Capitalism is not the problem, the inherently ANTI-CAPITALISTIC merger of GOVERNMENT and CORPORATIONS, where the GOVERNMENT picks the winners & losers (not the market), is the problem. This is not free-market capitalism; and yes when we say capitalism, 99.99% of us mean FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM.
When the government, by force of law, STEALS your money and uses it to pick winners and losers, it is not capitalism failing - what is failing is something much more akin to actual FACISM (or any of the other forms of socialism).
Indeed, when the government doles out cash stolen from the populace, that action is in direct OPPOSITION to the most basic tenants CAPITALISM.
And the SOLUTION to our current sociopolitical woes would be MORE CAPITALISM, AND GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY. We need free-market competition in government spending, and every dollar proposed/spent should be openly documented for public consumption.
As it stands the obfuscated spending of OUR tax dollars allows the government to circumvent the protective nature of capitalistic free markets. Instead, those in control of the government, spend the money on whatever entities they are they are in financial bed with.
We need all bids to be open and competitive. Without that, the Pfizers and Lockheed Martins of the world will continue to be propped up, in perpetuity, by the corrupt socialistic government-control of these so-called "private" industry.
No market is 'free'. All markets are based on power relationships. I don't think you can point to any historical example anywhere of a 'free' market. To believe in free market Capitalism (or to somehow get there from our urrent system) is literally MORE utopian than to believe in Communism. We know for an absolute fact that human beings survived for thousands (if not millions) of years in what can only be called primitive communism. There was no money, individual land ownership, or intellectual property in primitive societies. Yet they survived and even prospered for thousands of years, and innovated all kinds of huge technology we take for granted without having a profit motive. Our brain is so addled today that we cannot conceive of openly sharing food and resources with people other than our nuclear family, yet that is how we survived for a long time. Communal hunting, share the meat. Communal work at harvest or gathering, store the food together. That is the crime of Capitalism - it divides us into striving individuals predating on each other, not as a collaborative group working towards common survival. The philosophy you are espousing also sounds a lot like Neoliberalism, and we all know how that turns out.
Please regale us with the "kinds of huge technology we take for granted without having a profit motive" you are referring to coming from these utopian "primitive communist" societies.
Also metallurgy, animal domestication, wine/beermaking, cheese, even writing systems were developed pre-capitalism. Massive building projects were also done pre-capitalism (pyramids, Native American mound systems, Nazca lines, irrigation projects, Stonehenge).
It always amuses me to imagine a primitive person who invents say, a new better bow and arrow, trying to patent it or force other primitive people in his tribe to pay him tribute in meat or hides for the invention. "Hey guys I invented this bow and arrow, I get 10% of all game we kill with this for ME and my family for a few generations." Or "hey guys, I invented the idea of how to milk these awesome cows we have domesticated. I get 30% of all milk anybody milks from cows, or an equal trade of something else."
It always amazed me that someone would think some primitive person would invent a better arrow and then someone else would want it and neither barter for it or simply take it by force.
Specialization of labor is what spurred the great technological movements of humanity, not the random tinkerings of serfs (or more laughably, utopian-era communists) who then willing gave of themselves their abilities to all who simply asked.
There has always been human nature. The plea that a type of government can curtail that is laughable.
How were any of these produced without a profit motive, maybe except fire? In fact the acquisition of these things and the use of these things all became object of wars, hardly a utopian ideal.
There has always been human nature. The plea that a type of government can curtail that is laughable.
The acquisition of anything can be used for violence. If I make a corncob doll for my child, another child can pick it up and hit another child with it.
I didn't make it with a profit motive, nor for the purpose of creating a weapon.
One oversight in this is that the huge technology discoveries required thousands of years for each step, slow crawling progress is what you are advocating. All the isms lead to stagnation. Liberty results in rapid progress but has inherently greater risk.
Recently published was evidence to show that the inegalitarian culture traces its origins to the onset of the agrarian age; other research shows that many prior cultures were not competitive, others were atheistic.
The profit motive is a focus on the advantage of the individual. An individual human, in the wild, without the massive infrastructural support afforded by our society, will die 99% of the time. That is the reality of the Hobbsian view of humanity: without society, human life is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short". He believed, pessimistically, that humans need a sovereign or governor. We know much better, now as then, that it is our capacity for empathy that makes us human; those without it - sociopaths and psychopaths - are universally despised for the lack they show. Empathy drives cooperation.
Don't conflate capitalism with trade. Similarly, corporate capitalism with trade. Nor "ma-and-pa corner shop" with capitalism. That would also be "sole traders". Capitalism is investing capital (ie, liquid assets) into companies, which returns profit in the form of dividends or capital gains in stock and share values. Starting your own business is not capitalism; investing in someone else's company is.
I would say Capitalism is more than just investing in a company. Ownership is implied in Capitalism. To be a real capitalist, you have to own something (land, a business that produces something). Profits that you extract via rent or sale of the commodity you produce are then used to accumulate more profit-creating property (expand the business, buy more rent-taking land). That is capitalism - accumulation of more power to get control of more income producing stuff via re-investing profits you have extracted from unequal exchanges.
Just investing in stocks and getting dividends isn't capitalism. That is potentially letting somebody else use your excess money to let THEM expand in a Capitalist way. That you may be getting a small cut of their expansion doesn't make you a capitalist (unless you are a BIG investor who actually has enough shares to have an ownership stake and control of a company's decision making and ability to loot the company's profits). Stock investing may in some cases be you just getting fleeced by participating in a ponzi scheme. Unless you are using the profits you have extracted from the stock market to accumulate more income producing property (rather than just using it to live as retirement money), you aren't really a capitalist by just having a 401k (in my opinion).
A) I get really annoyed when someone repeats the academic myth that "human nature" encompasses all of the worst characteristics only, and conveniently ignores the better aspects of "human nature" like altruism, empathy, and compassion. Interestingly, for years biologists couldn't find any examples of these behaviors in nature, mostly because they didn't believe they existed. If you're not looking for something, you won't find it. Starting in the 1980s, scientists started studying altruism in nature, and - guess what! - they found it.
B) Read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen for an analysis of exactly how those primitive societies could have worked, and how the change to a more brutal, competitive model developed.
It seems to me that you have steeped in the competitive model for so long that it seems to be the only way life can be. Too bad!
Human nature absolutely does not only encompass all of the worst characteristics. But equally as annoying are the people that think there is a group or sect of humans whose nature only encompasses the good. When you are dealing with a group and it grows past, I dunno 30+ people?, you are gonna into some impure actors, that's simply a statistical reality. I'm not saying these people are evil, but that they are simply subject to the ups and downs of their human nature.
Given that, a particular government framework (which is an enforceable restraint, by definition), you will have to deal with human nature, dissent, conflict, and the seven deadly sins.
The question that one is left with is, what is the most efficient way to manage all that? In practice, Communism has failed, perhaps Capitalism, now too, has failed. Primitive or other utopia has clearly failed.
Veblen is easily skewered as I showed you in another reference you made to him.
You're putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I don't believe that there is a group of people who are only good.
Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, said that the line between good and bad didn't exist between one group of people and another, but down the middle of each person's heart, and that I DO believe.
THAT'S what I was trying to say: that "human nature" is not just the worst, but also the better.
The important point is that people are compassionate and they will be, they do not need to be told to. Socialism is a system that does not trust people to be compassionate. However, if you remove the profit incentive from society, you will remove a substantial amount of the incentive to innovate and advance the world. It is no coincidence that the period of massive charitable giving in the US was during the period of rampant capitalism.
Communism can last a long time and there may be examples eventually that show that it is sustainable but what is certain is that it will underperform capitalism in nearly every respect.
"There is no evidence that primitive societies were even egalitarian in groups, to say nothing of completely sharing resources. "
There's actually quite a bit of evidence. When Europeans came into conflict with native peoples across the globe, there are examples all over the place of living cultures, and evidence in the archeological/anthropological record. I'd recommend a couple of David Graeber's books on it: "Debt: the First 5,000 Years" and "The Dawn of Everything". Absolutely fascinating. There are more scholarly books out there too I'm sure.
""Human beings" have not been a species for even half a million years,"
Granted 'anatomically modern' humans have been around for maybe 400,000 years.
But something approximating humans has been around for at least a million years. Recent evidence shows camp fire use a million years ago, and we've been using stone tools for over 2 million years.
TAXES DON'T FUND SPENDING AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL. Stop spouting the lie that it is "our tax dollars."
The US has had a fiat currency since Richard Nixon took us off the last of the gold standard in 1971.
That means that Congress creates the currency every time they pass an appropriations bill. They don't need your taxes. (There are several reasons for taxes, but needing them to pay for government spending isn't one of them.) This also means that you can't stop them from spending money any way they like by withholding your taxes.
Will you please learn - really learn - Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to protect yourself from the lies that our politicians tell you, using your lack of knowledge against you? And don't think that because you heard something that "someone said" about MMT means that you understand MMT.
You can watch The Rogue Scholar, Macro'n'Cheese, or MMT Mondays on YouTube to learn about it. Thanks!
No one spends it. When your taxes go back to the Treasury Department, they are deleted (erased or subtracted) from the system. This is one of the reasons for taxes: it offsets the "printing" of more and more money.
Stephanie Kelton has several excellent videos on YouTube about this. Look them up. She has graphics showing how this works.
The solution you are looking for has nothing to do with economic models and everything to do with liberty. Eliminate government and most problems go with it.
I disagree. All of the theorists about society: Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and John Locke (read his Two Treatises on Government) said that governments are formed (in fact, societies are formed) because individuals can get their needs met better from a group than they can each by himself. Governments exist to have the power, that is, they are agreed to by the people, to curb the might of the powerful and protect the rights of the weak.
Of course, in your lifetime, you have only seen governments which have usurped their power and are oppressing their people, so you believe that that's the only form they can take.
Please read the entire Declaration of Independence. See what Jefferson had to say about governments that usurp their power.
Please drop the condescending attitude, I have read more of the founding documents than most. Are you suggesting that Chinese history where the government was nothing but a 1000 year long power struggle between war lords was an anomaly ? How about Rome where every transition was a coup, patricide or outright military regime change was the exception ? Perhaps it was the peaceful indigenous peoples of the Americas you had in mind that had non stop raging tribal warfare continent wide for generations.
Since you fantasize that government is benevolent please provide specific examples of such governments because I have found none.
Have you read Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Montaigne, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Machiavelli?
I didn't say that governments were benevolent. I said that the PURPOSE people have for creating a government is that it ought to be benevolent.
If you have read the "founding documents," you must have read the Declaration of Independence. I'm guessing that it must have been some time ago. I asked you to RE-READ it.
You cannot live in a civilized manner without a functioning government. The problem is not government - it is oligarchy, power focused in the hands of a few people - who then corrupt the government to serve their own sociopathic, suicidal ends.
GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE PROBLEM - IT IS THE CORRUPT, UNCONTROLLED GREED OF THE BILLIONAIRE ELITES.
How are the billionaires corrupt but the government isn't? This is South African judiciary logic where they convict Shabir Shaik of having a corrupt relationship with former president Jacob Zuma but somehow don't convict Jacob Zuma.
You've just said it! You're blaming the corporations for corrupting government but not blaming the government for being corrupt. How can only one side of a corrupt relationship be guilty?
For the thousandth time - you're describing an ideal capitalism which is not possible. Just like an ideal communism is not. If they were both systems would work.
No we are describing capitalism that until the 1920's and the interference of progressives in the market, was very real, and very possible. It was and is the socialistic-elements (things normally alien to capitalism) that poison/destroy free market economies, as theu do in all markets in ALL economic systems socialistic elements are introduced into. Socialistic elements will/do destroy capitalist economies and enable cronyism (a hallmark of socialism, and especially of hybrid socialist/capitalist systems - a la China). Socialism's inherent nature is that of corruption, and is largely why communism fails (among many, many other reasons).
If you keep government/"public" ownership (socialism) out of capitalism; than Capitalism has, does, and continues to be the system that brings greatest amount of prosperity & innovation to the greatest amount of the population. The cost of freedom is that some will fail. But they can also try again thanks to these same freedoms.
You cannot have social freedom without economic freedom. This is an undeniable fact.
I would also posit you cannot have "public" control or ownership of any part of the economy, without having horrible corruption in that segment of the economy.
The governments role in free market capitalism was to prevent trusts/monopolies from acting to stifle competition. Such as how the system largely was before amending the constitution to allow a federal income tax, and before FDR used court-stacking to blackmail the Supreme Court into reinterpreting interstate-commerce to mean ANYTHING (after they first ruled against him), we indeed had a very sincere capitalist society in the USA.
The progressives and socialists of the early 20th century sowed the seeds of the corruption we see today. They likely would not have been able to do this without one other horrible ammendment: the 17th ammendment.
Senators are no longer beholden to the states interest, but more so to the populace via promises towards their self-interest. This dissolution of states-power and republicanism via the 17th's appeal towards mob-control democracy has also destroyed much of the separation of state and federal power that enabled us to have a thriving capitalistic system. The founders should have made so that the tenants of our republic, such as thr state's legislatures choosing the senators, not the mob, could never he destroyed via amendment. The sins of the founders is that they faiped to protect the greatness that is/was the constitution and the original bill of rights. Granting more freedoms via ammendments was fine and an acceptable thing but destroying the foundations of system of republicanism, via amendments, should never have been possible.
The creation of Prohibition, the federal Income tax, and the 17th ammendments enablement of mob-rule should all never have been possible. That is one failing our system encountered that enabled creeping socialism to embed itself, like a parasite, within our economy/government - and like an unchecked parasite in the wrong host, it will grow and grow until its inherent corruption and bloat destroys our system.
Can you admit that there have been many many failures in the application of progressive ideology? If you cannot, then there is really no point in arguing. And no, capitalism is not perfect.
But if you prefer free people to domesticated ones, the choice is clear and progressivism will fail then, without force.
You're making the mistake of most Americans: you're confusing capitalism, an economic system, with "freedom," the outcome of a political system. We have been taught and brainwashed to confuse economics with politics. They aren't the same. You CAN have capitalism with totalitarianism. It's been done before.
Caitlin is a genius at exposing propaganda and narrative. However, when it comes to economics, I haven't seen her write any sort of detailed piece explaining anything about capitalism, socialism, communism, or fascism.
She hates billionaires. She would maybe pick up some good information if she listened to Russell Brand, who is on the left, and who loathes the tyranny of the fascist World Economic Forum in Davos. Check out this Brand video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCq9WBs6gzU
Again, I like her work. I will ally with anyone to stop nuclear war. But we could all stand to learn more about economics and how the world works.
This is why I plead with everyone to learn Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). This is what MMT does: it teaches ordinary people how the monetary system works, so that they can be armed against the lies of the politicians.
Most people have heard some gossip "debunking" MMT so they think that they know everything they need to know about it. Unless you KNOW MMT, you won't know whether its detractors are right wrong.
You can learn about it from The Rogue Scholar, Macro'n'Cheese, or MMT Mondays on YouTube. Also, Stephanie Kelton has several excellent videos with graphics about it on YouTube.
It will have everything to do with economics, since it seems that the West won't quit funneling money to the weapons manufacturers (who give back money to the politicians) until we end up in a nuclear war. After all, you have to use those darn bombs somewhere, so you can make more!
Im glad you have time to educate the author of the post. But I imagine that she will never learn. I already tried many times... I hope you have more patience and wish you luck.
I have to agree, Caitlin is a progressive communist that hasn't really experienced anything in life outside of capitalism. She has no real world comparison and so all evils in the world come from her identified enemy.
There are a lot of paid commenters in the world but I am not one of them. I have been a fan of hers since the gun carrying protest but sadly her ideology doesn't reflect anything even close to her public image.
Possibly her "public image" is a figment of your imagination that you projected onto her, and now you are disappointed when she turns out to be a real person and not the idol of your creation.
I've found Caitlin to be remarkably consistent over the years that I have been following her.
It's not that she turned out to be a real person, whatever that means. I clearly stated when I started following her and why I'm disappointed, deal with it.
I win nothing for educating the author of the post or her readers. I was doing it as a favor to them because I thought that they had good intentions but were simply ignorant. In the end, I lost patience.
I also think that the likelihood that they are just ignorant is very low. Still possible, but low. There is something deeply sinister with these people's desire to enslave the so called "capitalists" and create a dictatorship (of the proletariat or otherwise). It suggests a lot more than simple ignorance, much closer to being evil.
You are a low IQ no one that is resentful of the entire world and became a communist who is so deranged that believes that he understands what someone like me thinks. :)
Right. And since you need to be spoon fed, I was stressing that contradiction. Free market is what gave us the present situation, that is, the winners take over State power
Well, excuse me for not hanging on your every word. Corruption of the free market by collision between industry and the government gave us what we have. Without government protection large market players could not rise and become monopolistic.
We do not have Capitalism currently in the USA. We have Facism, which is the merger of Big Corporate with Big Government as clearly shown in the latest DHS email releases. Choosing between Facist and Communist is No Choice, both are Tyrannical. Going Gooey Green is also Tyrannical and stupidly unworkable as an aside.
Destroying Individual striving in any arena, spiritual, economic, or other endeavors is the road to ruin.
Wealth accumulation is not inheriently Evil, but Suppressing wealth accumulation is Evil. People are Flawed, No Governmental Authority is anything more than a Flawed Group.
Our Founders had / have much wisdom on how to create an orderly society if anyone cares to read and study it.
That is after we wiped out 10 million or so indigious humans. I fear that what we call wealth accumulation is stripping away the skin of our only planet. If we manage to redefine wealth as getting along together instead of converting a once beautiful planet into more piles of garbage I could more easily get behind the idea. Ditto being green, by which I mean getting along with each other AND that thing we call Nature.
Only capitalism does those bad things, right? How many indigenous people did Stalin wipe out, Mao? How has the central authoritarian Asian governments improved "Nature" via a new coal plant every week, or pouring plastics and other trash into the rivers and ocean?
Look, we now know that the left is an authoritarian, fascist wantabe state lurking in the wings, we see it in the EU, we se it in the US swamp. Quit enabling fascism with your lame excuses.
There is no point in having anything, if people are not free to enjoy it.
There are no leftists in the US government. There are right-wing neolibs/neocons in service to the oligarchy which is capitalist and increasingly fascist and the opposite of leftist or of communist.
Oh...the semantic BS, what a terrible place to hide. Look they are central authoritarians pilfering the government. That is not opposite leftist or communists in practice. The fact that multi-national mega corporations replace giant central authoritarian government is meaningless in practice, unless you're one of those, most aren't.
Human nature being what it is, pandering to individual liberty and not collective (forced) nonsense is much more preferable. Of course there are many people who believe that they know what is best for others, those are typically leftists and they are nearly always wrong and they are always doing it for the wrong reasons.
Did you actually read Caitlin's article before you came here to comment? I believe that she addressed the "Stalin/Mao" rebuttal. Go read, really read, the article again.
Her Ipsi Dixit plea that competitive-based society is pushing us towards all things evil is neither supported by fact or historical record.
moreover, her supposition that capitalism is not collaborative and that communism is is, again, neither supported by the fact or historical record. Jesus h Christ, we are (were?) a democracy, that is by definition collaborative. Tell me about the collaborative nature of communism, as practiced anywhere in history - it is the opposite, it is feudal.
Childish 19th century babble. Completely irrelevant today - much like Deniro's lame "Amsterdam" trying to explain the non-left as would be tyrants. Completely boorish.
In the essay “The Dullest Book of The Month: Dr. Thorstein Veblen Gets the Crown of Deadly Nightshade” (1919), after addressing the content of The Theory of the Leisure Class, the book reviewer Robert Benchley addressed the subject of who are readers to whom Veblen speaks, that:
“the Doctor has made one big mistake, however. He has presupposed, in writing this book, the existence of a [social] class with much more leisure than any class in the world ever possessed — for, has he not counted on a certain number of readers?”
or:
In the essay “Prof. Veblen” (1919) the intellectual H. L. Mencken addressed the matters of Americans' social psychology reported in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), by asking:
Do I enjoy a decent bath because I know that John Smith cannot afford one — or because I delight in being clean? Do I admire Beethoven's Fifth Symphony because it is incomprehensible to Congressmen and Methodists — or because I genuinely love music? Do I prefer terrapin à la Maryland to fried liver, because plowhands must put up with the liver — or because the terrapin is intrinsically a more charming dose?
LOL. You do not have any real evidence of a successful communist regime and only offer the sophmoric 19th century babblings of a self-loathing person who felt isolated from society...this seems to be the typical M.O. of the socialist/communist lefty academics. "Some historians have also speculated that this failure to obtain employment was partially due to prejudice against Norwegians (he is Norwegian)."
To want a utopia where everyone works to a common end is a nice fantasy, but one that is only realized through horrific costs to individuals. Some think that mean justifies the ends, others are not sociopaths.
I Do Not want "To Get Along" with everyone.. It is called Discernment. You may embrace everyone if you wish. I would suggest begining in China with the CCP. They love the Friendly Panda approach while doing the exact opposite. Not that I embrace the NWO NeoCons in the current USSA either. The planet will survive far longer than you or me. Look to your own survival first, then broaden the horizons to others. The Coup Feral Gov is our most immediate problem, imo.
You obviously don't See that I'm not bowing to your wokeness and hubris. I'll live Free and your pathetic spouts will alter nothing. Let me share a picture for you.
From this country’s inception, the rights assigned to the owners of property were the only rights that had the force of law behind them. There was never a time when “Big Corporate” could be distinguished from “Big Government.” In a democratic model, a country where corporate influence is strong, the federal government has to be stronger to be a bulwark on behalf of those without power. Here there has never been a defense of the rabble against corporate heft. Big Corporate = Big Government. Our beloved founders are the ones who forged this arrangement. The primacy of the individual is the core of this extremist concoction.
You wrote that “Wealth accumulation is not inherently Evil, but Suppressing wealth accumulation is Evil..”. When those who accumulate wealth, use it to write the laws and purchase the loyalty of decision-makers, the suppression of wealth is a direct result of the accumulation of wealth. So permitting and promoting and celebrating the accumulation of wealth as “evidence” of the genius of the liberal-capitalist model, but it is really the proof that America has fascist yearning in its blood.
That was FDR's pitch, Comrade. Look at DC today to see how wonderful Big Government has turned out. I also made no pitch for Big Corporate either, only for Individual Rights.
You may prefer Government Rights, but whomever is the Controlling Factor, Will Control YOU as well.
Isn’t it curious how the system that preaches freedom of the individual requires a massive military machine that swallows up citizen’s taxes, destroys fragile components of the global ecology, and, oh yeah, deprives the nations and peoples incapable of defending themselves of the means to survive with dignity. Welcome to the 22nd Century. The deification of the individual is clearly the ideology that is the gifter of perpetual war, the rise in fascism across the planet and the mentality that grips a nation of misinformed, angry voters who are at their wits’ end.
But he'll tell you that the current system is not the one that practices the freedom of individual, just preaches it. He'll use "comrade" to stress his point, too.
That such a system is a fantasy doesn't bother him.
and you keep telling people "Real" Socialism-Marxism hasn't been "perfected" yet. Perfection is unobtainable but millions have been slaughtered in it's quest by the Humanists under many "Ism's"
Individual Capitalism leads to innovation, new products, and yes Profits. In the former Soviet Union the joke was "They pretended to pay us, and We pretended to work". That surely is a model for Your "Success". Comrade.
"hasn't been "perfected" yet" - I never said that. The ideal is unachievable by definition and it's true for both systems. And whatever you call the current effective "non-true" capitalism system is guilty of the same sins you listed.
So next time read closer and stop being occupied with sticking in "comrade" everywhere. It interferes with your comprehension.
I wasn't addressing the War Wachine directly before, but it seems apparent to anyone with half a noodle that the Pantygone is Big Government and joined with Big Corp. I was Anti-War before you were born most likely. You have no idea how Big Gov can crush an Individual. Your love of Big Gov will eventually put you in the Gulag but your hubris prevents knowing history like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Comrade UW
Dictatorships, monarchies and oligarchies can be fascist. Communism, socialism and capitalism are economic systems and can be anywhere on the continuum from democratic to authoritarian. Greed is not good and power corrupts. Spread the wealth through equal opportunity and decentralize the power structures and give all stakeholders a seat at the round table. Our founders were just as flawed.
Actually, as.long as people are greedy they will have greedy leaders and any system will be corrupted.
Oh, wow, another person who can see thar economic systems aren't political systems!
I try to explain the difference like this: economic systems are on a "y" axis, from the freest to the most controlled, and political systems are on the "x" axis, from the freest to the most controlled.
You can make various combinations of these two systems with this. I believe that ours is high up on the continuum of "controlled economy" and has moved rapidly in the direction of "more controlled" political system in the last 50 years.
Capitalism cannot abide democracy. When the individual is the star of the model, the expectation that a government can act in the best interest of the society is fantasy. Germany serves as a good example. Germany, following their rebuild after WWII, built a parliamentarian government that was not attached to dogmatic homage to any ideology. They were capitalist in business and banking and legal affairs, but sought to maintain clean elections and autonomous governance. They had bureaucrats sit down with business leaders and trade union representatives, and they hashed out ground rules. They went on to become the most successful economy in Europe, and had the manufacturing and political infrastructure to lead the continent into a quasi-federated network. For years, they had a military budget that was intentionally dwarfed because of concerns of a return to aggression. That led to a relationship with the U.S. that was a dependent/enabler situation. Germany was a sort of silent partner in NATO, and completely in sync with anxious concerns about Soviet expansion. The U.S. bought German cooperation by assuming the latter’s military role and eating the costs. But fast forward to the present, and Germany’s chickens are coming home to roost. And this is the immutable nature of the capitalist model. Germany is all in on NATO... which is a de facto military representative of the EU. The demolition of the 20 billion-dollar Nordstream pipeline is the cost of allowing the U.S. to make policy on its behalf. The next elections in Germany should be interesting.
Not a problem for me comrade; I cannot abide a demoncrazy. That word is not to be found in a single document of the founding of this country.
So hence the divide, I favor a Republic where Rights are supposed to be guaranteed to the individual. That democRats have eroded the Republic to almost nothing remaining and now they blame what they have activelt destroyed as the problem is classical Bolshevik demonization.
NATO-UN-NWO-EU is all the same ball of tyranny imo. so we might agree on that, but not on your "solutions".
So, Comrade, Who do you appoint as the "Chief of Non-Greed"??? The conundrum is not solved that easily. BTW, "stakeholders" is NWO Facism which I would assume you oppose???
Shareholders are people who put their money in investments to better their lives while accepting the inherent risks of doing so. That is Individual Liberty.
I am using a definition of stakeholder as anyone affected by a decision. One does not see a homeless person, a small farmer, or a factory peon at Davos, for example. When enough people (a critical mass) face their shadow sides like greed and heal then we will have true public servants.
I think there a lot of mileage between protecting the meager earnings and savings of the majority who mostly play by the rules, and according every advantage and inducement to the tiny minority who wear the pants with the deepest pockets. If you think protecting the needs of the collective destroys individual striving, I’d be interested in your examples to substantiate this. Right now Cuba has an infant mortality that is better than many rich countries, including the U.S. The Scandinavian countries all have policies that curb the accumulation of individual wealth with progressive taxes, and their people are as productive and measurably happier than Americans. By any index, their version of capitalism is far superior to ours.
Wait until the Gov-Corp VaXXXes kick in some More. All Cause Mortality is soaring according to Life Insurance Companies ,who track such things and Morticians finding "stringy" nonbiological "clots" in the dead. Imagine that outcry.
Capitalism glorifies greed to the level of a sacred virtue. It's based on destroying the remarkably thin skin of earth (~6 inches) and the water that supports us (one drop, if our planet were the size of an egg). It destroys the ocean of air that supports all life, that could be represented by a thin tissue, if you laid that on a classroom globe. It turns people into slaves, killers of each other, and humans generally into lunatics. It has us competing violently for gold bars on the Global Titanic, which is already vertical. "And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made..."
Jesus freaking christ, dude. centralized government is your neon god. Not everyone wants to be a domesticated servant to the current fashionable Dear Leader...but apparently many do.
The glorification to which you refer is embedded in the relentless, 24/7 propaganda that distorts the actual amount of support among the populace, and masks the growing number of dissenters. I compare it to ad campaigns that seek to induce people to buy a product or see a movie. The system is amoral and caters to extremists and frauds. It usually attracts the worst of us, and the media present these ad campaigns as reality. It is a struggle to be honest and seek honest reportage.
I had a meteorology instructor say, "Imagine that this planet is a basketball, the bumps are higher than Everest and the grooves deeper than the Marianas Trench but it will do. Now dip it in water and take it out. The film of water on the surface? That's the thickness of our breathable atmosphere."
Capitalism is also just a word; words have been called the skin of thoughts. Strip off the skin here and and the pile of rot, garbage and death holds zero beauty.
Perhaps you should watch a sporting event that is devoid of competition, or perhaps you should determine which species does not compete to pass on their genes.
A free market economy (true capitalism) is not either/or systems, as such it is both collaboration-based and competition-based.
You are just as misguided as the technocrats that want to strip humanity of its freedoms by suppressing their human natures.
Another totally misguided effort. Perhaps you should finally get around to reading some Austrian economics and appreciate that our "capitalism" is centrally planned by a collaboration-based One World Government that is finalizing their technocommunism dystopia as you obsess with terms and systems you are clearly wholly ignorant of.
PS they win because of ignorance and division. I'm trying to in collaboration-based way educate you.
How about next time you fornicate you lecture the ballsack to not eject competitive sperm, but, rather, for them to swim in a collaboration-based manner?
I write solutions on my substack daily; ie: do NOT comply.
Yes, my first response as well. There seems to be this mistaken view that if we just get rid of Capitalism maybe everything would work out. While trade and locally-based economies may make sense and work out the rest of all the "isms" seem to fail and fail dramatically. After all the United States Capitalism began with what may be viewed as a corporate takeover of "America" initiated by East India Company and later by the Virginia Company. The alliance between governments, corporations and institutions are the enemies of we the people everywhere. After what is incorrectly called the colonization of "America" it wasn't long at all before the invaders had taken over the form of currency (wampum beads) and caused a runaway inflation. I can't see that anything would be different if a bunch of dedicated Communists had been the colonists.
Interestingly, without getting into a "noble savage" argument, some earlier cultures excelled at having elder councils who helped funnel competition into healthier forms. Art, music, spirituality, gambling and other pursuits helped stave off the occasional wars. I will take occasional wars any day over what we have now. Can't help but think it was better to be a Neanderthal over a modern human in the modern state run by kleptocratic, war-mongering psychopaths.
The pilgrims attempted this collaboration-based socialism and it took less than a season to destroy that little experiment and they reverted back to that which works.
Bitcoin was created as a competition-based solution, and is the competitor to CBDCs and state violence, and yet the author is always asking for some Satoshi's on the daily. And she probably does not even understand that the BTC blockchain only functions because of PoW which is itself pure competition to solve math puzzles for remuneration.
Sure but Bitcoin, whatever the advantages, is still a currency and open to whatever "ism" is in fashion. The problem isn't the currency just as guns, hammers and chain saws are tools and not the murderer. Whether it is wampum beads, sea shells, trade items, labor exchange or Bitcoin we are in trouble without a vast and massive cultural change. We have met the enemy and it is us. No nation, no form of economy, no currency, no form of politics can save us from this. The founding ancestors of the United States got it partly right until the Civil War but the parts they got wrong were serious enough to reap the consequences we inherit today.
It may be my own ignorance or terms I am not familiar with but.... the direction the Western world is headed towards does not look to me as what I understand as communism (mind you, true communism may have never existed or only works "on paper"). To me it looks more like fascism, totalitarianism.
But we may just be talking about the same thing using different terms.
A free-market system never existed or existed only "on paper": namely, in Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations. It was a model that existed only in Adam Smith's imagination.
From the beginnings of this thing way back i have felt it is fascism/totalitarianism. Don't think it is unique to any nation state, culture or economic system. It is planetary and it fits all the classic definitions you cite.
We have crony capitalism, not capitalism in the West at the time.
That said, all systems can be made to work tolerably well, if and to the extent that these systems are not run by sociopaths. The problem is that power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats, and they will worm their way to take over any system, no matter how well designed or well intentioned.
This is why capitalism will degenerate into crony capitalism, why socialism will eventually be corrupted, etc.. This is why, after 5,000 or so years of written history to pick examples from, there are no clear and simple answers as to which systems work and which do not, simply better and worse options at that time and in that place.
There were a few hundred thousand years of prehistory where all evidence indicates we survived via primitive communism. No money, no land property or intellectual property. Yet we survived and even prospered, developing agriculture, animal domestication, metal working, tools, even specialization and primitive writing systems before we had exchange currency for daily activities like we have now. All accomplished without destroying the planet and without a profit motive! Why were these primitive peoples so innovative without the ability to patent and profit from these developments? Then we introduce money, debt, and individual land ownership, and suddenly the idea of 'nation states' comes around, and little petty tribal conflicts explode into Total Wars of hegemony, colonization, and extermination.
Note the intensity of Glenn’s activity despite a serious health emergency in his family
• (re-tweet) unusual_whales @unusual_whales
JUST IN: Treasury Department officials have begun looking into whether they have the legal authority to start an investigation into the Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase because of Musk’s ties to foreign governments and investors, per the Washington Post.
Everybody knows exactly why this is happening.
• One day after a major story from @lhfang and @kenklippenstein proving the US Govt and Security State are directing Big Tech on what to censor, the #2 Senate Dem tries to radically restrict what "free speech" means in a way that contradicts all 1A caselaw:
Senator Dick Durbin @SenatorDurbin –“Free speech does not include spreading misinformation to downplay political violence.”
• By the way, one day after this massive story about the US Govt directing Big Tech censorship was published by a Dem-friendly site, with a popular left-wing figure as one of the reporters, neither CNN nor MSNBC invited them on, and no Dem politician has mentioned it.
Why is this?
• 2015, BBC: "Meet Twitter's second biggest shareholder, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal"
If DC Dems want an excuse to investigate Musk's purchase of Twitter on "national security grounds" because he won't censor for them, they'll need a better excuse.
• Also, few things are more darkly hilarious than Dems pretending to be so deeply concerned about Musk's involvement with Saudis when it's the US Government that is single-handedly responsible for propping up the Saudi regime with arms and surveillance tech
• Americans are being conditioned -- by "journalists" of all people -- to believe it's immoral or mentally ill not to immediately and uncritically accept whatever institutions of authorities claim.
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald weighs in on the Paul Pelosi attack: "Skepticism itself can never be wrong ... Even if evidence does emerge later on to prove it, the skepticism itself was not just valid, but necessary."
• To this very day, you can read articles in liberal corporate outlets branding as "conspiracy theorists" anyone asking about Nuland's comments - same for those who questioned claims about COVID vaccine efficacy and mask mandates, or *any* claim that the US Security State issues.
• The US corporate press is trying to train Americans to believe the first and most solemn duty of citizenship is instantly accept whatever institutions of authority tell you to believe. No wanting to see evidence, no noting contradictions: just happily recite what you're told.
• Rather than obey France's censorship order, Rumble turned its services off for France and will sue. But France should have no right to impose its censorship laws on the world.
• This is why I'm so proud to be working more with Rumble and why I believe in their free speech commitment. The easy thing to do would be to obey French politicians and remove anyone foreign governments demand. Rumble would rather lose France then submit to them.
People who believe capitalism is the best system will fight to the death for it. The death of other people. What other rationale was there in the Vietnam war, for instance? The US cited the domino theory: if Vietnam goes communist, it will cause all the countries in the global east and south to follow suit down the communist path. Communist countries everywhere - no matter what distance away - were a danger to the capitalist system. Indonesia was attacked in a different way in 1965 - the year of living dangerously - when the CIA lists of undesirables, people of a communitarian lifestyle, were murdered by co-opted Indonesians, and other CIA controlled thugs. Capitalism isn't its own good argument, or shining example. It takes muscle of one kind or another to enforce it.
There is a DIRECT connection between Russia-gate hoax concocted by St. Obama, Biden and Hillary and provoking capitalist Russia’s “Putin's war” by relentless NATO expansion.
The SAME lying team representing the US bipartisan War party.
Democracy and freedoms have left US – censorship is now nearly TOTAL; far worse than in Soviet Union 50 years ago.
I agree with the sentiment, but it is the philosophy of statism that has failed—not capitalism.
The state—through regulatory capture—has ensured the failure of capitalism. The state apparatus prefers one solution for many problems. That is the essence of statism.
Entrepreneurialism and free-market capitalism—a sovereign individual who is free to compete in the marketplace, creating goods and services to capture market share and capital—motivates individuals to create many solutions for many problems.
I don't want to assume anything, but intentionally or not, you are competing against other Substack newsletters.
Through the relatively free-market here on Substack, are you not creating a service that is attempting to capture market share/subscribers—paying subscribers or otherwise?
Its not even that the government "ensures the failur of capitalism", but that when the government controls the means of production of any industry, that is Socialism. The government nearly the sole of the "millitary industrial conplex".
That is a monstrosity of GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED PRODUCTION - the basic founding principle of SOCIALISM.
What we have in our nation are sectors of the economy that controlled by means of SOCIALISM.
You can argue they are privately owned, by if you don't conteol what you make - you are not privately owned.
That's why NAZI-ism was executed largely in this manner, as they did not have time with the onset of their war, to take ownership of most of the economy - instead they took control. Indeed the Nazi party, The National SOCIALIST Workers Party of Germany, if far more in the line economically with the problematic parts of our economy:
Pharmaceuticals, War, Etc.
And they are sectors of our economy that are socialized, with no little to no private options remaining:
Welfare, SSDI, etc - all have supplanted any private unemployment or disability insurance. And without the competition of a free market, these socialized segments of our economy have become HORRIBLY CORRUPT; just like anything that is SOCIALIZED becomes.
THIS IS WHAT SOCIALIZING A SEGMENT OF THE ECONOMY DOES:
I know a drug addict on disability for 10 years now, that loves in a $200 a month 2 bedroom apartment by himself that would cost in excess of $1600 on the private market. And he pays for it with his disability check that exceeds $1000 a month. He also gets food stamps on top of that. The rest gets spent on DRUGS. On which our GOVERNMENT has ruled: we CANNOT DRUG-TEST WELFARE RECIPIENTS.
Private unemployment and disabity insurance would never allow this excess or corruption, they care about how the money is spent - unlike socialized government programs.
We need MORE CAPITALISM, and the government should do its one job there: PREVENT TRUSTS/CARTELS/MONOPOLIES from acting in anticompetitive manners.
You too ignore the source of State capture: corporate power, which is derived from and based on capitalism.
Libertarians, utopian economists, and Republicans have done a good job in shifting the focus on inquiry (and blame) from corporations and capitalism to government. You do the same.
You ignore the source of State capture: corporate power, which is derived from and based on capitalism.
Liberations and Republicans have done a good job in shifting the focus on inquiry (and blame) from corporations and capitalism to government. You do the same.
It is the state that has a monopoly on the use of force and coercion. The state has the power to lock you up, or lock you down.
Corporations are merely the lapdogs of the state.
Sure, lots of back scratching going on between the entities—but if the last 2 plus years hasn't shown that it is the state that enslaves, I cannot convince you otherwise.
I really have to wrap my head around communism. It is tough to do. And I think I kind of agree with you to a point.
Let's say this, a doctor is an excellent doctor is tired one evening. There are no other doctors around and a Baker comes to the doctor in the evening. The Baker understands that the doctor is the best. But the doctor says I am tired, see me tomorrow. The baker sees that the doctor is tired but cant come back tomorrow. So he tries to sweeten the pot with an apple pie. The doctor accepts the pie and ignores his own feelings and sees the baker.
Soon everyone is doing little extras to get through shortages or to achieve excellent results. Soon the doctor is rich.
Now this is the purest form of capitalism. Probably pure communism.
Entrepreneurs finding each other and trading. Free will. No pollution. No big trucks or boats. Just doing our thing as value for work is paid.
Communism as is defined by Marx is a total sham.
Oh and by creating a local environment where people trade, work and talk the love will happen. Then there will be no need for abortion or any of the other crap lefties sell. We can teach biodiversity.
Because everything in life will have unmanipulated value.
Go to most small towns in the undeveloped world. This is how it is done. They seem to get along quite well without us.
If you're interested in understanding what socialism is please read theory by Karl Marx, Engles, Lenin, or Mao. Or peruse the Youtube channel Second Thought for an introduction to socialism:
I am simply not interested. There is no such thing as equal. Someone will run faster, doctor better, cook better, work harder and so on. So this supposed better form of government will fail. However a republic with a great constitution that protects the individual, the environment and the whole if society will work. Checks and balances to protect the individual from those who will harm any of the three parts are needed.
Then why did you say "I really have to wrap my head around communism"? You just explained the United States and other capitalist countries and they don't work. "Rights of the individual" only protects a select few people own capital. Wage slavery does not protect the individual. At least inform yourself beyond a surface propagandistic interpretation of socialism.
In their current form they aren't working. I can agree with that. Because they are corrupt. However communism in its current form has never really worked at all. Ever. It is unrealistic in a human sense.
"Communism has never worked" If the CIA/US hadn't meddled by overthrowing those countries governments we might have found out if that was true. I implore you to find non US sources about communism. Even a basic understanding of socialist principles would be helpful.
"It is unrealistic in the human sense" Social darwinism is unrealistic in the human sense. Communities, communal living, social cooperation is how our species has survived for millennia.
We're heavily propagandized too by people who don not have our best interests in mind. If you question the US and it's motives at all I would implore you to question what you know about socialism in general.
To me, what I have seen about communism, the state as in a country runs government for a few years, kills a few million people, then points a gun at you for the rest of your life. Thus creating fear, breeding hate, stifling creativity, creating massive poverty etc etc etc.
The west is experiencing this communist/socialist takeover right now. Clot shots, corporate takeover of government, ever increasing crime, ever more violent, the degradation of moral values, the dumbing down of our children and on it goes.
The people both left and right are tired of government. And now governments are crushing freedoms daily.
I despise industry. I know where pollution is created.
I despise large centralization of industry and government. That creates lopsided, psychopathic systems that puts industry and government over humanity. It creates us vs them.
We aren't going to stop competing. Destroying the testosterone of young men is only going to manifest other problems. People are naturally innovative, naturally curious. People fall into place rather than being shoved into line.
So a republic style small government that is based on protecting the freedom of the individual and the environment is where I see a successful world.
To create this, the world has to stop supporting psychopaths.
Communism and corporatism are psychopathic.
We need a system that better detects psychopathic behaviour .
The Menonites seem to have found that system. Overall not a bad way to live. And of course you can punch a hundred holes in my thoughts.
This one once again tries desperately to conflate capitalism with geopolitical power games that exist outside of any economic system.
Any-ism are all formed and led by elite power mad humans that use their unique abilities to position themselves to use humanity for their own gain. This has been true of theocracies, communes, cults, nation states, tribes and every other form of collective government.
Capitalism is not the problem, it is just your favorite whipping boy.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... wish I had a solution. But as I see it, the power to tax is the power to destroy. End confiscation, reestablish voluntary taxation, and governments will be inherently smaller, and less capable of mass destruction.
Capitalism has not failed...it is the idiots that have been trying to turn it into a socialist free-for-all that have caused problems. If you can come up with a better system, please tell us. Communism? Socialism? Leftism? Fascism? All major failures. All causing more death and destruction than capitalism ever will.
Capitalism is not the problem, the inherently ANTI-CAPITALISTIC merger of GOVERNMENT and CORPORATIONS, where the GOVERNMENT picks the winners & losers (not the market), is the problem. This is not free-market capitalism; and yes when we say capitalism, 99.99% of us mean FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM.
When the government, by force of law, STEALS your money and uses it to pick winners and losers, it is not capitalism failing - what is failing is something much more akin to actual FACISM (or any of the other forms of socialism).
Indeed, when the government doles out cash stolen from the populace, that action is in direct OPPOSITION to the most basic tenants CAPITALISM.
And the SOLUTION to our current sociopolitical woes would be MORE CAPITALISM, AND GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY. We need free-market competition in government spending, and every dollar proposed/spent should be openly documented for public consumption.
As it stands the obfuscated spending of OUR tax dollars allows the government to circumvent the protective nature of capitalistic free markets. Instead, those in control of the government, spend the money on whatever entities they are they are in financial bed with.
We need all bids to be open and competitive. Without that, the Pfizers and Lockheed Martins of the world will continue to be propped up, in perpetuity, by the corrupt socialistic government-control of these so-called "private" industry.
No market is 'free'. All markets are based on power relationships. I don't think you can point to any historical example anywhere of a 'free' market. To believe in free market Capitalism (or to somehow get there from our urrent system) is literally MORE utopian than to believe in Communism. We know for an absolute fact that human beings survived for thousands (if not millions) of years in what can only be called primitive communism. There was no money, individual land ownership, or intellectual property in primitive societies. Yet they survived and even prospered for thousands of years, and innovated all kinds of huge technology we take for granted without having a profit motive. Our brain is so addled today that we cannot conceive of openly sharing food and resources with people other than our nuclear family, yet that is how we survived for a long time. Communal hunting, share the meat. Communal work at harvest or gathering, store the food together. That is the crime of Capitalism - it divides us into striving individuals predating on each other, not as a collaborative group working towards common survival. The philosophy you are espousing also sounds a lot like Neoliberalism, and we all know how that turns out.
The "free market" was the brainchild of Adam Smith, and arose merely in his imagination, to describe a perfect model of his economic system.
This is foolish drivel, free markets have existed as long as humanity.
Please regale us with the "kinds of huge technology we take for granted without having a profit motive" you are referring to coming from these utopian "primitive communist" societies.
Fire. The wheel. fishing. boats. Agriculture. painting. tanning. Tool use. Need I go on?
Also metallurgy, animal domestication, wine/beermaking, cheese, even writing systems were developed pre-capitalism. Massive building projects were also done pre-capitalism (pyramids, Native American mound systems, Nazca lines, irrigation projects, Stonehenge).
It always amuses me to imagine a primitive person who invents say, a new better bow and arrow, trying to patent it or force other primitive people in his tribe to pay him tribute in meat or hides for the invention. "Hey guys I invented this bow and arrow, I get 10% of all game we kill with this for ME and my family for a few generations." Or "hey guys, I invented the idea of how to milk these awesome cows we have domesticated. I get 30% of all milk anybody milks from cows, or an equal trade of something else."
It always amazed me that someone would think some primitive person would invent a better arrow and then someone else would want it and neither barter for it or simply take it by force.
Specialization of labor is what spurred the great technological movements of humanity, not the random tinkerings of serfs (or more laughably, utopian-era communists) who then willing gave of themselves their abilities to all who simply asked.
There has always been human nature. The plea that a type of government can curtail that is laughable.
Brilliant
How were any of these produced without a profit motive, maybe except fire? In fact the acquisition of these things and the use of these things all became object of wars, hardly a utopian ideal.
There has always been human nature. The plea that a type of government can curtail that is laughable.
The acquisition of anything can be used for violence. If I make a corncob doll for my child, another child can pick it up and hit another child with it.
I didn't make it with a profit motive, nor for the purpose of creating a weapon.
GREAT examples!
Stonehenge
The Library of Alexandria
One oversight in this is that the huge technology discoveries required thousands of years for each step, slow crawling progress is what you are advocating. All the isms lead to stagnation. Liberty results in rapid progress but has inherently greater risk.
Recently published was evidence to show that the inegalitarian culture traces its origins to the onset of the agrarian age; other research shows that many prior cultures were not competitive, others were atheistic.
The profit motive is a focus on the advantage of the individual. An individual human, in the wild, without the massive infrastructural support afforded by our society, will die 99% of the time. That is the reality of the Hobbsian view of humanity: without society, human life is indeed "solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short". He believed, pessimistically, that humans need a sovereign or governor. We know much better, now as then, that it is our capacity for empathy that makes us human; those without it - sociopaths and psychopaths - are universally despised for the lack they show. Empathy drives cooperation.
Don't conflate capitalism with trade. Similarly, corporate capitalism with trade. Nor "ma-and-pa corner shop" with capitalism. That would also be "sole traders". Capitalism is investing capital (ie, liquid assets) into companies, which returns profit in the form of dividends or capital gains in stock and share values. Starting your own business is not capitalism; investing in someone else's company is.
If you haven't already, you might like to read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen.
I would say Capitalism is more than just investing in a company. Ownership is implied in Capitalism. To be a real capitalist, you have to own something (land, a business that produces something). Profits that you extract via rent or sale of the commodity you produce are then used to accumulate more profit-creating property (expand the business, buy more rent-taking land). That is capitalism - accumulation of more power to get control of more income producing stuff via re-investing profits you have extracted from unequal exchanges.
Just investing in stocks and getting dividends isn't capitalism. That is potentially letting somebody else use your excess money to let THEM expand in a Capitalist way. That you may be getting a small cut of their expansion doesn't make you a capitalist (unless you are a BIG investor who actually has enough shares to have an ownership stake and control of a company's decision making and ability to loot the company's profits). Stock investing may in some cases be you just getting fleeced by participating in a ponzi scheme. Unless you are using the profits you have extracted from the stock market to accumulate more income producing property (rather than just using it to live as retirement money), you aren't really a capitalist by just having a 401k (in my opinion).
A) I get really annoyed when someone repeats the academic myth that "human nature" encompasses all of the worst characteristics only, and conveniently ignores the better aspects of "human nature" like altruism, empathy, and compassion. Interestingly, for years biologists couldn't find any examples of these behaviors in nature, mostly because they didn't believe they existed. If you're not looking for something, you won't find it. Starting in the 1980s, scientists started studying altruism in nature, and - guess what! - they found it.
B) Read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen for an analysis of exactly how those primitive societies could have worked, and how the change to a more brutal, competitive model developed.
It seems to me that you have steeped in the competitive model for so long that it seems to be the only way life can be. Too bad!
Human nature absolutely does not only encompass all of the worst characteristics. But equally as annoying are the people that think there is a group or sect of humans whose nature only encompasses the good. When you are dealing with a group and it grows past, I dunno 30+ people?, you are gonna into some impure actors, that's simply a statistical reality. I'm not saying these people are evil, but that they are simply subject to the ups and downs of their human nature.
Given that, a particular government framework (which is an enforceable restraint, by definition), you will have to deal with human nature, dissent, conflict, and the seven deadly sins.
The question that one is left with is, what is the most efficient way to manage all that? In practice, Communism has failed, perhaps Capitalism, now too, has failed. Primitive or other utopia has clearly failed.
Veblen is easily skewered as I showed you in another reference you made to him.
You're putting words in my mouth that I didn't say. I don't believe that there is a group of people who are only good.
Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, said that the line between good and bad didn't exist between one group of people and another, but down the middle of each person's heart, and that I DO believe.
THAT'S what I was trying to say: that "human nature" is not just the worst, but also the better.
Maybe you should read as many books as I have.
The important point is that people are compassionate and they will be, they do not need to be told to. Socialism is a system that does not trust people to be compassionate. However, if you remove the profit incentive from society, you will remove a substantial amount of the incentive to innovate and advance the world. It is no coincidence that the period of massive charitable giving in the US was during the period of rampant capitalism.
Communism can last a long time and there may be examples eventually that show that it is sustainable but what is certain is that it will underperform capitalism in nearly every respect.
"There is no evidence that primitive societies were even egalitarian in groups, to say nothing of completely sharing resources. "
There's actually quite a bit of evidence. When Europeans came into conflict with native peoples across the globe, there are examples all over the place of living cultures, and evidence in the archeological/anthropological record. I'd recommend a couple of David Graeber's books on it: "Debt: the First 5,000 Years" and "The Dawn of Everything". Absolutely fascinating. There are more scholarly books out there too I'm sure.
""Human beings" have not been a species for even half a million years,"
Granted 'anatomically modern' humans have been around for maybe 400,000 years.
But something approximating humans has been around for at least a million years. Recent evidence shows camp fire use a million years ago, and we've been using stone tools for over 2 million years.
TAXES DON'T FUND SPENDING AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL. Stop spouting the lie that it is "our tax dollars."
The US has had a fiat currency since Richard Nixon took us off the last of the gold standard in 1971.
That means that Congress creates the currency every time they pass an appropriations bill. They don't need your taxes. (There are several reasons for taxes, but needing them to pay for government spending isn't one of them.) This also means that you can't stop them from spending money any way they like by withholding your taxes.
Will you please learn - really learn - Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to protect yourself from the lies that our politicians tell you, using your lack of knowledge against you? And don't think that because you heard something that "someone said" about MMT means that you understand MMT.
You can watch The Rogue Scholar, Macro'n'Cheese, or MMT Mondays on YouTube to learn about it. Thanks!
So where does the money I send to the IRS go? Who spends it?
No one spends it. When your taxes go back to the Treasury Department, they are deleted (erased or subtracted) from the system. This is one of the reasons for taxes: it offsets the "printing" of more and more money.
Stephanie Kelton has several excellent videos on YouTube about this. Look them up. She has graphics showing how this works.
So if I don't send my money, they have to print more? That means that the money i send does get spent.
The solution you are looking for has nothing to do with economic models and everything to do with liberty. Eliminate government and most problems go with it.
I disagree. All of the theorists about society: Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and John Locke (read his Two Treatises on Government) said that governments are formed (in fact, societies are formed) because individuals can get their needs met better from a group than they can each by himself. Governments exist to have the power, that is, they are agreed to by the people, to curb the might of the powerful and protect the rights of the weak.
Of course, in your lifetime, you have only seen governments which have usurped their power and are oppressing their people, so you believe that that's the only form they can take.
Please read the entire Declaration of Independence. See what Jefferson had to say about governments that usurp their power.
Please drop the condescending attitude, I have read more of the founding documents than most. Are you suggesting that Chinese history where the government was nothing but a 1000 year long power struggle between war lords was an anomaly ? How about Rome where every transition was a coup, patricide or outright military regime change was the exception ? Perhaps it was the peaceful indigenous peoples of the Americas you had in mind that had non stop raging tribal warfare continent wide for generations.
Since you fantasize that government is benevolent please provide specific examples of such governments because I have found none.
You read "the founding documents," fine.
Have you read Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Montaigne, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Machiavelli?
I didn't say that governments were benevolent. I said that the PURPOSE people have for creating a government is that it ought to be benevolent.
If you have read the "founding documents," you must have read the Declaration of Independence. I'm guessing that it must have been some time ago. I asked you to RE-READ it.
You cannot live in a civilized manner without a functioning government. The problem is not government - it is oligarchy, power focused in the hands of a few people - who then corrupt the government to serve their own sociopathic, suicidal ends.
GOVERNMENT IS NOT THE PROBLEM - IT IS THE CORRUPT, UNCONTROLLED GREED OF THE BILLIONAIRE ELITES.
Can you name a single government that has never fallen to the elites in society ?
Off the top of my head no. But obviously that doesn't mean we ought to ignore the problem.
How are the billionaires corrupt but the government isn't? This is South African judiciary logic where they convict Shabir Shaik of having a corrupt relationship with former president Jacob Zuma but somehow don't convict Jacob Zuma.
Who said that?
We all know that governments can be corrupt.
The problem in the United States is that the government has been corrupted by the money that they are getting from the corrupt corporations.
You've just said it! You're blaming the corporations for corrupting government but not blaming the government for being corrupt. How can only one side of a corrupt relationship be guilty?
For the thousandth time - you're describing an ideal capitalism which is not possible. Just like an ideal communism is not. If they were both systems would work.
No we are describing capitalism that until the 1920's and the interference of progressives in the market, was very real, and very possible. It was and is the socialistic-elements (things normally alien to capitalism) that poison/destroy free market economies, as theu do in all markets in ALL economic systems socialistic elements are introduced into. Socialistic elements will/do destroy capitalist economies and enable cronyism (a hallmark of socialism, and especially of hybrid socialist/capitalist systems - a la China). Socialism's inherent nature is that of corruption, and is largely why communism fails (among many, many other reasons).
If you keep government/"public" ownership (socialism) out of capitalism; than Capitalism has, does, and continues to be the system that brings greatest amount of prosperity & innovation to the greatest amount of the population. The cost of freedom is that some will fail. But they can also try again thanks to these same freedoms.
You cannot have social freedom without economic freedom. This is an undeniable fact.
I would also posit you cannot have "public" control or ownership of any part of the economy, without having horrible corruption in that segment of the economy.
The governments role in free market capitalism was to prevent trusts/monopolies from acting to stifle competition. Such as how the system largely was before amending the constitution to allow a federal income tax, and before FDR used court-stacking to blackmail the Supreme Court into reinterpreting interstate-commerce to mean ANYTHING (after they first ruled against him), we indeed had a very sincere capitalist society in the USA.
The progressives and socialists of the early 20th century sowed the seeds of the corruption we see today. They likely would not have been able to do this without one other horrible ammendment: the 17th ammendment.
Senators are no longer beholden to the states interest, but more so to the populace via promises towards their self-interest. This dissolution of states-power and republicanism via the 17th's appeal towards mob-control democracy has also destroyed much of the separation of state and federal power that enabled us to have a thriving capitalistic system. The founders should have made so that the tenants of our republic, such as thr state's legislatures choosing the senators, not the mob, could never he destroyed via amendment. The sins of the founders is that they faiped to protect the greatness that is/was the constitution and the original bill of rights. Granting more freedoms via ammendments was fine and an acceptable thing but destroying the foundations of system of republicanism, via amendments, should never have been possible.
The creation of Prohibition, the federal Income tax, and the 17th ammendments enablement of mob-rule should all never have been possible. That is one failing our system encountered that enabled creeping socialism to embed itself, like a parasite, within our economy/government - and like an unchecked parasite in the wrong host, it will grow and grow until its inherent corruption and bloat destroys our system.
Oh, right, it was those "dirty progressives" who are to blame for all of the ills of our otherwise perfect world!
Can you admit that there have been many many failures in the application of progressive ideology? If you cannot, then there is really no point in arguing. And no, capitalism is not perfect.
But if you prefer free people to domesticated ones, the choice is clear and progressivism will fail then, without force.
You're making the mistake of most Americans: you're confusing capitalism, an economic system, with "freedom," the outcome of a political system. We have been taught and brainwashed to confuse economics with politics. They aren't the same. You CAN have capitalism with totalitarianism. It's been done before.
Where was that done?
Where was communism and "freedom" done together?
Caitlin is a genius at exposing propaganda and narrative. However, when it comes to economics, I haven't seen her write any sort of detailed piece explaining anything about capitalism, socialism, communism, or fascism.
She hates billionaires. She would maybe pick up some good information if she listened to Russell Brand, who is on the left, and who loathes the tyranny of the fascist World Economic Forum in Davos. Check out this Brand video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCq9WBs6gzU
Again, I like her work. I will ally with anyone to stop nuclear war. But we could all stand to learn more about economics and how the world works.
This is why I plead with everyone to learn Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). This is what MMT does: it teaches ordinary people how the monetary system works, so that they can be armed against the lies of the politicians.
Most people have heard some gossip "debunking" MMT so they think that they know everything they need to know about it. Unless you KNOW MMT, you won't know whether its detractors are right wrong.
You can learn about it from The Rogue Scholar, Macro'n'Cheese, or MMT Mondays on YouTube. Also, Stephanie Kelton has several excellent videos with graphics about it on YouTube.
Yeah - I'm sure Caitlin should stop talking about a possible World War III since it will have nothing to do with economics. Whatever.
WHAT?
It will have everything to do with economics, since it seems that the West won't quit funneling money to the weapons manufacturers (who give back money to the politicians) until we end up in a nuclear war. After all, you have to use those darn bombs somewhere, so you can make more!
Im glad you have time to educate the author of the post. But I imagine that she will never learn. I already tried many times... I hope you have more patience and wish you luck.
I have to agree, Caitlin is a progressive communist that hasn't really experienced anything in life outside of capitalism. She has no real world comparison and so all evils in the world come from her identified enemy.
Which is why people like you are rushing to her comment section. Whoever is paying you is wasting their investment; people here have thinking minds
There are a lot of paid commenters in the world but I am not one of them. I have been a fan of hers since the gun carrying protest but sadly her ideology doesn't reflect anything even close to her public image.
Possibly her "public image" is a figment of your imagination that you projected onto her, and now you are disappointed when she turns out to be a real person and not the idol of your creation.
I've found Caitlin to be remarkably consistent over the years that I have been following her.
It's not that she turned out to be a real person, whatever that means. I clearly stated when I started following her and why I'm disappointed, deal with it.
That condescending approach should do the trick
I win nothing for educating the author of the post or her readers. I was doing it as a favor to them because I thought that they had good intentions but were simply ignorant. In the end, I lost patience.
I also think that the likelihood that they are just ignorant is very low. Still possible, but low. There is something deeply sinister with these people's desire to enslave the so called "capitalists" and create a dictatorship (of the proletariat or otherwise). It suggests a lot more than simple ignorance, much closer to being evil.
Thank you so much for your crusade in favour of Good against us who cherish Evil. Your defence of man's right to exploit man is admirable
You are a paranoid fool that thinks life is black and white.
Names! Hurling names at your opponents is always one of the most effective and distinguished methods of debate.
You are a low IQ no one that is resentful of the entire world and became a communist who is so deranged that believes that he understands what someone like me thinks. :)
As I said, I don't have time, I am sorry... If you want to learn, there are lots of material on the internet.
Cheers
You win a great deal of puffing up of your ego by exposing the "failings" of one of the best thinkers of our times.
Bully for you!
Oh man… my ego, seriously?
I only observe reality. The writer wants to enslave the people that she calls capitalists.
If you don’t see how despicable this is and/or if you think this is ok, I can just hope that you will face justice one day. At some spiritual level.
I wish you exactly what you wish to these other people that you call capitalists.and I believe it will come to you, fortunately.
No, thanks for the attempt to apologize for capitalism, but what you are describing IS capitalism.
Who would enforce your free-market capitalism?
Nobody enforces free markets, otherwise they wouldn't be free
Right. And since you need to be spoon fed, I was stressing that contradiction. Free market is what gave us the present situation, that is, the winners take over State power
Well, excuse me for not hanging on your every word. Corruption of the free market by collision between industry and the government gave us what we have. Without government protection large market players could not rise and become monopolistic.
And that corruption erupted by sheer bad luck in your simplistic world view
"ENFORCEMENT" mean s no freedom. So, ditch that system/ idea.
Right. So the military-industrial complex would be free to do business as usual
The MIC are apparently free to do as they please in our current fascist regime.
Yes. Free market eventually leads to fascism. You can call it black and white but reality doesn't care about your labels
That's simply ignorant of human nature. Tyranny is independent of economic models.
We do not have Capitalism currently in the USA. We have Facism, which is the merger of Big Corporate with Big Government as clearly shown in the latest DHS email releases. Choosing between Facist and Communist is No Choice, both are Tyrannical. Going Gooey Green is also Tyrannical and stupidly unworkable as an aside.
Destroying Individual striving in any arena, spiritual, economic, or other endeavors is the road to ruin.
Wealth accumulation is not inheriently Evil, but Suppressing wealth accumulation is Evil. People are Flawed, No Governmental Authority is anything more than a Flawed Group.
Our Founders had / have much wisdom on how to create an orderly society if anyone cares to read and study it.
That is after we wiped out 10 million or so indigious humans. I fear that what we call wealth accumulation is stripping away the skin of our only planet. If we manage to redefine wealth as getting along together instead of converting a once beautiful planet into more piles of garbage I could more easily get behind the idea. Ditto being green, by which I mean getting along with each other AND that thing we call Nature.
Only capitalism does those bad things, right? How many indigenous people did Stalin wipe out, Mao? How has the central authoritarian Asian governments improved "Nature" via a new coal plant every week, or pouring plastics and other trash into the rivers and ocean?
Look, we now know that the left is an authoritarian, fascist wantabe state lurking in the wings, we see it in the EU, we se it in the US swamp. Quit enabling fascism with your lame excuses.
There is no point in having anything, if people are not free to enjoy it.
There are no leftists in the US government. There are right-wing neolibs/neocons in service to the oligarchy which is capitalist and increasingly fascist and the opposite of leftist or of communist.
Oh...the semantic BS, what a terrible place to hide. Look they are central authoritarians pilfering the government. That is not opposite leftist or communists in practice. The fact that multi-national mega corporations replace giant central authoritarian government is meaningless in practice, unless you're one of those, most aren't.
Human nature being what it is, pandering to individual liberty and not collective (forced) nonsense is much more preferable. Of course there are many people who believe that they know what is best for others, those are typically leftists and they are nearly always wrong and they are always doing it for the wrong reasons.
How many indigenous tribes wiped each other out long before the white man showed his face ? Mayans were ruthless genocidal empire builders
7,946
Did you actually read Caitlin's article before you came here to comment? I believe that she addressed the "Stalin/Mao" rebuttal. Go read, really read, the article again.
Her Ipsi Dixit plea that competitive-based society is pushing us towards all things evil is neither supported by fact or historical record.
moreover, her supposition that capitalism is not collaborative and that communism is is, again, neither supported by the fact or historical record. Jesus h Christ, we are (were?) a democracy, that is by definition collaborative. Tell me about the collaborative nature of communism, as practiced anywhere in history - it is the opposite, it is feudal.
Go read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen.
Childish 19th century babble. Completely irrelevant today - much like Deniro's lame "Amsterdam" trying to explain the non-left as would be tyrants. Completely boorish.
In the essay “The Dullest Book of The Month: Dr. Thorstein Veblen Gets the Crown of Deadly Nightshade” (1919), after addressing the content of The Theory of the Leisure Class, the book reviewer Robert Benchley addressed the subject of who are readers to whom Veblen speaks, that:
“the Doctor has made one big mistake, however. He has presupposed, in writing this book, the existence of a [social] class with much more leisure than any class in the world ever possessed — for, has he not counted on a certain number of readers?”
or:
In the essay “Prof. Veblen” (1919) the intellectual H. L. Mencken addressed the matters of Americans' social psychology reported in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), by asking:
Do I enjoy a decent bath because I know that John Smith cannot afford one — or because I delight in being clean? Do I admire Beethoven's Fifth Symphony because it is incomprehensible to Congressmen and Methodists — or because I genuinely love music? Do I prefer terrapin à la Maryland to fried liver, because plowhands must put up with the liver — or because the terrapin is intrinsically a more charming dose?
LOL. You do not have any real evidence of a successful communist regime and only offer the sophmoric 19th century babblings of a self-loathing person who felt isolated from society...this seems to be the typical M.O. of the socialist/communist lefty academics. "Some historians have also speculated that this failure to obtain employment was partially due to prejudice against Norwegians (he is Norwegian)."
To want a utopia where everyone works to a common end is a nice fantasy, but one that is only realized through horrific costs to individuals. Some think that mean justifies the ends, others are not sociopaths.
I Do Not want "To Get Along" with everyone.. It is called Discernment. You may embrace everyone if you wish. I would suggest begining in China with the CCP. They love the Friendly Panda approach while doing the exact opposite. Not that I embrace the NWO NeoCons in the current USSA either. The planet will survive far longer than you or me. Look to your own survival first, then broaden the horizons to others. The Coup Feral Gov is our most immediate problem, imo.
If you don't want to get along with everyone, you're part of the problem.
You can call it "discernment" if you want; I call it a euphemism for "snobbery."
Go live on Antarctica if that's the way you feel.
You obviously don't See that I'm not bowing to your wokeness and hubris. I'll live Free and your pathetic spouts will alter nothing. Let me share a picture for you.
https://ncrenegade.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/fjb1.jpg
From this country’s inception, the rights assigned to the owners of property were the only rights that had the force of law behind them. There was never a time when “Big Corporate” could be distinguished from “Big Government.” In a democratic model, a country where corporate influence is strong, the federal government has to be stronger to be a bulwark on behalf of those without power. Here there has never been a defense of the rabble against corporate heft. Big Corporate = Big Government. Our beloved founders are the ones who forged this arrangement. The primacy of the individual is the core of this extremist concoction.
You wrote that “Wealth accumulation is not inherently Evil, but Suppressing wealth accumulation is Evil..”. When those who accumulate wealth, use it to write the laws and purchase the loyalty of decision-makers, the suppression of wealth is a direct result of the accumulation of wealth. So permitting and promoting and celebrating the accumulation of wealth as “evidence” of the genius of the liberal-capitalist model, but it is really the proof that America has fascist yearning in its blood.
https://mronline.org/2022/10/31/liberal-democracy/
That was FDR's pitch, Comrade. Look at DC today to see how wonderful Big Government has turned out. I also made no pitch for Big Corporate either, only for Individual Rights.
You may prefer Government Rights, but whomever is the Controlling Factor, Will Control YOU as well.
Isn’t it curious how the system that preaches freedom of the individual requires a massive military machine that swallows up citizen’s taxes, destroys fragile components of the global ecology, and, oh yeah, deprives the nations and peoples incapable of defending themselves of the means to survive with dignity. Welcome to the 22nd Century. The deification of the individual is clearly the ideology that is the gifter of perpetual war, the rise in fascism across the planet and the mentality that grips a nation of misinformed, angry voters who are at their wits’ end.
But he'll tell you that the current system is not the one that practices the freedom of individual, just preaches it. He'll use "comrade" to stress his point, too.
That such a system is a fantasy doesn't bother him.
and you keep telling people "Real" Socialism-Marxism hasn't been "perfected" yet. Perfection is unobtainable but millions have been slaughtered in it's quest by the Humanists under many "Ism's"
Individual Capitalism leads to innovation, new products, and yes Profits. In the former Soviet Union the joke was "They pretended to pay us, and We pretended to work". That surely is a model for Your "Success". Comrade.
"hasn't been "perfected" yet" - I never said that. The ideal is unachievable by definition and it's true for both systems. And whatever you call the current effective "non-true" capitalism system is guilty of the same sins you listed.
So next time read closer and stop being occupied with sticking in "comrade" everywhere. It interferes with your comprehension.
I wasn't addressing the War Wachine directly before, but it seems apparent to anyone with half a noodle that the Pantygone is Big Government and joined with Big Corp. I was Anti-War before you were born most likely. You have no idea how Big Gov can crush an Individual. Your love of Big Gov will eventually put you in the Gulag but your hubris prevents knowing history like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Comrade UW
I read and recommend your thoughtful essay. Thank you.
Dictatorships, monarchies and oligarchies can be fascist. Communism, socialism and capitalism are economic systems and can be anywhere on the continuum from democratic to authoritarian. Greed is not good and power corrupts. Spread the wealth through equal opportunity and decentralize the power structures and give all stakeholders a seat at the round table. Our founders were just as flawed.
Actually, as.long as people are greedy they will have greedy leaders and any system will be corrupted.
Oh, wow, another person who can see thar economic systems aren't political systems!
I try to explain the difference like this: economic systems are on a "y" axis, from the freest to the most controlled, and political systems are on the "x" axis, from the freest to the most controlled.
You can make various combinations of these two systems with this. I believe that ours is high up on the continuum of "controlled economy" and has moved rapidly in the direction of "more controlled" political system in the last 50 years.
Capitalism cannot abide democracy. When the individual is the star of the model, the expectation that a government can act in the best interest of the society is fantasy. Germany serves as a good example. Germany, following their rebuild after WWII, built a parliamentarian government that was not attached to dogmatic homage to any ideology. They were capitalist in business and banking and legal affairs, but sought to maintain clean elections and autonomous governance. They had bureaucrats sit down with business leaders and trade union representatives, and they hashed out ground rules. They went on to become the most successful economy in Europe, and had the manufacturing and political infrastructure to lead the continent into a quasi-federated network. For years, they had a military budget that was intentionally dwarfed because of concerns of a return to aggression. That led to a relationship with the U.S. that was a dependent/enabler situation. Germany was a sort of silent partner in NATO, and completely in sync with anxious concerns about Soviet expansion. The U.S. bought German cooperation by assuming the latter’s military role and eating the costs. But fast forward to the present, and Germany’s chickens are coming home to roost. And this is the immutable nature of the capitalist model. Germany is all in on NATO... which is a de facto military representative of the EU. The demolition of the 20 billion-dollar Nordstream pipeline is the cost of allowing the U.S. to make policy on its behalf. The next elections in Germany should be interesting.
Not a problem for me comrade; I cannot abide a demoncrazy. That word is not to be found in a single document of the founding of this country.
So hence the divide, I favor a Republic where Rights are supposed to be guaranteed to the individual. That democRats have eroded the Republic to almost nothing remaining and now they blame what they have activelt destroyed as the problem is classical Bolshevik demonization.
NATO-UN-NWO-EU is all the same ball of tyranny imo. so we might agree on that, but not on your "solutions".
Yes, but you already admitted that you don't want to get along with everyone, so criticisms from you are expected.
So, Comrade, Who do you appoint as the "Chief of Non-Greed"??? The conundrum is not solved that easily. BTW, "stakeholders" is NWO Facism which I would assume you oppose???
Shareholders are people who put their money in investments to better their lives while accepting the inherent risks of doing so. That is Individual Liberty.
Dear comrade,
I am using a definition of stakeholder as anyone affected by a decision. One does not see a homeless person, a small farmer, or a factory peon at Davos, for example. When enough people (a critical mass) face their shadow sides like greed and heal then we will have true public servants.
I know what "stakeholder" means, and so do you; It's "the Masses", typical Bolshevik lingo.
Are you also voting for more JoBama democRat Hope & Change? The NWO Masters sure hope so.
There is only one party: the neocon/neolib servant of the oligarchy which is capitalist and increasingly fascist. (And right-wing.)
You avoided answering, "WHO is the Chief of Non-Greed?" What "system" do you advocate for? The Borg or the Individual?
I think there a lot of mileage between protecting the meager earnings and savings of the majority who mostly play by the rules, and according every advantage and inducement to the tiny minority who wear the pants with the deepest pockets. If you think protecting the needs of the collective destroys individual striving, I’d be interested in your examples to substantiate this. Right now Cuba has an infant mortality that is better than many rich countries, including the U.S. The Scandinavian countries all have policies that curb the accumulation of individual wealth with progressive taxes, and their people are as productive and measurably happier than Americans. By any index, their version of capitalism is far superior to ours.
Also, the US is 35th out of the top 50 countries in maternal morbidity and mortality.
Imagine the outcry if we were 35th at the Olympics.
Wait until the Gov-Corp VaXXXes kick in some More. All Cause Mortality is soaring according to Life Insurance Companies ,who track such things and Morticians finding "stringy" nonbiological "clots" in the dead. Imagine that outcry.
like Sparta.
Capitalism glorifies greed to the level of a sacred virtue. It's based on destroying the remarkably thin skin of earth (~6 inches) and the water that supports us (one drop, if our planet were the size of an egg). It destroys the ocean of air that supports all life, that could be represented by a thin tissue, if you laid that on a classroom globe. It turns people into slaves, killers of each other, and humans generally into lunatics. It has us competing violently for gold bars on the Global Titanic, which is already vertical. "And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made..."
...before Capitalism, there was utopia.
Jesus freaking christ, dude. centralized government is your neon god. Not everyone wants to be a domesticated servant to the current fashionable Dear Leader...but apparently many do.
Like many people, you are confusing capitalism, an economic system, with government, a political system.
The glorification to which you refer is embedded in the relentless, 24/7 propaganda that distorts the actual amount of support among the populace, and masks the growing number of dissenters. I compare it to ad campaigns that seek to induce people to buy a product or see a movie. The system is amoral and caters to extremists and frauds. It usually attracts the worst of us, and the media present these ad campaigns as reality. It is a struggle to be honest and seek honest reportage.
I had a meteorology instructor say, "Imagine that this planet is a basketball, the bumps are higher than Everest and the grooves deeper than the Marianas Trench but it will do. Now dip it in water and take it out. The film of water on the surface? That's the thickness of our breathable atmosphere."
Much like Wars are never lost by the Oligarchy.
Capitalism never fails. It always successfully serves the Oligarchy.
Capitalism's enemy is the rights of the people and planet.
All economies are planned. Capitalism
is planned to exponentially profit the Oligarchy.
All else is devoured and destroyed.
Capitalism is a death cult built to the God of the very worst humanity can conjure against it's own existence.
Capitalism is also just a word; words have been called the skin of thoughts. Strip off the skin here and and the pile of rot, garbage and death holds zero beauty.
As someone not educated in social science forgive me for this description of that comment as post-modern nihilistic BS. YMMV.
Perhaps you should watch a sporting event that is devoid of competition, or perhaps you should determine which species does not compete to pass on their genes.
A free market economy (true capitalism) is not either/or systems, as such it is both collaboration-based and competition-based.
You are just as misguided as the technocrats that want to strip humanity of its freedoms by suppressing their human natures.
Another totally misguided effort. Perhaps you should finally get around to reading some Austrian economics and appreciate that our "capitalism" is centrally planned by a collaboration-based One World Government that is finalizing their technocommunism dystopia as you obsess with terms and systems you are clearly wholly ignorant of.
PS they win because of ignorance and division. I'm trying to in collaboration-based way educate you.
You're a pompous git.
Next post, try to include solutions with your vitriol.
p.s. I'm just trying to educate you
Ad hominem and yet no argument.
How about next time you fornicate you lecture the ballsack to not eject competitive sperm, but, rather, for them to swim in a collaboration-based manner?
I write solutions on my substack daily; ie: do NOT comply.
"I'm trying to in collaboration-based way educate you." English skills courtesy of Capitalism.
And from which econ system are you criticizing my purposely convoluted syntax?
Did you type that from Venezuela perchance?
"And from which econ system are you criticizing my purposely convoluted syntax?"
I'm looking forward to seeing something from the "Smartest Guy in the World".
Speaking of wankers wanking, see your reply re your solution "do not comply"
To his credit he doesn't claim to be THE smartest guy in the world.
Yes, my first response as well. There seems to be this mistaken view that if we just get rid of Capitalism maybe everything would work out. While trade and locally-based economies may make sense and work out the rest of all the "isms" seem to fail and fail dramatically. After all the United States Capitalism began with what may be viewed as a corporate takeover of "America" initiated by East India Company and later by the Virginia Company. The alliance between governments, corporations and institutions are the enemies of we the people everywhere. After what is incorrectly called the colonization of "America" it wasn't long at all before the invaders had taken over the form of currency (wampum beads) and caused a runaway inflation. I can't see that anything would be different if a bunch of dedicated Communists had been the colonists.
Interestingly, without getting into a "noble savage" argument, some earlier cultures excelled at having elder councils who helped funnel competition into healthier forms. Art, music, spirituality, gambling and other pursuits helped stave off the occasional wars. I will take occasional wars any day over what we have now. Can't help but think it was better to be a Neanderthal over a modern human in the modern state run by kleptocratic, war-mongering psychopaths.
The pilgrims attempted this collaboration-based socialism and it took less than a season to destroy that little experiment and they reverted back to that which works.
Bitcoin was created as a competition-based solution, and is the competitor to CBDCs and state violence, and yet the author is always asking for some Satoshi's on the daily. And she probably does not even understand that the BTC blockchain only functions because of PoW which is itself pure competition to solve math puzzles for remuneration.
Time to get rigorously educated and honest.
Just a neutral question: if the owners of the Internet turn it off, how much is your Bitcoin worth?
About the same as your bank account, though when it is turned back on your BTC will remain as it was prior to the blackout.
Sure but Bitcoin, whatever the advantages, is still a currency and open to whatever "ism" is in fashion. The problem isn't the currency just as guns, hammers and chain saws are tools and not the murderer. Whether it is wampum beads, sea shells, trade items, labor exchange or Bitcoin we are in trouble without a vast and massive cultural change. We have met the enemy and it is us. No nation, no form of economy, no currency, no form of politics can save us from this. The founding ancestors of the United States got it partly right until the Civil War but the parts they got wrong were serious enough to reap the consequences we inherit today.
Your first paragraph of one anecdote about pilgrims says and proves nothing.
There is such a thing as healthy competition as long as it does no harm.
It may be my own ignorance or terms I am not familiar with but.... the direction the Western world is headed towards does not look to me as what I understand as communism (mind you, true communism may have never existed or only works "on paper"). To me it looks more like fascism, totalitarianism.
But we may just be talking about the same thing using different terms.
A free-market system never existed or existed only "on paper": namely, in Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations. It was a model that existed only in Adam Smith's imagination.
From the beginnings of this thing way back i have felt it is fascism/totalitarianism. Don't think it is unique to any nation state, culture or economic system. It is planetary and it fits all the classic definitions you cite.
...wow, I really should have read your comment first, my post (if you want to give it a look) strongly echoes your sentiments.
Will check it out. Who say's there thinking isn't contagious?
Austrian economics - oh, please!
We have crony capitalism, not capitalism in the West at the time.
That said, all systems can be made to work tolerably well, if and to the extent that these systems are not run by sociopaths. The problem is that power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats, and they will worm their way to take over any system, no matter how well designed or well intentioned.
This is why capitalism will degenerate into crony capitalism, why socialism will eventually be corrupted, etc.. This is why, after 5,000 or so years of written history to pick examples from, there are no clear and simple answers as to which systems work and which do not, simply better and worse options at that time and in that place.
There were a few hundred thousand years of prehistory where all evidence indicates we survived via primitive communism. No money, no land property or intellectual property. Yet we survived and even prospered, developing agriculture, animal domestication, metal working, tools, even specialization and primitive writing systems before we had exchange currency for daily activities like we have now. All accomplished without destroying the planet and without a profit motive! Why were these primitive peoples so innovative without the ability to patent and profit from these developments? Then we introduce money, debt, and individual land ownership, and suddenly the idea of 'nation states' comes around, and little petty tribal conflicts explode into Total Wars of hegemony, colonization, and extermination.
Capitalism is a dead hand.
The thing keeps killing long after we are all dead already.
Why do they, the rich fuckerwhores, hate us so?
Tis because they can.
...
They can so they do this, rather than learn to dance and to someone else's music?
Only the blues...
GG tweets – extracted ~Nov 2 period https://twitter.com/ggreenwald
Note the intensity of Glenn’s activity despite a serious health emergency in his family
• (re-tweet) unusual_whales @unusual_whales
JUST IN: Treasury Department officials have begun looking into whether they have the legal authority to start an investigation into the Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase because of Musk’s ties to foreign governments and investors, per the Washington Post.
Everybody knows exactly why this is happening.
• One day after a major story from @lhfang and @kenklippenstein proving the US Govt and Security State are directing Big Tech on what to censor, the #2 Senate Dem tries to radically restrict what "free speech" means in a way that contradicts all 1A caselaw:
Senator Dick Durbin @SenatorDurbin –“Free speech does not include spreading misinformation to downplay political violence.”
• By the way, one day after this massive story about the US Govt directing Big Tech censorship was published by a Dem-friendly site, with a popular left-wing figure as one of the reporters, neither CNN nor MSNBC invited them on, and no Dem politician has mentioned it.
Why is this?
• 2015, BBC: "Meet Twitter's second biggest shareholder, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal"
If DC Dems want an excuse to investigate Musk's purchase of Twitter on "national security grounds" because he won't censor for them, they'll need a better excuse.
• Also, few things are more darkly hilarious than Dems pretending to be so deeply concerned about Musk's involvement with Saudis when it's the US Government that is single-handedly responsible for propping up the Saudi regime with arms and surveillance tech
• Americans are being conditioned -- by "journalists" of all people -- to believe it's immoral or mentally ill not to immediately and uncritically accept whatever institutions of authorities claim.
Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald weighs in on the Paul Pelosi attack: "Skepticism itself can never be wrong ... Even if evidence does emerge later on to prove it, the skepticism itself was not just valid, but necessary."
• To this very day, you can read articles in liberal corporate outlets branding as "conspiracy theorists" anyone asking about Nuland's comments - same for those who questioned claims about COVID vaccine efficacy and mask mandates, or *any* claim that the US Security State issues.
• The US corporate press is trying to train Americans to believe the first and most solemn duty of citizenship is instantly accept whatever institutions of authority tell you to believe. No wanting to see evidence, no noting contradictions: just happily recite what you're told.
• Rather than obey France's censorship order, Rumble turned its services off for France and will sue. But France should have no right to impose its censorship laws on the world.
• This is why I'm so proud to be working more with Rumble and why I believe in their free speech commitment. The easy thing to do would be to obey French politicians and remove anyone foreign governments demand. Rumble would rather lose France then submit to them.
People who believe capitalism is the best system will fight to the death for it. The death of other people. What other rationale was there in the Vietnam war, for instance? The US cited the domino theory: if Vietnam goes communist, it will cause all the countries in the global east and south to follow suit down the communist path. Communist countries everywhere - no matter what distance away - were a danger to the capitalist system. Indonesia was attacked in a different way in 1965 - the year of living dangerously - when the CIA lists of undesirables, people of a communitarian lifestyle, were murdered by co-opted Indonesians, and other CIA controlled thugs. Capitalism isn't its own good argument, or shining example. It takes muscle of one kind or another to enforce it.
There is a DIRECT connection between Russia-gate hoax concocted by St. Obama, Biden and Hillary and provoking capitalist Russia’s “Putin's war” by relentless NATO expansion.
The SAME lying team representing the US bipartisan War party.
Democracy and freedoms have left US – censorship is now nearly TOTAL; far worse than in Soviet Union 50 years ago.
I agree with the sentiment, but it is the philosophy of statism that has failed—not capitalism.
The state—through regulatory capture—has ensured the failure of capitalism. The state apparatus prefers one solution for many problems. That is the essence of statism.
Entrepreneurialism and free-market capitalism—a sovereign individual who is free to compete in the marketplace, creating goods and services to capture market share and capital—motivates individuals to create many solutions for many problems.
I don't want to assume anything, but intentionally or not, you are competing against other Substack newsletters.
Through the relatively free-market here on Substack, are you not creating a service that is attempting to capture market share/subscribers—paying subscribers or otherwise?
Its not even that the government "ensures the failur of capitalism", but that when the government controls the means of production of any industry, that is Socialism. The government nearly the sole of the "millitary industrial conplex".
That is a monstrosity of GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED PRODUCTION - the basic founding principle of SOCIALISM.
What we have in our nation are sectors of the economy that controlled by means of SOCIALISM.
You can argue they are privately owned, by if you don't conteol what you make - you are not privately owned.
That's why NAZI-ism was executed largely in this manner, as they did not have time with the onset of their war, to take ownership of most of the economy - instead they took control. Indeed the Nazi party, The National SOCIALIST Workers Party of Germany, if far more in the line economically with the problematic parts of our economy:
Pharmaceuticals, War, Etc.
And they are sectors of our economy that are socialized, with no little to no private options remaining:
Welfare, SSDI, etc - all have supplanted any private unemployment or disability insurance. And without the competition of a free market, these socialized segments of our economy have become HORRIBLY CORRUPT; just like anything that is SOCIALIZED becomes.
THIS IS WHAT SOCIALIZING A SEGMENT OF THE ECONOMY DOES:
I know a drug addict on disability for 10 years now, that loves in a $200 a month 2 bedroom apartment by himself that would cost in excess of $1600 on the private market. And he pays for it with his disability check that exceeds $1000 a month. He also gets food stamps on top of that. The rest gets spent on DRUGS. On which our GOVERNMENT has ruled: we CANNOT DRUG-TEST WELFARE RECIPIENTS.
Private unemployment and disabity insurance would never allow this excess or corruption, they care about how the money is spent - unlike socialized government programs.
We need MORE CAPITALISM, and the government should do its one job there: PREVENT TRUSTS/CARTELS/MONOPOLIES from acting in anticompetitive manners.
You too ignore the source of State capture: corporate power, which is derived from and based on capitalism.
Libertarians, utopian economists, and Republicans have done a good job in shifting the focus on inquiry (and blame) from corporations and capitalism to government. You do the same.
Nah ah don't, Bill.
Let me help you a little here:
A corporation is a legal entity that only exists in the context of the state/government.
Corporations cannot / do not exist outside "The Matrix" that is the state.
Ah, let me explain that (again).
When the bank teller hands over the cash to the bank robber with a gun in his face, we don't blame the robbery on the bank teller.
In this case you confuse the bank teller (government) with the bank robbers (capitalists).
You ignore the source of State capture: corporate power, which is derived from and based on capitalism.
Liberations and Republicans have done a good job in shifting the focus on inquiry (and blame) from corporations and capitalism to government. You do the same.
PS
It is the state that has a monopoly on the use of force and coercion. The state has the power to lock you up, or lock you down.
Corporations are merely the lapdogs of the state.
Sure, lots of back scratching going on between the entities—but if the last 2 plus years hasn't shown that it is the state that enslaves, I cannot convince you otherwise.
Why do you think the government rarely or never uses their powers of force and coercion on the capitalists? Government is owned by the capitalists.
Just think, will you.
I really have to wrap my head around communism. It is tough to do. And I think I kind of agree with you to a point.
Let's say this, a doctor is an excellent doctor is tired one evening. There are no other doctors around and a Baker comes to the doctor in the evening. The Baker understands that the doctor is the best. But the doctor says I am tired, see me tomorrow. The baker sees that the doctor is tired but cant come back tomorrow. So he tries to sweeten the pot with an apple pie. The doctor accepts the pie and ignores his own feelings and sees the baker.
Soon everyone is doing little extras to get through shortages or to achieve excellent results. Soon the doctor is rich.
Now this is the purest form of capitalism. Probably pure communism.
Entrepreneurs finding each other and trading. Free will. No pollution. No big trucks or boats. Just doing our thing as value for work is paid.
Communism as is defined by Marx is a total sham.
Oh and by creating a local environment where people trade, work and talk the love will happen. Then there will be no need for abortion or any of the other crap lefties sell. We can teach biodiversity.
Because everything in life will have unmanipulated value.
Go to most small towns in the undeveloped world. This is how it is done. They seem to get along quite well without us.
"Now this is the purest form of capitalism. Probably pure communism."
Which shows that you know neither capitalism nor communism. They can't, logically, occupy the same space.
Please go study both.
If you're interested in understanding what socialism is please read theory by Karl Marx, Engles, Lenin, or Mao. Or peruse the Youtube channel Second Thought for an introduction to socialism:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fpKsygbNLT4
I am simply not interested. There is no such thing as equal. Someone will run faster, doctor better, cook better, work harder and so on. So this supposed better form of government will fail. However a republic with a great constitution that protects the individual, the environment and the whole if society will work. Checks and balances to protect the individual from those who will harm any of the three parts are needed.
Then why did you say "I really have to wrap my head around communism"? You just explained the United States and other capitalist countries and they don't work. "Rights of the individual" only protects a select few people own capital. Wage slavery does not protect the individual. At least inform yourself beyond a surface propagandistic interpretation of socialism.
In their current form they aren't working. I can agree with that. Because they are corrupt. However communism in its current form has never really worked at all. Ever. It is unrealistic in a human sense.
"Communism has never worked" If the CIA/US hadn't meddled by overthrowing those countries governments we might have found out if that was true. I implore you to find non US sources about communism. Even a basic understanding of socialist principles would be helpful.
"It is unrealistic in the human sense" Social darwinism is unrealistic in the human sense. Communities, communal living, social cooperation is how our species has survived for millennia.
We're heavily propagandized too by people who don not have our best interests in mind. If you question the US and it's motives at all I would implore you to question what you know about socialism in general.
To me, what I have seen about communism, the state as in a country runs government for a few years, kills a few million people, then points a gun at you for the rest of your life. Thus creating fear, breeding hate, stifling creativity, creating massive poverty etc etc etc.
The west is experiencing this communist/socialist takeover right now. Clot shots, corporate takeover of government, ever increasing crime, ever more violent, the degradation of moral values, the dumbing down of our children and on it goes.
The people both left and right are tired of government. And now governments are crushing freedoms daily.
I despise industry. I know where pollution is created.
I despise large centralization of industry and government. That creates lopsided, psychopathic systems that puts industry and government over humanity. It creates us vs them.
We aren't going to stop competing. Destroying the testosterone of young men is only going to manifest other problems. People are naturally innovative, naturally curious. People fall into place rather than being shoved into line.
So a republic style small government that is based on protecting the freedom of the individual and the environment is where I see a successful world.
To create this, the world has to stop supporting psychopaths.
Communism and corporatism are psychopathic.
We need a system that better detects psychopathic behaviour .
The Menonites seem to have found that system. Overall not a bad way to live. And of course you can punch a hundred holes in my thoughts.
That is easy.
"Babbling about Stalin and Mao" is deeply unfortunate phrase.
This one once again tries desperately to conflate capitalism with geopolitical power games that exist outside of any economic system.
Any-ism are all formed and led by elite power mad humans that use their unique abilities to position themselves to use humanity for their own gain. This has been true of theocracies, communes, cults, nation states, tribes and every other form of collective government.
Capitalism is not the problem, it is just your favorite whipping boy.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ... wish I had a solution. But as I see it, the power to tax is the power to destroy. End confiscation, reestablish voluntary taxation, and governments will be inherently smaller, and less capable of mass destruction.
Capitalism has not failed...it is the idiots that have been trying to turn it into a socialist free-for-all that have caused problems. If you can come up with a better system, please tell us. Communism? Socialism? Leftism? Fascism? All major failures. All causing more death and destruction than capitalism ever will.