintended consequence of abundance may be an element of unhappiness, but that isn't a reason to call abundance bad. It's worse to starve, work hard for food, and only have one source. I say this, not because I don't think his point is a quality one, but that it's not a counter to capitalism. Capitalism isn't the problem, the human makeup is the problem. Capitalism has solved some of our biggest problems, which has allowed other natural human problems to emerge because they're no longer suppressed by the bigger problems.
Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, turned activist/whistleblower.Quote:
The closure of 19 schools in Edinburgh because of jerry-building under the Blue and Red Tories’ Private Finance Initiative, throws a stark light on the impact of the neo-con age on ordinary people.
The Private Finance Initiative was always a scam. It was yet another way to divert money from ordinary tax-payers to the super rich. Instead of schools and hospitals being built and paid for by the taxpayer, they were built and paid for by the bankers, hedge fund managers and other “financial services” sharks, giving state guaranteed returns averaging 7% from the taxpayer, when we now have negative interest rates. It is such a massive scam that every man, woman and child in the UK owes £3,000 to PFI financiers. Like so many far right Tory ideas, its most fervent practitioners were Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.
The “advantage” to government was the accounting trick of a reduction in state capital spending. The other “advantage” was that the private sector was supposed to have more “efficient” methods, due to the profit motive. So somebody in a local authority organising the building of a school from the desire to do the best for the children of their community, was less “efficient” than a hedge fund manager doing it to make the maximum cash. The result? Jerry-building.
I do not want to spend the rest of my life paying capitalist bloodsuckers through my savings. All PFI built infrastructure should be nationalised – without compensation. In doing so the taxpayer will be reclaiming assets to the value of only 10% of the money given to UK bankers in bailouts. Clawing back 10% of the cash we gave the bankers would be a damn good thing. If it caused the odd bank to crash, that is long overdue. Ordinary people’s deposits up to £75,000 are protected anyway. Those with more have it in Panama, the Caymans or the BVI, apparently.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...-nationalised/
I post this here for your reading pleasure because it kinda shits on the idea that capitalist interests, ie protfit, is a more effective incentive than the overall benefit of scoiety.
When this many schools close in a British city because of the standard of buildings that were made barely over a decade ago, it's a big fucking deal. This is disrupting the education of a lot of children in a major city at a critical time... some have exams next month. Closing these schools would not be a decision taken lightly.
This is what happenes when critical infrastructure is built by capitalists. Money becomes more important than people.
Nah. This is a problem of building codes and regulations.
It's not reasonable to expect everyone who needs a building to be an architect.
It is reasonable for all architects to make safe buildings. However, the definition of "safe" is always relative. There is no such thing as any activity being 100% safe. So it's up to a oversight body (within or beyond the architecture firm) to dictate what level of over-design (safety) is mandatory.
If the architects have met the necessary building codes, then made the lowest bid by barely scraping those codes... and the buyer took the lowest bid without understanding that it meant lower quality... then that's just people making bad choices... which is what the free market is all about.
His blog post is skimp on the details, so I can't address them.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
But I can respond to this:
The net of history, data, and theory overwhelmingly shits on the idea that the desire for societal benefit is a better driver of actual benefit than self-interest.Quote:
I post this here for your reading pleasure because it kinda shits on the idea that capitalist interests, ie protfit, is a more effective incentive than the overall benefit of scoiety.
A way for you to understand this in your personal life could be as follows: who do you think is better at making decisions that affect you: you or a bunch of legislators in Arkansas?
Another way to understand this is about the things you have that you like: your food, your clothes, your internet, your home, etc., are all things that were created through the self-interest profit method. Additionally, there is a wealth of data on societies that did away with self-interest, and they all (without exception) did not develop the wonderful things you enjoy today and actually lost much of what they already had.
Sure. Let's look at what profit does to food. Large industrial farms and major supermarket chains destroying small family dairies so people can buy four pints of milk for a pound, then there's the quality of processed food compared to fresh food. Clothes... yeah I probably wear clothes that some kid in India made for a few rupees, I wouldn't know where they came from because of blissful ignorance. Internet... pretty sure this was initially made for the military, ie not motivated by profit. My home? I don't own my home. I rent. But hey, there's more empty homes here in the UK than there are homeless people, because so many people have second homes, or foreign owners who fail to replace outgoing tenants, etc.Quote:
Another way to understand this is about the things you have that you like: your food, your clothes, your internet, your home, etc., are all things that were created through the self-interest profit method.
That's because people are selfish and greedy, and the system actively rewards such behaviour.Quote:
The net of history, data, and theory overwhelmingly shits on the idea that the desire for societal benefit is a better driver of actual benefit than self-interest.
These schools were built by cheap third party contractors employed by people whose sole motivation was the value of their shares. Schools should be built by high quality contractors employed by the council who have children at these schools. There's a motivation that matches private profit... your child's educational welfare. Furthermore, the council wants to get reelected... further motivation to do the job right.
People aren't just motivated by money. Most people in the world are motivated by family, or religion, more than money, mainly because they don't have much money. It's not about wealth, it's about health and happiness. Not here though. Here, money is king, even to the detriment of our schools.
There are tons of examples of people, or groups of people, who know what's in my best interest better than me.
Plumbers, electricians, Generals, attorneys, tax specialists, my parents, cops, even bar tenders.
And ya, legislators too. I don't know jack about most foreign relation matters, and I'm a highly educated and informed person. I shouldn't be deciding those questions. I mean sure, if I spent the time learning about the issue, I could make a good choice. But I dont want to be a legislator.
Am I a better person to decide what clothes I should buy? Ya, that decision requires no input from others, and is purely personal taste. But even something like food...my doctor tells me what to eat all the time. Frankly, I'm not smart enough...or don't have the time...to figure that out alone
The world and its people are better off by several orders of magnitude due to what you're calling a problem. Things are constantly, rapidly improving too.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
If you're in a drought, it's a mistake to call the rains a problem since they get your shirt wet.
Cronyism rewards the stuff you're thinking of. Capitalism is an acknowledgement of human behavior. While it would be nice if people were innately altruistic in the ways you want; we have no choice but to acknowledge the reality that we're not and instead use the tools that create the most good within this reality.Quote:
That's because people are selfish and greedy, and the system actively rewards such behaviour.
People are motivated by economic utility (in economics, "utility" has its own unique meaning, which is similar to happiness). Economic utility is influenced by capital (capital is any resource that can be used to affect other resources). Capital is in part represented by money. Money isn't remotely comprehensive in representing capital, but it does a substantially better job than anything else created.Quote:
People aren't just motivated by money. Most people in the world are motivated by family, or religion, more than money, mainly because they don't have much money. It's not about wealth, it's about health and happiness. Not here though. Here, money is king, even to the detriment of our schools.
You're on the right track. But we need to go deeper.Quote:
Originally Posted by JKDS
Is it better for legislators in Arkansas to assess your need for those specialists than for you to do so? It is better for those legislators to determine what those specialists can and can't do, who they can and can't sell their services to, what prices they must charge, or is it better for those specialists themselves to do so?
You are totally correct that you are limited in your skills, but your ability to assess that is itself a skill. Your closeness to the issue is a tool, while a legislating body's distance from the issue is a blockage. Let's say your toilet breaks. Are you going to call a plumber and work things out with him or are you going to call a legislative body at the other end of the country and have them tell you whether or not you need a plumber, what kind of plumber to hire, how much you're allowed to pay, etc.?
The crux of this dynamic is that typically the people who are the closest to an issue and have the most skin in the game are those with the most relevant and beneficial tools to address them. This dynamic isn't perfect, but it is more effective than any other options presented to the world so far.
Ah, here's where we disagree. I would say capitalism is the moulding of human behaviour.Quote:
Capitalism is an acknowledgement of human behavior.
If we lived in a system that punished greed and selfishness, rather than rewarded it, then people wouldn't naturally be greedy and selfish, because they would have learned through childhood and into adulthood that such tendancies are not adventageous.
But how can we teach our children not to be like this when the system demands it? Capitalism doesn't reflect human behaviour, it is human behaviour.
Just like how society has punished homosexuality and now there are no homosexuals.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
You're in luck, the USSR did exactly what you ask for. It didn't pussyfoot around either. It was a purist, an extremist, it punished self-interest so deeply that the driving ethos of the country for half a century revolved about the "collective good."
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand everything went to shit. There was no incentive to improve one's lot. Subsequently all lots spoiled. An irony is that the manifest punishment of greed and selfishness inadvertently led to people who were more greedy and selfish than in the freer West. When nobody could get ahead by improving themselves, problems were blamed on unfair treatment, and stewed desires emerged in the dark.
An economist I read tells a story about a handful of friends he has who were raised in communist countries. They're perfectly normal people except that they constantly misrepresent things for their own benefit. For example, when playing volleyball, if there is a dispute on whether the ball is in or out based on how close it landed on the line, the ex-communists invariably rule in their own favor. To economists and probably psychologists, this behavior makes sense since in a communist society, the only way to get ahead is to cheat and obfuscate since it is illegal to get ahead legitimately.
So basically capitalism and communism both suck, largely for the same reason. Greed.
I'd probably hate whatever system was in place.
Where would you get that idea? Capitalism is amazing. It's the reason why cars exist. It's why I can eat $1 sandwiches, watch films made in Denmark, and tell you how awesome capitalism is through this series of tubes.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Without capitalism, the production, distribution, and innovation of products and services wouldn't be a thing. Even what people think is the greatest universal good -- technology -- would be unheard of if not for the mechanism by which technology is reimagined, packaged, and dispersed, rinse and repeat. Without capitalism, you would not have a computer, you wouldn't have daily weed, you would most likely be hungry most of the time, you would either be working from sun up to sun down or living in dirt, and you'd most likely wipe your ass with your hand. Every song you ever liked, every movie you ever liked, every time you read a book to a lamp, every time you went someplace with a different climate and different people, every time you took a hot shower, every time you jacked off to pictures and videos of hot naked women, all would have never come to pass without capitalism.
Listen to me and you won't have to.Quote:
I'd probably hate whatever system was in place.
Drinking your own Kool-Aid a bit much?Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Nothing on that kind of pedestal is going to live up to the elevation.
This isn't guesswork. The field of economics has long since come to the same conclusion. Economics is the study of how resources are produced, distributed, and consumed. Market capitalism is the paradigm by which the modern world has produced, distributed, and consumed resources. If you were to ask an economist who specializes in economic history, he would tell you the world of consumer products we have today emerged from market capitalism and that if instead the paradigm had been any of the other popular paradigms, there is no way to say that the same results would have come and it is likely the results would have been far less productive.Quote:
Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
So with the idea that individuals best decide what their money is spent on what happens in the case of children?
For example, poor eyesight is probably one of the biggest barriers that children face in terms of their prospects being massively limited. They have no choice over what money is spent on, is there any credit to such programs that provide free eye care to children below a certain age with whatever stipulations in place. Any other suggestions for this problem?
Without capitalism you wouldn't have eyeglasses in the first place (that's a joke).
I think the idea that some degree of capitalism is good therefore more capitalism is better and total capitalism is the best is an overly simplified, black-and-white view. Certainly elements of capitalism work well but there's also elements of socialism that are good too.
Different systems can be better optimized on different scales.
Families are socialist. Employees in the same job are mostly egalitarian.
These work because of trust within the small groups that any short-term imbalance in the distribution of resources will be restored in the long-term.
Capitalism shines on the scales where this kind of trust is not appropriate.
Like what?Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
They're value judgments of course but I believe the distribution of resources in a strictly capitalist system tends to be overly skewed towards having a few very well-off individuals at the expense of the people in the middle and at the bottom.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I don't think a 'everyone for themselves, survival of the fittest' economy in general leads to a happy society because it lacks a certain brotherhood and common empathy for your fellow man. To give a concrete example, the quality of your health care is not something I think should, in general, depend on your wealth.
I think I'm going to approach this two different ways. The first is in a very macro sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImSavy
Capitalism created and continues to create the treatments that help children with poor eyesight. It does this more or less because of its efficiency. Given that government intervening in this market would reduce the efficiency, it means that down the road, children would be worse off because the growth of treatment quality and quantity would suffer. The exponential nature of growth in prosperity shows how grave a mistake it is to capture a particular benefit at the expense of growth rate.
The second way I'll approach this is to say that, keeping all else equal, if tomorrow there's a new program to check for children's eyesight issues, yes those children will be better off in this regard. But at what cost? I don't mean "what's the price tag?" I mean what are the diverse and usually unquantified costs and opportunity costs? What is the cost to labor production and productivity with the uptick in taxes and the downtick in incentive to produce? What is the cost to society when it has a track record of embracing the virus of welfarism? What is the cost to the individuals when they learn to internalize that their problems should be solved by a mandatory program? What is the cost to families when the parents internalize just a little less responsibility for the well-being of their families? What's the cost to innovative doctors/researchers/entrepreneurs who have higher barriers to entry to the eyesight treatment market because the government has standardized a different method? What's the cost to community/family/church/secular charity organizations that get pushed out by inability to compete with a tax-backed program?
Some of those may not be that costly and some may be costly bigly. Also I'm not suggesting that this program would only incur costs. There would certainly be benefits as well, like the initial set of kids getting the treatments may live more productive lives. I think overall it's a net cost though, and this is ultimately because I think the care would be even better and at greater quantities without the government intervention in the first place.
Markets are by definition places that match up people with capital/labor/skills to provide in order to improve their lots that they otherwise couldn't. They work, but when the government steps in and regulates them, they eventually look like they don't work. Look at it this way: the amount of people who think a market needs regulating has much stronger positive correlation with markets that are already regulated than ones that are not. Intervening into markets doesn't help, it just makes us think we need more intervention. We live in a vicious circle of capitalist innovations creating new goods and services and then later generations take those goods and services for granted and want the government to regulate them for the general welfare, yet this has the effect of dampening the engine of creation for newer goods and services. It's mortgaging the future for the present.
I know this is very long so I don't expect you to watch, but in case you want to. Milton Friedman has long discussed how free market capitalism benefits the poorer more greatly than the richer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3N2sNnGwa4
My added input is that government favors are what make such divides, and that when government is prohibited from giving favors, the markets are most open to the most diverse and lowest cost alternatives, which helps the poor.
Friedman is explicit: there is no example in the world of a first-world society that didn't become that way but for free market capitalism.
If I understand you correctly, you're against such a program in principle because that wouldn't be capitalism and so should be dismissed regardless of being eminently better at face value.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
It sounds like you're saying that these kids should walk around squinting so that we don't somehow hinder the economy from producing more and better eyeglasses for future generations. In other words, it sounds like you're mortgaging the present for the future.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
If you want some examples of how government benefits the rich and free markets benefit the poor....
All those rich bankers that got bailed out by the US government? In a free market, they fail. With government, they got richer and more powerful. Ever hear about the shitty ISP market in the US and how Comcast and a couple other companies are getting filthy rich off the internet? There is little competition in this market because municipal governments have effectively prohibited competition through their red tape regulations and special favors stacked higher than the Space Needle. Have you heard about how in the US, a mere visit to a medical clinic to get a shot can run you >$100 in costs? This, and the vast quantities of other inefficiencies, are due to the government giving special favors to the AMA, among other things, and the barrier of entry by otherwise qualified individuals less penetrable than Fort Knox. My cousin's girlfriend had to pay ~$20k to ultimately get her beautician license. The government is so suffocating to the well-being of the average person that it makes a kraken look like a baby turtle.
That's fine and he may be right (didn't watch but I might some time), but it doesn't address my other point. If you take capitalism to it's extreme, there's no recourse for anyone who lacks resources to obtain things they might desperately need.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
What you're talking about is government corruption, not effective socialism. I mean lol at a socialist saying let's bail out some banking fatcats.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
It also happens to be a government in a capitalist country, which makes your argument weaker bigly.
I embrace capitalism because it is better at total value. If socialism was capable of providing greater value, I would support that. But it hasn't and according to the best economics theory we got, it can't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
I'm okay with the characterization in bold. A courageous man is somebody who does the right thing to benefit others even if it means he doesn't experience the same benefit. Due to the function of exponential growth, when we do this it makes everybody better off. If our antecedents mortgaged the future for themselves, we'd still live in huts, till the soil with our hands and backs, and live at the mercy of warlords.Quote:
It sounds like you're saying that these kids should walk around squinting so that we don't somehow hinder the economy from producing more and better eyeglasses for future generations. In other words, it sounds like you're mortgaging the present for the future.
Children should walk around with wonderful vision. Government programs crowd out private programs. Private programs work better. I don't want the government involved because it harms what it's meant to help. For the future and for the current time, welfare is a bad idea.
That's already the case. Capitalism improves access. Government bills its programs as helping the least fortunate, but it doesn't. This isn't entirely due to corruption either. For example, the least fortunate are made worse off by "good" programs to help them because those programs by nature are disincentives for their improvement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
If we're talking about healthcare, that's the case in the US (or at least it was), not in most wealthy countries where healthcare is subsidized.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I wouldn't argue otherwise if you're comparing strict capitalism to strict communism. But it's not a black vs. white argument. There's a middle ground that you're happier believing can't be any better. I'm arguing it can.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
For example, if some of those taxes that were currently being spent on stimulating economic growth (for example, by not being taken in the first place) were instead used to repair some of the areas where capitalism is inadequate, then you may end up with less wealthy people, but the overall happiness is greater.
You can argue that this somehow will make people unhappy at some vague time in the future and that only money matters so having the most productive system is always best. I'm saying it ain't that simple.
That is socialism. Social ownership requires government (otherwise ownerships would be private). Then we have the same problem of government, when it does what it naturally does and is meant to do, benefits the strongest.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
Also, the things I listed aren't corruption. These are things that democratic voters want. They tell their politicians that they want their rent control and their mountain views, so the politicians had better make sure no developers come in and change that. They tell their politicians that they want to be assured that if they use a service that the government approves of that service, so the politicians had better make sure that the only people who get licenses are good with the government.
How so?Quote:
It also happens to be a government in a capitalist country, which makes your argument weaker bigly.
It's even worse for you guys. The subsidies hide the negatives better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
I can't find examples of where that would be, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
Lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Maybe that's because you haven't looked.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report
All of the countries in the top ten have an economic system that in comparison to that in the US is highly socialist. But according to you, this should ruin their economies and make them all miserable.
The subsidies have contributed to a bunch of problems that go undiscussed. I only learned about them because I read economics.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
I meant examples of how governments can improve capitalism.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
The "highly socialist" attribute given to those countries is greatly overstated and the association doesn't hold up when more countries are included. Examples include how many of those countries have elements that are substantially more capitalist friendly than the US.
A more telling association is that those countries have similar cultures and demographics that embraced the Protestant work ethic.
Where does it say things need to be binary? Either full on padded-elbow mememe capitalism or some marxist utopia. Wouldn't it be better to pick the cherries from both? What stops us from embracing the economic strengths of capitalism in trade and production, while providing basic safety nets for everyone? With the massive changes to the labor markets in the next decades due to AI and robotics, close to 50% of the current jobs will be gone. There just won't be work for everyone. How does the free market address this? Oh yeah, by killing off the weaklings.
+1Quote:
Originally Posted by CoccoBill
If something other than capitalism could reasonably be expected to benefit in some areas, I'm open to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by CoccoBill
Also the "people out of work because of machines" thing appears to be a non-thing. Yes, specific jobs are lost from mechanization, but even more are gained. If mechanization was a job killer, the economy would have gone to shit with the invention of the plow.
^Either you or I haven't properly read up on this. Already by 2020 7 million jobs are estimated to be lost, with 2 million new ones created. I have not heard any claims that overall more jobs would be created, and intuitively that sounds untrue. Source?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...5-million-jobs
Tell that to all the human plows who lost their jobs back in 2000 BCQuote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
This is a good example of how the economics field suffers greatly by favoring econometricians over economic philosophers.Quote:
Originally Posted by CoccoBill
The historical evidence supports my view. Every year there are new econometrics that present things getting worse, yet it never comes to pass.
Farm jobs have plummeted while total jobs have skyrocketed. And we're all better off because of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
That was a joke.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I didn't provide the economic philosophy for why (it's hard but also fun). Here are some elements to it: as productivity increases, the opportunity cost of more work increases, which incentivizes more leisure. Innovations like mechanization have led to people having more leisure time. This leads to even greater innovation since leisure time includes hobbies and other projects. New markets are created from this and over history we've seen this process grow the total economy.
It is possible that we should begin worrying about technology killing jobs when our comparative advantage of human capital (more or less our brains) is eliminated by AI. Even then, I don't think it would happen, probably because I think humans will always limit AI, but it is a question.
Geography, people, resources, climate.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
All more important than -isms.
How about nationalising the railways? By taking into public ownership of the railways, both public transport and goods freight can be made cheaper, either by cutting out profit, or by subsidising using tax.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
By getting more people and goods moving on the trains, there are less cars and lorries on the road, and more people travelling directly into city centres. This has an obvious benefit to the economy.
Private rail means multiple companies leasing different parts of the network (none of which are competing which each other). This means that for me to go to Cornwall, I need to pay two, maybe three, different companies for my travel, all of whom want a slice of profit. This makes it expensive as hell. A quick google search tells me a return from Kidderminster to Truro tomorrow is fucking £300. Jesus wept, I could probably find a cheaper taxi. How in the world can it be three to four times more expensive to get the train to Cornwall than to drive? It should be cheaper! (It's a 500 mile round trip by road).
Government has a place in a capitalist model, and that place should be to ensure essential infrastructure is not at the mercy of profit.
The whole reason the trains are a mess is because government controls it all makes a huge monopoly eventually sells it at a tiny % of the cost it would otherwise sell for and then the people who bought it have a monopoly on the market.
Also trains are a really shit outdated form of transport.
Trains companies love this and I don't know why the consumer accepts it. The fact it isn't more integrated is madness.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
That being said if you use the train even semi regularly then get a rail card and book your tickets in advance. Also if you're going multiple trains it's usually much cheaper to buy individual tickets. I'd be surprised if there isn't an app that calculates the cheapest way of doing a journey over a given time frame.
I'm fairly sure the watchdog insisted that cheapest rail fares must be calculated and shown by the websites. I got that fare from National Rail Enquiries.
OUR trains are a shit and outdated form of transport. You wouldn't say the same if you lived in Japan.
Trains are essential if we want to reduce the number of cars on the road.
The invention of the combine harvester was the single greatest moment in modern history in a very real way. That one machine increased the amount of food a single person could produce by factors of ten. It literally put 80+% of farmers out of work.
Truth be told, most of them didn't want to be farmers after all, and a large percentage of the society was freed from food production to work in other industries. Some of those industries were created because of the influx of talented people, looking for a new way to fill an economic niche.
Don't underestimate the ability of intelligent humans to innovate new industries when the old ones become obsolete.
I'm referring to the mechanism by which humans can change things.Quote:
Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla
Profit is essential to determining what works. Without he profit motive, the train system would maintain a stasis of gradual decline. We've seen this in public infrastructure everywhere. The reason the profit motive is so important is that it incentivizes producers of goods and services to innovate so that consumers want more of what they provide.Quote:
Originally Posted by OngBonga
You are correct that this in general is good. However, the underlying math for how good it is (or how bad) is in its efficiency. If the government subsidizes this (which necessarily means it ignores costs), we would end up finding very big inefficiencies like colossal traffic jams at choke points.Quote:
By getting more people and goods moving on the trains, there are less cars and lorries on the road, and more people travelling directly into city centres. This has an obvious benefit to the economy.
Great point. When the price of a good or service increases, consumers look for substitutions. When there are profit motives and no price controls (or other regulations), this drives innovation and lowers costs while improving quality and quantity. If, instead, the government subsidized rail travel, a lot of entrepreneurs who have good ideas would be pushed out of the market since only the wealthy could compete at such high entry barriers. We would again end up in a system where the rail is there and never improving while stymieing improvement of other things.Quote:
Jesus wept, I could probably find a cheaper taxi.
Without profit, things don't improve. With government intervention, things don't improve.Quote:
Government has a place in a capitalist model, and that place should be to ensure essential infrastructure is not at the mercy of profit.