I would say that any political or economic system, capitalism, socialism, whatever. can be made to work tolerably well, if and to the extent that it is run by non-sociopaths.
The problem is that power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats. The very people who will do anything to get power are precisely the people who should not have it.
This is why, after some 5,000 years of recorded history, there are no clear answers as to "what works?". just experiments that flourish for a time and then fail as the sociopaths take over and corrupt everything.
I've got a theory I call "Institutional Depravity". Institutions develop their own cultures, and a depraved institution is culturally oppressive, which can cover both the institutional members, but more generally those that are outside the institution, but subject to its cultural imperatives. A person joining the institution, otherwise morally and mentally healthy, will progressively adopt the institution's culture or will be expelled from the institution. One does not need to be a psychopath to internalize a depraved culture.
This is basically a gloss on Bourdieu's Field Theory.
I have long thought the same thing. This is how you can take a person who is otherwise exemplary in his personal life, and get that same person to perform monstrous things.
Alfred Nu Steele was the chairman of Pepsico. He said, "the secret is to take a good man and turn him into a son of a bitch. Someone who starts out as a son of a bitch will crack under the pressure."
Alfred married movie star Joan Crawford, the couple residing in Texas.
By the way, the spell checker knew that Alfred Nu Steel was wrong. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of this AI's training.
I almost always agree with your comments, but I don’t share your fatalistic assertions. We all are capable of indulging our ugliest impulses, but most of us are not choosing to. That is primarily because we have choices.
Everyone who exploits and does wrong by their neighbors is not a sociopath. We have been conditioned to see the exploitative and the predatory as the keys to success, as we define it. Our system rewards rule-abuse. Many conservatives sincerely call for law and order, and many who do are blind to the systemic imbalances that yield crime and chaos. Many liberals rhetorically defend the victims of a fixed, unjust system, but they know how to avoid becoming victims, and I don’t think most conservatives and liberals are sociopaths.
It may sound trite, but when people are shown that their vigilance is required, they often respond. Look at the people of Cuba. They built a world-class healthcare system, against great opposition. You might argue that Cuba is a dictatorship or such, but they chose to stand and fight instead of kneeling and prospering.
If I may invoke trite one more time, I do believe that if Americans were taught and conditioned, not to fear and hate communism, but to cherish and value and fight for democracy, we would consign all sociopaths to a compassionate care system.
The comment elsewhere, describing how ordinary people, decent people, can be made to behave like sociopaths is most instructive.
As pointed out, Rule By Sociopath is severely limited in its effectiveness. Where everything is ever always only a zero-sum, no-holds-barred, winner-takes-all game, anything other than short-term cooperation for limited objectives is difficult at best.
As a boomer, we were taught to fear and hate Communism and to cherish our REPUBLIC and we were the last generation to send innocent boys to an unwarranted, needless war, Viet Nam, which was vehemently and mostly successfully protested against. That woke up many of us in our generation. We paid dearly for our awakening. The PTB backlashed to the extreme of what we have today. At that time SOCIOPATHS and other mentally disturbed people WERE treated and institutionalized.
ANY fixed system will collapse when allowed to operate in it's extreme, when the rules are not obeyed as we can clearly see. When godlessness and greed are allowed to run amok. As when Jesus overturned the tables. We do need a reset, however, not the one the Luciferians are planning. A stable society will not work once everyone is out only for himself. Stop blaming capitalism, that's a cop out.
So you're a bunch of larpy whiners trained to enslave yourselves to an inherited ruling class and die for them? Sounds like a mental illness not to be proud of.
It was capitalists who conspired to remove FDR while he was still in office, and it was capitalists who paid to get Truman on the ticket, and it was an array of of capitalists and sociopaths who lobbied for the U.S. to get involved in Vietnam, two of the latter being Winston Churchill and Allen Dulles.
Capitalism, as practiced here, finds sociopaths better than trained scent-hounds locate drug stashes, and I am not at all surprised that people believe that the problem is either capitalism or sociopaths, which is easier than coming to terms with a history written in other people’s blood, and the unchecked influence of zealots and extremists.
I think the public response to Vietnam was initiated by thoughtful idealists, but they were only joined by members of the establishment when it became clear that the body bags, the draft, the raw footage of soldiers without a clue as to why they were there, were all images that seeped into the public consciousness, with a still professional media delivering the message.
If the JFK assassination marked the beginning of American deployment in Vietnam, the 1968 Democrat Convention marked the beginning of the end. But it took another six years and close to 3 million dead Vietnamese before the bad guys left.
If you believe that Vietnam was evidence of our nation going off the rails, I think you aren’t looking closely enough at the country’s earliest days. The will to power was on full display in the ambitions of the fervent Christians who felt entitled to steal and kill and judge harshly any who did likewise without their assent. Your religious faith may help you make sense of your world, but Christians in America have consistently remained silent or loudly defended the many atrocities of war.
Here’s a link to a comprehensive account of American history from before its founding to today.
"The praise that has been lavished on the New Deal had always rested,
essentially, on a single specious argument whatever its faults and limitations, it was better than nothing at all; that driving small farmers into urban slums was better than no farm legislation; that a regressive Social Security tax was better than no Social Security Act; that Roosevelt’s “activism” was better than Coolidge’s “laissez-faire.” But these were never the alternatives that Roosevelt faced; they were the alternatives the two party oligarchies offered the citizenry, but that is another matter. Roosevelt was neither bestowing reform on a reluctant conservative people nor dragging it from a balky conservative Congress. He had done the very opposite. He had held back genuine reform from a clamorous democratic people who in 1936 had responded with overwhelming favor to his republican campaign talk. He had suppressed an unruly, reform Congress by saddling it with Bourbon overlords. Every piece of New Deal legislation bears the imprint of that purpose; every political move Roosevelt made was subservient to that purpose, was deliberately calculated to achieve it." Walter Karp, _Indispensable Enemies_
Do you have a factual historical response to that?
Hmmmm. So the Iraq war was not a needless war? As far Jesus overturning the tables, if I remember correctly that story is only told in one of the four gospels. And, hopefully you know this, no one knows who wrote the gospels or exactly when they were written. However, almost all scholars agree that all four gospels were written long after Jesus was supposed to have been crucified with enough elapse in time that none of the gospel writers lived contemporaneously with Jesus.
It's impossible and they know it. The cries from some to "wake up" and "we can do it" is one of the examples of eternal futility. Somewhat encouraged by the systems to illustrate "freedoms".
The other problem is that Rule By Sociopath has its own severe and inherent limitations.
Alexander Tytler I think had some words on the subject:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
That said, it's not as if absolute monarchs were frugal stewards of the public purse, never enriching themselves with palaces, gems or statuary or using state monies for their own self-aggrandizement.
Your argument that monarchy didnt really work either goes right back to the idea that the system is irrelevant, it is the corruption of whichever system is current that is the problem caused by sociopaths.
In the US what goes up EVERY GODDAMN YEAR is military spending--because those who actually get to vote, billionaires and corporations, send their lobbyists in to demand it. How could ordinary voters vote themselves fatter shares of the public purse? All we ever get to vote on is whether Tweedledee or Tweedledum will "represent us". Actually they represent whichever special interests paid the tab as was PROVEN with the Page and Gilens study. No need to worry about how democracy would turn out. It's never been tried on a large scale, if you go with the true definition from the root words: THE PEOPLE RULE. The bastardized definition, "regular elections", is quite common of course.
Shows that social spending as a percentage of GDP has only ever increased, there is a minor flattening during reagan that immediately dissapeared and returned to a steady climb. It is typical rhetoric that a flattening of increased spending equals decreased spending.
Thank God the usA is a Constitutional Republic that incorporates democratic principles. Anyone ever look up republic vrs democracy as forms of government?
Lord Woodhouselee is, after all, a peer, a custodian of the open-air prison that English society always was, selected by its wardens. He has private and systemic reasons to lie about other possibilities.
PMC whiners experience social death if capitalism doesn't continue to exist, so their whining should be permanently and continuously dismissed as psychotic babbling.
I think you are going too far. There are plenty of examples in history of the people waking up. The transition is always sudden, sometimes literally overnight.
Don't know about any such occurrence that didn't involve direct suffering of some meaningful sort by the critical mass. Currently they keep the population sufficiently mellow for that not to happen.
More usually such abrupt changes are triggered by a sharp drop in living standards that appears to be the fault of the government. Hunger is particularly motivating. A big military defeat helps.
Such circumstances create a sudden vacuum in which leadership is desperately needed. The people turn to those who have been planning in solitude for decades and have impeccable credentials as committed dissidents. Thus arose Vaclav Havel, John Adams, Xanana Gusmao, Vladimir Lenin, and Nelson Mandela. John Adams commented on his discouraging lack of progress over many years followed by everything flipping over in the course of a week.
I do know of one. Eric Kandel grew up in Austria. When he was a boy the German Nazis came in and took over. In one day Austria transitioned from defiant resistance to full embrace of Nazism. Eric went to sleep a fellow citizen only to awaken the next morning a despised Jew. This transformation so fascinated him he devoted his energies to the study of the brain, culminating in the Nobel Prize.
Eric also reports it was Austrian tradition for the maid to initiate boys into the mysteries of sex.
The problem is also, that essentially the system is psychopathic and can only operate with psychopaths at the helm and under their direction: could you, for one instance, force people in arrears in rent payment out of their houses at gunpoint? No, I don't think so. But some "enforcers" do this, and seem to enjoy it too. And it's all perfectly lawful.
I mean, I've gotten into fights over territory and queens, but it's not as if I didn't want other tomcats to exist. Just I'd prefer they did it somewhere else.
Of course this presents us with the question of why people keep following sociopaths. Individuals and societies do learn something sometimes.
However, since I'm at the top here, I wanted to add something which I think might be relevant: capitalism is not a scam for the most part because what it does, how it functions, is obvious and overt: rich people make use of their wealth, their power, their superior information and organization, to take advantage of poor people and extract goods, services, value, money from them. Almost everyone seems to know this on some level. They make jokes like "The Golden Rule: he who has the gold, rules." And then they go back to it. Therefore, it must be what they like.
Why, it's almost as if the rich got to be rich because they were better at manipulation and organization, because they had superior information and access to resources and they didn't hesitate to use these to their advantage!
Of course, under "socialism" or "communism" or whatever, you'd see the same humans doing the same thing, even if "winning" might be toted up using a different set of chits to keep score with. Note how seamlessly the Soviet nomenklatura transitioned to being capitalist and nationalist oligarchs and politicians, how Bush-era neocons effortlessly morphed into liberals who really really wanted to expand their empire because of a deep and abiding concern for gay rights or whatever.
I must admit to being just a little confused by your remarks here Starry. You say:
"...capitalism is not a scam for the most part because ..."
then you follow-up on this observation with:
".... rich people make use of their wealth, their power, their superior information and organization, to take advantage of poor people and extract goods, services, value, money from them. ...."
Personally, I think that your latter remark is much closer to the truth than your former comment.
Society will be much better off when more people realize the manner in which they are being 'taken for a ride' by the assortment of robber barons, oligarchs and plutocrats who really 'call the shots' in this system. The next obvious step will be to take decisive action in order to revolutionize the way we organize the economy and our society.
I don't see the contradiction between my saying that capitalism is not a scam because people recognize its nature, and a description of that nature. There was a time, now long gone, when there was a form of utopian capitalism (oddly mirrored in the Soviet Union) when everything was supposed to get better and better. I don't think many people take that seriously any more, given what they see around them. The problem with taking decisive action is that no one know what action to take, except for true believers, whom no one believes in any more.
I lived for a number of years in a retirement community northern Michigan. Some residents had been in the auto industry in Detroit. One day I had a talk with the mayor. He'd worked in one of the big three. I think it was Chrysler. One day he in turn met the son of a former CEO of that company. My friend asked the son why he seemed satisfied with his job. The son said, "If you're on top you're surrounded by people who will do ANYTHING to take your place."
The mayor also told me some guys had taken over the volunteer fire department, paid themselves salaries high enough to bankrupt the institution, then hid one of the fire engines, presumably so that they could sell it and keep the money for themselves. They knew what they were doing. It was all legal.
I am not sure just how capitalism can 'be made to work tolerably well' Feral without strong restrictions and regulations that are rigorously enforced by the government. This is anathema to virtually all those who support this rapacious system. Regulations and rules only 'cramp their style to make ever greater profits. Caitlin is 'right on the money' with her assessment of this cruel system.
You're talking about a sort of myth. I worked for a commodities exchange for several years in their Compliance Department. There are fat books of rules; if you don't obey them, your marbles are taken away. The reason they have the rules is not just to have rules for the fun of having rules; in order for the market to work, it must be trusted, and in order for the market to be trusted, certain kinds of hanky-panky must be definitively outlawed. With extreme prejudice. Individuals (brokers, investors), companies (brokerage houses, investment houses, banks, and so on), and governments are involved because all of them want the commodities markets to work _really badly_ because that is the only way they can make lots of money trading stuff around. It used to crack me up when I heard people talking about the "free market"; but then I got tired of the joke.
Good on you Starry Gordon, nothing like a bit of insider knowledge!
We have to educate our children ,free of the public system of indoctrination of impressionable young minds, the value of enterprise, good hard work , service to one's brothers and sisters which in turn bring there own rewards which are not just quantified by dollars. Then there will be no need of "isms" of any kind. They are by products of indoctrination.
RobertR---I didn't notice what the replacement for capitalism is. If you, Caitlin or anyone knows of a better system, let us hear of it. No system run by dishonest greedy selfish humans can long work for all the people.
One thing I have learned during my 74 years is that capitalism works great till greed & the lust for power & control are thrown into the spokes.
Let me deal with the points that you raise in your post in a reasonably succinct manner.
About 40 or so years ago the working class traitors Bob Hawke and Paul Keating followed a trend developed overseas by the likes of politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and Libertarian extremists such as Ayn Rand and imposed a neo-liberal economy on us here in Australia, which upon reflection, makes the likes of Robert Menzies, Henry Bolte and Robert Askin, look like socialists.
I quite agree with your remark that:
"No system run by dishonest greedy selfish humans can long work for all the people."
yet, that is what we clearly have had ever since that time.
What we need is a democratic socialist economic model whereby health, education, gas, water, electricity and all essential services are run by the government (that is, the elected representatives of the people), not for profit but for the benefit of society. Checking mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that corruption is never allowed to take hold.
Sam, with the greatest of respect, you go on to make the incredibly naive comment that:
"..... capitalism works great till greed & the lust for power & control are thrown into the spokes."
I was frankly gobsmacked when I read that. It causes me to think that you haven't been paying attention to how things work over the last 74 years. Let me enlighten you on something. Capitalism is the catalyst that turbo-charges greed, selfishness, lust for power and exploitation. I woke up to that in my teens when the prospect of being conscripted into the army for the purpose of killing Vietnamese in their own country because they had the audacity to want to run their own affairs. Didn't you also notice that something did not seem right back then too?
Every political system could be made better or worse, capitalism could be made a lot better than what we have now, but it has inherent flaws that will always lead to excessive distribution of wealth inequities.
Vayu--Capitalism's biggest, hugest most gigantic 'inherent flaw' is selfish greedy immoral people.
One US Founder said the US republic was made only for a moral people. Looks like he was right. It is sad. SOOOOO many 'leaders' are corrupt. That is why capitalism doesn't work as well as it can or should.
As usual, it's a people problem...
If more people could understand that honesty is INDEED the best policy, much needless suffering could be avoided. What you sow is what you WILL reap & for sure what goes around comes around! Those aspects of natural law are inescapable!!!
Useless Calvinists have been whining the exact same story for 350 years to hook themselves a slice of the pie and it's exactly as false now as it is today. Only people whose existence depends on slaves clamor for "leaders".
If our systems were transparent and decentralized - like we always write about - then free market capitalism is the best system. However when systems are corrupted like ours are currently, then all systems are bad. Socialism isn't the best for innovation, and we need innovation now more than ever. Wall Street could be eliminated, and the free market would be even freer. But "capitalism" is too broad of a net you are casting.
Combating power requires decentralizing power relations. Communism vis a vis Russia was such a failure because of the power of the administration. Capitalism’s failure is that the structure produces the most extreme forms of inequality, and the power to leverage democracy, markets etc is rewarded. The accumulation model of capitalism produces psychopathic behaivour. Once every possible material desire is filled , where does one go - self aggrandizement thru power structures. As benjamin says it bears all the hallmarks of a cult
This has been my belief for years that the economic system is almost irrelevant, sociopaths and psychopaths, (i.e. politicians) will abuse the populace regardless of the system. China is a hybrid communist/capitalist system that is the most abusive of the largest population on the planet.
Most abusive? In a generation they've gone from the poorest people in the world to middle class, and they rate democracy, and their country AS a democracy, higher than citizens of the US do.
Mary Wild---Since when did CCP stand for anything but the Chinese Communist Party? How about you tell us how the nation of China MADE all that progress. They steal our tech, pay off our business leaders & open their markets to them on condition that any company going into China tell the CCP ALL their ways & means of doing things.
They bribe & lobby our 'leaders' into betraying the US.
Did you forget China's govt uses slave labor, much of it children? Their economy started out as fully communist. It didn't work so they added some state controlled democratic principles.
What do you think of the Chinese Social Credit Score? No worries. It's just dictatorial population control on steroids.
SamFox
If we cut trade with China, their economy would die .
I think your "facts" about China are nearly all fictitious, except that they started fully communist and no longer are, and the Social Credit Score is nasty.
Lately, before I read a post that is a critique of capitalism, I remind myself that it is going to conflate CAPITALISM and CAPITALIST. That is, I assume it is going to predicate, "corrupt," "evil," "depraved" or some other uniquely human trait to capitalism which is a non-human concept.
These traits require a human mind, intention, decisions and so forth. They are mental states and cannot exist abstractly. That is, CAPITALISM is not corrupt, CAPITALISTS are.
This author is obviously very deep into this business, knowledgeable and actually gives a damn about things, so she might not be very concerned about this part.
What I'm wondering is, do you know why this mistake so common?
kudjoe--Those don't come FROM capitalism. They come from PEOPLE! As I said I say again--NO economy will last if not run honestly by honest people. Therein lies the rub!
Sorry but I have a different opinion. I see no benefit to labeling others as sociopaths. It is common that once a label is attached to something, using that label suffices to discuss it and understanding about variation within that label is lost. We discuss means without understanding variance, statistically speaking.
All economic systems have strengths and weaknesses. The problems come up when any system operates within the extremes of its ideology. Capitalism is at an extreme that can only be brought back to a less extreme position through reasoned regulation.
When all, and I do mean all, branches of government have been bought and paid for by the very wealthy, reasonable regulation is a pipe dream. Thus, the only solution would require an educated electorate that understands the issues. However, I do not think anyone would disagree that we do not have and never had that type of electorate. We vote wedge issues and false (dishonest) facts or “alternative” facts.
Expanding electorate both via bringing in everybody and their mother, and making it "more convenient" via mail/online/etc means, deliberately waters down the engaged slice of voters. There's a reason in ancient times only certain citizens could vote - those with the skin in the game and hence deeply into the issues. Not at the level of voting pamphlets.
The voting process is rigged and a scam, purposely so.
Hmmmm. russian_bot. In this time you may be trying to be clever but may be too clever for effective trust. So, if one goes back to ancient Athens, it was not a true democracy. Yet, even with who could vote restricted, their government had many issues. Remember their senate condemned Socrates to either exile or death for corrupting the youth of Athens to think for themselves. Big sin to those in power.
The problem with an oligarchy—which it seems you are close to suggesting—is who determines who can vote? Who qualifies? I can look across our current senate where most senators are rich former lawyers. Many are educated at ivy-league schools. Can you truly suggest that wise and prudent governance comes from this group? It is much worse in the house and any non-biased person recognizes the Supreme Court is totally corrupt.
You mention mothers. I hope you were only using an idiom and not some chauvinistic stereotype about women. So, enough of the platitudes, who do you think should run the government?
Remember Plato suggested a ruler who was wise, educated and just. Yeah, good luck finding this person. As Socrates concluded, one is wise only 2when they realize the “know” nothing.
First off - "true democracy" is an ideal in the same sense "free market capitalism" or "communism" are ideals. If they were possible they would work and we wouldn't have these discussions.
So we're left to look for something that might work "better". Here again it cannot be something concrete as that would approach an ideal. Instead, it's something that works in certain circumstance and not another, always fluid. But what we should necessarily arrive at is that whoever votes for something must be thoroughly knowledgable and qualified to do so. To think that could be majority of the voting public is naive. A "mother" I referred to is someone who's not qualified and should somehow be excluded as they're simply a manipulated slice that skews the results reliably the way the manipulators want.
Unfortunately, it is the very upper-middle class that you would enfranchise which seeks out the soap operas and passion propaganda like Fox News, OAN, WSJ, MSDNC, daily Kos, Common Dreams, and other mythology sites.
In any case some groups are dis/enfranchised. No situation can ever be even close to ideal since that "true democracy" scam can never be achieved.
At least in that case the choices would be made consciously and purposely as opposed to current way of following instructions of the voting pamphlets, in the best case. In the worst case just surrendering signed mailing ballots to the collectors to be filled out later, the promise sealed by some $50.
I remember a great piece of literature with a great musical based upon the literature.
To dream, the impossible dream.
To beat, the unbeatable foe.
I still get emotional hearing that song.
I certainty have a lot of idealism in me which is problematic as the ranks of cynics is filled with unrequited idealists. Nevertheless, even though I have a strong Quixotic side to me, I’m able to recognize that proclivity and not make irrational pronouncements based upon my idealism with a salty tear in my eye.
I tried to make it clear that "mothers" are not to be taken literally. Many mothers deserve to be at the front lines while their kids with their game consoles and chips should stay as far as possible from the voting booths.
China and the US have the world's largest corporations. In China the corporations are under government control to serve the state's priorities. In the US it is the opposite-- government is the lackey of the corporations serving its capitalist greed up to and including global warfare.
China's control over its corporations has been a key element in its "economic miracle" Another major factor is that it set up its own strategies for economic recovery rejecting those of the West, at the same time having a clear understanding of the savagery of the Western capitalist system.
Capitalism is surely a scam and utterly socially destructive when it only serves the gluttony of a small self -serving fascist elite.
Communist is not the issue, China is a capitalist authoritarian state. The US feels threatened because Chinese capitalism is more effective, serving its peoples, where as America is being cannibalized by its corporations with the complicity of it governing class. The US has become a slave state to corporations and their wars.
Michael Hudson is a very good reference on these issues. The following video is well worth watching and understanding:
How does the Communist Chinese Social Credit Score fit in there? It forces the people to do as they are told or they will be sanctioned. The Chinese citizen MUST be obedient to the state or they will be limited on how much food they are allowed to buy, if their DIGITAL money isn't frozen. How far they can travel is already controlled, IF they can travel...what kind of capitalism is practiced in China via child labor? Imprisoned Uyghurs in China are treated like animals. Children are often used as slave labor.
There are fools here, in the USA, who want that social credit score population control mechanism here. Hey, maybe China would be more to your liking !
If capitalism is soooo bad, when will you be leaving for Cuba or Venezuela?
No doubt capitalism can have drawbacks. But most of them are from cheaters, liars,thieves, connivers & cronies out side the system burrowing their way in. NO system will work when run by the selfish & dishonest. Not even a Constituti9onal Republic. Like the one WE are SUPPOSED to be living under.
As in the USSR. But what about Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela? They have all managed to do fairly well by their people despite relentless attack from the US and its lackeys.
I follow a YTer who was just in Cuba among the local people. Idk why ppl here saying how great the ppl are being treated there? THEY'RE NOT! They can barely afford to eat. They're lucky to make $20 a month when a hamburger costs $12. The govt, as most know, is severely oppressive. It's a dire situation that those ppl do not deserve.
Mary Wild---Are you kidding? You need to talk to people who fled those countries. All of them have rich rulers, poor populations, little industry & few jobs. In Venezuela in 2017 the people had to eat the zoo animals.
Look up Cuban Refugees Speak. Add other countries to the term.
These people did NOT run from wealthy prosperous countries because they were tired of a high standard of living.
They came HERE! WHY????
Are you one of Soro's paid dsrupters? I ask because your statement is so far out in left field as to be deep into ludicrous land.
I have watched refugees from those places tell a VERY DIFFERENT story that what you posted. Thanks.
Two points. Those countries are poor because of colonialism in the past, followed by a relentless campaign of harrassment and sanctions by the US government following successful revolution. Cuba has higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the US despite the sanctions. I don't meet refugees from those countries (I live in West Virginia, which has the lowest hispanic population in the country) but I'd point out that they are self-selected--these are the people who chose to leave, and to come to the aggressor country.
I think it is not only the corporations China 'controls' (or tries to) but mainly how their banks work (at least some of them), Ellen Brown is talking about this quite a lot and I think (as the bank in SDakota) it is a much better way, as interest goes to the state and NOT the greedy bankers with their greedy shareholders ...
State-owned banks are prone toward corruption. The USA tried that twice, long ago.
The idea is that private banks are subject to market discipline. In the USA this becomes increasingly a joke and a well known one. The result is the dystopic worst-of-both-world's system in which the oligarchs reap the profits while the people suffer the losses, with Joe Biden as poster boy.
I am sorry but if you really understand modern China, you would also understand the Capitalist trade they engage in to the tune of billions of western dollars every day the markets are open. They are no island of Communist utopia. Why do you think they want Taiwan?
You mean like multiple times in the last decade. Trillions to bankers to avoid the most recent collapse. 1929,1987,2002,2008,2019, always money for Capitalists.
But that money is pure fiat, Monopoly money, which is why de-dollarization is happening much faster than most anticipated. The problem now is CBDC... Also backed by nothing, but gives the criminals who run this scam the ability to steal your money more easily and shut you out of your funding if you resist.
No one should be fooled by crypto or digital currency. If the currency isn’t moored to a tangible asset, it is illegitimate.
I feel this system has to collapse on its own... We will all need to take care of each other and ourselves. My fear is more of a Walking Dead situation, however, as humanity will not have been de-programmed of the poison in their hearts and minds, and we will rip one another to shreds to be on top of yet another Bullshit Mountain!
The need for "things" is a sign of a weak mind. All money is the mystified right of command; people who are such slaves to shiny metal that they will debase themselves for it are arguably even less sane for actually pricing themselves.
Yes, 1929 the banking system was on life support and FDR nationalized the system in March 33 just after taking office. Banking should never have been return to private equity, along with our oil, utilities, healthcare, education.
They get the money because they can be trusted to use it to preserve the order of society. Pesky working-class people get the money and they want to own the means of production, which is fine from a material production standpoint. But the non-division of labor destroys a culture's organs of social reproduction, which means that the ownership class, who have sacrificed their living embodied experience to immortalize themselves in history, finally dies totally.
Well said, Philip, in response to an excellent post. And that's why I continue to develop plans for small scale sovereignty, as a third paradigm to both. Any centralized system that gives some people power over others will lead to corruption because it starts that way already.
I agree, and where I particularly run afoul of just about everyone in discussions about imagining and developing holistic and complementary/cooperative systems is that people can't imagine them because they have never been attempted in modern society.
As an example, a commune operating within a nation that is Capitalist in nature has no chance because its overarching system is still competitive and exploitative. It necessarily becomes corrupted in order to survive in a corrupt system.
What I think we need to look at is at the root of Consciousness itself in which every particle moves in directions that not only benefit itself but also all of Consciousness at the same time.
If we look at nature, and resist the urge to humanize its behavior, we can clearly see this system of cooperation in practice.
Our brains, and the "thinking" animal we are could be used to our great benefit if we could simply act NOT in lack. Lack is at the root of all competitive commerce.
Our amazing brains and ability to reason could easily utilize the great limitless bounty that the Earth offers us, and our technology could allow us to solve lack worldwide were we to just move in that direction.
Instead we act like children fighting over toys, and never realize the gifts we have in our physical reality.
This WILL come to pass. It's up to us WHEN that is going to occur.
We will discover how to Consciously Create, to instantly manifest anything. I hope that we don't have to wait for that to happen in order to begin moving in different directions of cooperation and sustainability of our ecosystem.
You and I are in complete agreement on that, Philip. We have an economy based on exploitation that we put up with because of the limitations we put on Consciousness. I don't know if you're consciously quoting from A Course in Miracles when you say, "This WILL come to pass. It's up to us WHEN that is going to occur." It's certainly consistent, especially with my reading from this morning 'My Self is ruler of the universe.' The all-inclusive Self, of course.
My comment arises from knowing that as we have now entered the third decade of the objective portion of the Shift in Consciousness, there is no stopping this train.
The Shift has occurred - this Master Source Event has already taken place.
WE are wearing the proverbial electric dog collar but don't realize that the electric fence has been turned off.
This is why every step we take - every movement is supported in Consciousness. All we have to do is move forward.
Beautifully put and great analogy. Having studied the Course for almost 20 yrs, there's no one path and yours is heading in the same direction. That certainty is a great thing to share. And thank you for 'liking' my post, Philip!
One thing I have learned is that we each have a different piece of this puzzle. We each bring our own uniqueness to the game. That's the best part is that not any one of us has to do it all.
Let us recognize each other on the way to our future and know we got this.
We're a work on progress. When we master ourselves to the necessary degree, we may be given the keys to the car, as it were. What the Law of One material calls "intelligent infinity", or the Shakti in another tradition.
As I said elsewhere, the electric dog fence has been turned off, and we are the dogs standing at the edge of the yard barking and don't even know all we have to do is step through it.
It's not a matter of us being given the keys to the car, we already have them, we just don't realize it yet.
So the work is not to become good enough, it's to become self-aware enough to realize that we ARE good enough.
>The capitalism cultist’s solution to caring for developmentally disabled children is that their families care for them at home for their entire lives. Society gets those families’ labor, for free. Free stuff! Sweet, huh? But the problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people’s free labor.
Like bribing elected officials to write laws that provide tax breaks, subsidies, patent and trademarks rights, right to work/anti-union laws, starvation minimum wages, and lax worker safety, public health and environmental oversight and standards laws?
Like hiring government officials in a revolving door system of corruption and regulatory capture?
Like paying think tanks and public relations firms to generate all kinds of corporate propaganda about the glories of capitalism and freedom?
How about buying endowed University faculty and polluting the science and academic literature with corporate money?
It's all laid out for you, in the Chamber of Commerce's own words, in the infamous "Powell Memo" (Attack on American Free Enterprise)
It is FAIRLY obvious that running your entire society on the sole basis of "Can someone make private money from it?", will not end well.
And it doesn't really matter WHAT you call it.
But it is VERY important to mentally distinguish between Feudalism, and Capitalism.
Remember, we weren't all living in some wonderful Socialist Paradise and then along comes "Capitalism" and ruins it.
That is the kind of nincompoopery one expects from tweenies, or media.
It was already-existing Feudalism that created the Haves/Have Not situation, that Capitalism inherited.
And then you get into the debate about what "Capitalism" MEANS.
Some think petite-bourgouse worker-ownership is Capitalist, others think it is "Socialism". Whichever it is, it is obviously a counterpoint to the FEUDAL system, of minority-ownership and control.
At the end of the day though, all definitional arguments aside, what is ACTUALLY meant by "The Market will solve it", is that IF SOMEONE with access to resources can MAKE A PROFIT, then it will be done.
If not, then it will not be done.
It is FAIRLY obvious that running your entire society on the sole basis of "Can someone make private money from it?", will not end well.
"It was already-existing Feudalism that created the Haves/Have Not situation, that Capitalism inherited."
Kindly consider the end of the USSR. It wasn't feudal. They tried to decentralize ownership. The public immediately centralized ownership anyways. It was human nature and not a holdover from feudalism.
Sorry Patrick, but I disagree. The first group the Bolsheviks turned upon after defeating the "White Russians", were the actual worker-owned soviets, many of whom if they refused the new Party control were 'sent to the Wall'.
The USSR, in terms of democratic ownership and control of their workplaces, was not much different to the Corporate structure in the USA. Which of course also use the powers of the State, and organised crime, to enforce minority ownership, and destroy and collective action or ownership.
It is NOT "human nature", to wish to be a wage-slave of exploiters. Anymore than people &qu
I would say that any political or economic system, capitalism, socialism, whatever. can be made to work tolerably well, if and to the extent that it is run by non-sociopaths.
The problem is that power is to sociopaths what catnip is to cats. The very people who will do anything to get power are precisely the people who should not have it.
This is why, after some 5,000 years of recorded history, there are no clear answers as to "what works?". just experiments that flourish for a time and then fail as the sociopaths take over and corrupt everything.
I've got a theory I call "Institutional Depravity". Institutions develop their own cultures, and a depraved institution is culturally oppressive, which can cover both the institutional members, but more generally those that are outside the institution, but subject to its cultural imperatives. A person joining the institution, otherwise morally and mentally healthy, will progressively adopt the institution's culture or will be expelled from the institution. One does not need to be a psychopath to internalize a depraved culture.
This is basically a gloss on Bourdieu's Field Theory.
I have long thought the same thing. This is how you can take a person who is otherwise exemplary in his personal life, and get that same person to perform monstrous things.
Alfred Nu Steele was the chairman of Pepsico. He said, "the secret is to take a good man and turn him into a son of a bitch. Someone who starts out as a son of a bitch will crack under the pressure."
Alfred married movie star Joan Crawford, the couple residing in Texas.
By the way, the spell checker knew that Alfred Nu Steel was wrong. I'm impressed by the thoroughness of this AI's training.
I almost always agree with your comments, but I don’t share your fatalistic assertions. We all are capable of indulging our ugliest impulses, but most of us are not choosing to. That is primarily because we have choices.
Everyone who exploits and does wrong by their neighbors is not a sociopath. We have been conditioned to see the exploitative and the predatory as the keys to success, as we define it. Our system rewards rule-abuse. Many conservatives sincerely call for law and order, and many who do are blind to the systemic imbalances that yield crime and chaos. Many liberals rhetorically defend the victims of a fixed, unjust system, but they know how to avoid becoming victims, and I don’t think most conservatives and liberals are sociopaths.
It may sound trite, but when people are shown that their vigilance is required, they often respond. Look at the people of Cuba. They built a world-class healthcare system, against great opposition. You might argue that Cuba is a dictatorship or such, but they chose to stand and fight instead of kneeling and prospering.
If I may invoke trite one more time, I do believe that if Americans were taught and conditioned, not to fear and hate communism, but to cherish and value and fight for democracy, we would consign all sociopaths to a compassionate care system.
The comment elsewhere, describing how ordinary people, decent people, can be made to behave like sociopaths is most instructive.
As pointed out, Rule By Sociopath is severely limited in its effectiveness. Where everything is ever always only a zero-sum, no-holds-barred, winner-takes-all game, anything other than short-term cooperation for limited objectives is difficult at best.
As a boomer, we were taught to fear and hate Communism and to cherish our REPUBLIC and we were the last generation to send innocent boys to an unwarranted, needless war, Viet Nam, which was vehemently and mostly successfully protested against. That woke up many of us in our generation. We paid dearly for our awakening. The PTB backlashed to the extreme of what we have today. At that time SOCIOPATHS and other mentally disturbed people WERE treated and institutionalized.
ANY fixed system will collapse when allowed to operate in it's extreme, when the rules are not obeyed as we can clearly see. When godlessness and greed are allowed to run amok. As when Jesus overturned the tables. We do need a reset, however, not the one the Luciferians are planning. A stable society will not work once everyone is out only for himself. Stop blaming capitalism, that's a cop out.
So you're a bunch of larpy whiners trained to enslave yourselves to an inherited ruling class and die for them? Sounds like a mental illness not to be proud of.
It was capitalists who conspired to remove FDR while he was still in office, and it was capitalists who paid to get Truman on the ticket, and it was an array of of capitalists and sociopaths who lobbied for the U.S. to get involved in Vietnam, two of the latter being Winston Churchill and Allen Dulles.
Capitalism, as practiced here, finds sociopaths better than trained scent-hounds locate drug stashes, and I am not at all surprised that people believe that the problem is either capitalism or sociopaths, which is easier than coming to terms with a history written in other people’s blood, and the unchecked influence of zealots and extremists.
I think the public response to Vietnam was initiated by thoughtful idealists, but they were only joined by members of the establishment when it became clear that the body bags, the draft, the raw footage of soldiers without a clue as to why they were there, were all images that seeped into the public consciousness, with a still professional media delivering the message.
If the JFK assassination marked the beginning of American deployment in Vietnam, the 1968 Democrat Convention marked the beginning of the end. But it took another six years and close to 3 million dead Vietnamese before the bad guys left.
If you believe that Vietnam was evidence of our nation going off the rails, I think you aren’t looking closely enough at the country’s earliest days. The will to power was on full display in the ambitions of the fervent Christians who felt entitled to steal and kill and judge harshly any who did likewise without their assent. Your religious faith may help you make sense of your world, but Christians in America have consistently remained silent or loudly defended the many atrocities of war.
Here’s a link to a comprehensive account of American history from before its founding to today.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/american-history-for-truthdiggers-a-once-always-and-future-empire/
"The praise that has been lavished on the New Deal had always rested,
essentially, on a single specious argument whatever its faults and limitations, it was better than nothing at all; that driving small farmers into urban slums was better than no farm legislation; that a regressive Social Security tax was better than no Social Security Act; that Roosevelt’s “activism” was better than Coolidge’s “laissez-faire.” But these were never the alternatives that Roosevelt faced; they were the alternatives the two party oligarchies offered the citizenry, but that is another matter. Roosevelt was neither bestowing reform on a reluctant conservative people nor dragging it from a balky conservative Congress. He had done the very opposite. He had held back genuine reform from a clamorous democratic people who in 1936 had responded with overwhelming favor to his republican campaign talk. He had suppressed an unruly, reform Congress by saddling it with Bourbon overlords. Every piece of New Deal legislation bears the imprint of that purpose; every political move Roosevelt made was subservient to that purpose, was deliberately calculated to achieve it." Walter Karp, _Indispensable Enemies_
Do you have a factual historical response to that?
(edited: line breaks)
Hmmmm. So the Iraq war was not a needless war? As far Jesus overturning the tables, if I remember correctly that story is only told in one of the four gospels. And, hopefully you know this, no one knows who wrote the gospels or exactly when they were written. However, almost all scholars agree that all four gospels were written long after Jesus was supposed to have been crucified with enough elapse in time that none of the gospel writers lived contemporaneously with Jesus.
"they chose to stand and fight instead of kneeling and prospering."
The example of Haiti tells me that kneeling is not the road to prosperity.
And so the answer is for people to never fall asleep while the systems try their hardest to put them to it.
Of course. Easier said than done.
It's impossible and they know it. The cries from some to "wake up" and "we can do it" is one of the examples of eternal futility. Somewhat encouraged by the systems to illustrate "freedoms".
The other problem is that Rule By Sociopath has its own severe and inherent limitations.
Alexander Tytler I think had some words on the subject:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
That said, it's not as if absolute monarchs were frugal stewards of the public purse, never enriching themselves with palaces, gems or statuary or using state monies for their own self-aggrandizement.
Your argument that monarchy didnt really work either goes right back to the idea that the system is irrelevant, it is the corruption of whichever system is current that is the problem caused by sociopaths.
Pretty much, this. But I did want to present the quote fairly and in context.
? In the USA the Reagan "no benefits to the public" is what has been voted for for 43 years. Alexander Tytler stands refuted.
In the US what goes up EVERY GODDAMN YEAR is military spending--because those who actually get to vote, billionaires and corporations, send their lobbyists in to demand it. How could ordinary voters vote themselves fatter shares of the public purse? All we ever get to vote on is whether Tweedledee or Tweedledum will "represent us". Actually they represent whichever special interests paid the tab as was PROVEN with the Page and Gilens study. No need to worry about how democracy would turn out. It's never been tried on a large scale, if you go with the true definition from the root words: THE PEOPLE RULE. The bastardized definition, "regular elections", is quite common of course.
Agreed, although what we have is not democracy but oligarchy with some vestigial trappings of a democratic republic.
Still, I wanted to give the full quote and not take out of context.
This chart
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun
Shows that social spending as a percentage of GDP has only ever increased, there is a minor flattening during reagan that immediately dissapeared and returned to a steady climb. It is typical rhetoric that a flattening of increased spending equals decreased spending.
Thank God the usA is a Constitutional Republic that incorporates democratic principles. Anyone ever look up republic vrs democracy as forms of government?
Our Founders were wise beyond our years.
SamFox
Lord Woodhouselee is, after all, a peer, a custodian of the open-air prison that English society always was, selected by its wardens. He has private and systemic reasons to lie about other possibilities.
tankies will say that this 'appeal to futility' is one of the most important weapons of the sociopaths in power.
PMC whiners experience social death if capitalism doesn't continue to exist, so their whining should be permanently and continuously dismissed as psychotic babbling.
I think you are going too far. There are plenty of examples in history of the people waking up. The transition is always sudden, sometimes literally overnight.
Don't know about any such occurrence that didn't involve direct suffering of some meaningful sort by the critical mass. Currently they keep the population sufficiently mellow for that not to happen.
More usually such abrupt changes are triggered by a sharp drop in living standards that appears to be the fault of the government. Hunger is particularly motivating. A big military defeat helps.
Such circumstances create a sudden vacuum in which leadership is desperately needed. The people turn to those who have been planning in solitude for decades and have impeccable credentials as committed dissidents. Thus arose Vaclav Havel, John Adams, Xanana Gusmao, Vladimir Lenin, and Nelson Mandela. John Adams commented on his discouraging lack of progress over many years followed by everything flipping over in the course of a week.
I do know of one. Eric Kandel grew up in Austria. When he was a boy the German Nazis came in and took over. In one day Austria transitioned from defiant resistance to full embrace of Nazism. Eric went to sleep a fellow citizen only to awaken the next morning a despised Jew. This transformation so fascinated him he devoted his energies to the study of the brain, culminating in the Nobel Prize.
Eric also reports it was Austrian tradition for the maid to initiate boys into the mysteries of sex.
The problem is also, that essentially the system is psychopathic and can only operate with psychopaths at the helm and under their direction: could you, for one instance, force people in arrears in rent payment out of their houses at gunpoint? No, I don't think so. But some "enforcers" do this, and seem to enjoy it too. And it's all perfectly lawful.
I mean, I've gotten into fights over territory and queens, but it's not as if I didn't want other tomcats to exist. Just I'd prefer they did it somewhere else.
Yeah, think it's sometimes referred to as, "honour among thieves."
Cats have honor. Thieves, not so much.
Of course this presents us with the question of why people keep following sociopaths. Individuals and societies do learn something sometimes.
However, since I'm at the top here, I wanted to add something which I think might be relevant: capitalism is not a scam for the most part because what it does, how it functions, is obvious and overt: rich people make use of their wealth, their power, their superior information and organization, to take advantage of poor people and extract goods, services, value, money from them. Almost everyone seems to know this on some level. They make jokes like "The Golden Rule: he who has the gold, rules." And then they go back to it. Therefore, it must be what they like.
Why, it's almost as if the rich got to be rich because they were better at manipulation and organization, because they had superior information and access to resources and they didn't hesitate to use these to their advantage!
Of course, under "socialism" or "communism" or whatever, you'd see the same humans doing the same thing, even if "winning" might be toted up using a different set of chits to keep score with. Note how seamlessly the Soviet nomenklatura transitioned to being capitalist and nationalist oligarchs and politicians, how Bush-era neocons effortlessly morphed into liberals who really really wanted to expand their empire because of a deep and abiding concern for gay rights or whatever.
Well, in my case, there was a certain amount of dumb luck involved.
I must admit to being just a little confused by your remarks here Starry. You say:
"...capitalism is not a scam for the most part because ..."
then you follow-up on this observation with:
".... rich people make use of their wealth, their power, their superior information and organization, to take advantage of poor people and extract goods, services, value, money from them. ...."
Personally, I think that your latter remark is much closer to the truth than your former comment.
Society will be much better off when more people realize the manner in which they are being 'taken for a ride' by the assortment of robber barons, oligarchs and plutocrats who really 'call the shots' in this system. The next obvious step will be to take decisive action in order to revolutionize the way we organize the economy and our society.
I don't see the contradiction between my saying that capitalism is not a scam because people recognize its nature, and a description of that nature. There was a time, now long gone, when there was a form of utopian capitalism (oddly mirrored in the Soviet Union) when everything was supposed to get better and better. I don't think many people take that seriously any more, given what they see around them. The problem with taking decisive action is that no one know what action to take, except for true believers, whom no one believes in any more.
I lived for a number of years in a retirement community northern Michigan. Some residents had been in the auto industry in Detroit. One day I had a talk with the mayor. He'd worked in one of the big three. I think it was Chrysler. One day he in turn met the son of a former CEO of that company. My friend asked the son why he seemed satisfied with his job. The son said, "If you're on top you're surrounded by people who will do ANYTHING to take your place."
The mayor also told me some guys had taken over the volunteer fire department, paid themselves salaries high enough to bankrupt the institution, then hid one of the fire engines, presumably so that they could sell it and keep the money for themselves. They knew what they were doing. It was all legal.
I am not sure just how capitalism can 'be made to work tolerably well' Feral without strong restrictions and regulations that are rigorously enforced by the government. This is anathema to virtually all those who support this rapacious system. Regulations and rules only 'cramp their style to make ever greater profits. Caitlin is 'right on the money' with her assessment of this cruel system.
You're talking about a sort of myth. I worked for a commodities exchange for several years in their Compliance Department. There are fat books of rules; if you don't obey them, your marbles are taken away. The reason they have the rules is not just to have rules for the fun of having rules; in order for the market to work, it must be trusted, and in order for the market to be trusted, certain kinds of hanky-panky must be definitively outlawed. With extreme prejudice. Individuals (brokers, investors), companies (brokerage houses, investment houses, banks, and so on), and governments are involved because all of them want the commodities markets to work _really badly_ because that is the only way they can make lots of money trading stuff around. It used to crack me up when I heard people talking about the "free market"; but then I got tired of the joke.
Good on you Starry Gordon, nothing like a bit of insider knowledge!
We have to educate our children ,free of the public system of indoctrination of impressionable young minds, the value of enterprise, good hard work , service to one's brothers and sisters which in turn bring there own rewards which are not just quantified by dollars. Then there will be no need of "isms" of any kind. They are by products of indoctrination.
Why do all these senile neoliberal WASP boomers keep proposing the problem of theocracy as a solution to its own problems?
RobertR---I didn't notice what the replacement for capitalism is. If you, Caitlin or anyone knows of a better system, let us hear of it. No system run by dishonest greedy selfish humans can long work for all the people.
One thing I have learned during my 74 years is that capitalism works great till greed & the lust for power & control are thrown into the spokes.
SamFox
Thank you for your reply Sam.
Let me deal with the points that you raise in your post in a reasonably succinct manner.
About 40 or so years ago the working class traitors Bob Hawke and Paul Keating followed a trend developed overseas by the likes of politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, economists such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and Libertarian extremists such as Ayn Rand and imposed a neo-liberal economy on us here in Australia, which upon reflection, makes the likes of Robert Menzies, Henry Bolte and Robert Askin, look like socialists.
I quite agree with your remark that:
"No system run by dishonest greedy selfish humans can long work for all the people."
yet, that is what we clearly have had ever since that time.
What we need is a democratic socialist economic model whereby health, education, gas, water, electricity and all essential services are run by the government (that is, the elected representatives of the people), not for profit but for the benefit of society. Checking mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that corruption is never allowed to take hold.
Sam, with the greatest of respect, you go on to make the incredibly naive comment that:
"..... capitalism works great till greed & the lust for power & control are thrown into the spokes."
I was frankly gobsmacked when I read that. It causes me to think that you haven't been paying attention to how things work over the last 74 years. Let me enlighten you on something. Capitalism is the catalyst that turbo-charges greed, selfishness, lust for power and exploitation. I woke up to that in my teens when the prospect of being conscripted into the army for the purpose of killing Vietnamese in their own country because they had the audacity to want to run their own affairs. Didn't you also notice that something did not seem right back then too?
Oh, Sam, and by-the-way, I am 75 years of age,
Every political system could be made better or worse, capitalism could be made a lot better than what we have now, but it has inherent flaws that will always lead to excessive distribution of wealth inequities.
Vayu--Capitalism's biggest, hugest most gigantic 'inherent flaw' is selfish greedy immoral people.
One US Founder said the US republic was made only for a moral people. Looks like he was right. It is sad. SOOOOO many 'leaders' are corrupt. That is why capitalism doesn't work as well as it can or should.
As usual, it's a people problem...
If more people could understand that honesty is INDEED the best policy, much needless suffering could be avoided. What you sow is what you WILL reap & for sure what goes around comes around! Those aspects of natural law are inescapable!!!
SamFox
THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!! We have the WRONG PEOPLE IN POSITIONS OF LEADERSHIP, but unfortunately they bought their way into those positions.
Most of the time, purchase is not even necessary. Manipulation will do just fine.
Useless Calvinists have been whining the exact same story for 350 years to hook themselves a slice of the pie and it's exactly as false now as it is today. Only people whose existence depends on slaves clamor for "leaders".
If our systems were transparent and decentralized - like we always write about - then free market capitalism is the best system. However when systems are corrupted like ours are currently, then all systems are bad. Socialism isn't the best for innovation, and we need innovation now more than ever. Wall Street could be eliminated, and the free market would be even freer. But "capitalism" is too broad of a net you are casting.
Combating power requires decentralizing power relations. Communism vis a vis Russia was such a failure because of the power of the administration. Capitalism’s failure is that the structure produces the most extreme forms of inequality, and the power to leverage democracy, markets etc is rewarded. The accumulation model of capitalism produces psychopathic behaivour. Once every possible material desire is filled , where does one go - self aggrandizement thru power structures. As benjamin says it bears all the hallmarks of a cult
This has been my belief for years that the economic system is almost irrelevant, sociopaths and psychopaths, (i.e. politicians) will abuse the populace regardless of the system. China is a hybrid communist/capitalist system that is the most abusive of the largest population on the planet.
Most abusive? In a generation they've gone from the poorest people in the world to middle class, and they rate democracy, and their country AS a democracy, higher than citizens of the US do.
Mary Wild---Since when did CCP stand for anything but the Chinese Communist Party? How about you tell us how the nation of China MADE all that progress. They steal our tech, pay off our business leaders & open their markets to them on condition that any company going into China tell the CCP ALL their ways & means of doing things.
They bribe & lobby our 'leaders' into betraying the US.
Did you forget China's govt uses slave labor, much of it children? Their economy started out as fully communist. It didn't work so they added some state controlled democratic principles.
What do you think of the Chinese Social Credit Score? No worries. It's just dictatorial population control on steroids.
SamFox
If we cut trade with China, their economy would die .
I think your "facts" about China are nearly all fictitious, except that they started fully communist and no longer are, and the Social Credit Score is nasty.
Lately, before I read a post that is a critique of capitalism, I remind myself that it is going to conflate CAPITALISM and CAPITALIST. That is, I assume it is going to predicate, "corrupt," "evil," "depraved" or some other uniquely human trait to capitalism which is a non-human concept.
These traits require a human mind, intention, decisions and so forth. They are mental states and cannot exist abstractly. That is, CAPITALISM is not corrupt, CAPITALISTS are.
This author is obviously very deep into this business, knowledgeable and actually gives a damn about things, so she might not be very concerned about this part.
What I'm wondering is, do you know why this mistake so common?
Thank you
No - capitalism for example is driven by sociopathy and greed.
kudjoe--Those don't come FROM capitalism. They come from PEOPLE! As I said I say again--NO economy will last if not run honestly by honest people. Therein lies the rub!
PEOPLE!
SamFox
Sorry but I have a different opinion. I see no benefit to labeling others as sociopaths. It is common that once a label is attached to something, using that label suffices to discuss it and understanding about variation within that label is lost. We discuss means without understanding variance, statistically speaking.
All economic systems have strengths and weaknesses. The problems come up when any system operates within the extremes of its ideology. Capitalism is at an extreme that can only be brought back to a less extreme position through reasoned regulation.
When all, and I do mean all, branches of government have been bought and paid for by the very wealthy, reasonable regulation is a pipe dream. Thus, the only solution would require an educated electorate that understands the issues. However, I do not think anyone would disagree that we do not have and never had that type of electorate. We vote wedge issues and false (dishonest) facts or “alternative” facts.
Expanding electorate both via bringing in everybody and their mother, and making it "more convenient" via mail/online/etc means, deliberately waters down the engaged slice of voters. There's a reason in ancient times only certain citizens could vote - those with the skin in the game and hence deeply into the issues. Not at the level of voting pamphlets.
The voting process is rigged and a scam, purposely so.
Hmmmm. russian_bot. In this time you may be trying to be clever but may be too clever for effective trust. So, if one goes back to ancient Athens, it was not a true democracy. Yet, even with who could vote restricted, their government had many issues. Remember their senate condemned Socrates to either exile or death for corrupting the youth of Athens to think for themselves. Big sin to those in power.
The problem with an oligarchy—which it seems you are close to suggesting—is who determines who can vote? Who qualifies? I can look across our current senate where most senators are rich former lawyers. Many are educated at ivy-league schools. Can you truly suggest that wise and prudent governance comes from this group? It is much worse in the house and any non-biased person recognizes the Supreme Court is totally corrupt.
You mention mothers. I hope you were only using an idiom and not some chauvinistic stereotype about women. So, enough of the platitudes, who do you think should run the government?
Remember Plato suggested a ruler who was wise, educated and just. Yeah, good luck finding this person. As Socrates concluded, one is wise only 2when they realize the “know” nothing.
First off - "true democracy" is an ideal in the same sense "free market capitalism" or "communism" are ideals. If they were possible they would work and we wouldn't have these discussions.
So we're left to look for something that might work "better". Here again it cannot be something concrete as that would approach an ideal. Instead, it's something that works in certain circumstance and not another, always fluid. But what we should necessarily arrive at is that whoever votes for something must be thoroughly knowledgable and qualified to do so. To think that could be majority of the voting public is naive. A "mother" I referred to is someone who's not qualified and should somehow be excluded as they're simply a manipulated slice that skews the results reliably the way the manipulators want.
Unfortunately, it is the very upper-middle class that you would enfranchise which seeks out the soap operas and passion propaganda like Fox News, OAN, WSJ, MSDNC, daily Kos, Common Dreams, and other mythology sites.
In any case some groups are dis/enfranchised. No situation can ever be even close to ideal since that "true democracy" scam can never be achieved.
At least in that case the choices would be made consciously and purposely as opposed to current way of following instructions of the voting pamphlets, in the best case. In the worst case just surrendering signed mailing ballots to the collectors to be filled out later, the promise sealed by some $50.
So mothers are not qualified?
Thoroughly knowledgeable and qualified?
Ideals?
I remember a great piece of literature with a great musical based upon the literature.
To dream, the impossible dream.
To beat, the unbeatable foe.
I still get emotional hearing that song.
I certainty have a lot of idealism in me which is problematic as the ranks of cynics is filled with unrequited idealists. Nevertheless, even though I have a strong Quixotic side to me, I’m able to recognize that proclivity and not make irrational pronouncements based upon my idealism with a salty tear in my eye.
I tried to make it clear that "mothers" are not to be taken literally. Many mothers deserve to be at the front lines while their kids with their game consoles and chips should stay as far as possible from the voting booths.
add "using government" at the end of your comment and you've nailed it.
China and the US have the world's largest corporations. In China the corporations are under government control to serve the state's priorities. In the US it is the opposite-- government is the lackey of the corporations serving its capitalist greed up to and including global warfare.
China's control over its corporations has been a key element in its "economic miracle" Another major factor is that it set up its own strategies for economic recovery rejecting those of the West, at the same time having a clear understanding of the savagery of the Western capitalist system.
Capitalism is surely a scam and utterly socially destructive when it only serves the gluttony of a small self -serving fascist elite.
Communism is surely a scam and utterly socially destructive when it only serves the gluttony of a small self -serving Bolshevik elite.
Communist is not the issue, China is a capitalist authoritarian state. The US feels threatened because Chinese capitalism is more effective, serving its peoples, where as America is being cannibalized by its corporations with the complicity of it governing class. The US has become a slave state to corporations and their wars.
Michael Hudson is a very good reference on these issues. The following video is well worth watching and understanding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OqT54p7rA8
"Effective" Government is to be Avoided, Comrade. But I'm sure the ChiCom social credit score will be totally acceptable to you.......
It appears you prefer stereotypes over reality.
There is nothing in that boy's world that isn't a slapdash capitalist pastiche.
COMMUNIST China, serving the people? Up to what?
How does the Communist Chinese Social Credit Score fit in there? It forces the people to do as they are told or they will be sanctioned. The Chinese citizen MUST be obedient to the state or they will be limited on how much food they are allowed to buy, if their DIGITAL money isn't frozen. How far they can travel is already controlled, IF they can travel...what kind of capitalism is practiced in China via child labor? Imprisoned Uyghurs in China are treated like animals. Children are often used as slave labor.
There are fools here, in the USA, who want that social credit score population control mechanism here. Hey, maybe China would be more to your liking !
If capitalism is soooo bad, when will you be leaving for Cuba or Venezuela?
No doubt capitalism can have drawbacks. But most of them are from cheaters, liars,thieves, connivers & cronies out side the system burrowing their way in. NO system will work when run by the selfish & dishonest. Not even a Constituti9onal Republic. Like the one WE are SUPPOSED to be living under.
SamFox
As in the USSR. But what about Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela? They have all managed to do fairly well by their people despite relentless attack from the US and its lackeys.
Go visit any of your 3 referenced countries foe a month and get back to me, Comrade Obamy Mammy.
I follow a YTer who was just in Cuba among the local people. Idk why ppl here saying how great the ppl are being treated there? THEY'RE NOT! They can barely afford to eat. They're lucky to make $20 a month when a hamburger costs $12. The govt, as most know, is severely oppressive. It's a dire situation that those ppl do not deserve.
He gets more from lying to you Calvinist cucks than he does from working, so you shouldn't support him.
Mary Wild---Are you kidding? You need to talk to people who fled those countries. All of them have rich rulers, poor populations, little industry & few jobs. In Venezuela in 2017 the people had to eat the zoo animals.
Look up Cuban Refugees Speak. Add other countries to the term.
These people did NOT run from wealthy prosperous countries because they were tired of a high standard of living.
They came HERE! WHY????
Are you one of Soro's paid dsrupters? I ask because your statement is so far out in left field as to be deep into ludicrous land.
I have watched refugees from those places tell a VERY DIFFERENT story that what you posted. Thanks.
SamFox
Two points. Those countries are poor because of colonialism in the past, followed by a relentless campaign of harrassment and sanctions by the US government following successful revolution. Cuba has higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the US despite the sanctions. I don't meet refugees from those countries (I live in West Virginia, which has the lowest hispanic population in the country) but I'd point out that they are self-selected--these are the people who chose to leave, and to come to the aggressor country.
I think it is not only the corporations China 'controls' (or tries to) but mainly how their banks work (at least some of them), Ellen Brown is talking about this quite a lot and I think (as the bank in SDakota) it is a much better way, as interest goes to the state and NOT the greedy bankers with their greedy shareholders ...
North Dakota. https://bnd.nd.gov/public/
you are right ... but the idea is fascinating and obviously working (and of course so hush hush because the BIG banks certainly do not want it)
Ellen Brown is definitely an interesting writer on finance.
State-owned banks are prone toward corruption. The USA tried that twice, long ago.
The idea is that private banks are subject to market discipline. In the USA this becomes increasingly a joke and a well known one. The result is the dystopic worst-of-both-world's system in which the oligarchs reap the profits while the people suffer the losses, with Joe Biden as poster boy.
Just the greedy state
I am sorry but if you really understand modern China, you would also understand the Capitalist trade they engage in to the tune of billions of western dollars every day the markets are open. They are no island of Communist utopia. Why do you think they want Taiwan?
They say with Socialism that eventually you run out of other people's money.
But with Capitalism, you eventually run out of... other people's money.
You mean like multiple times in the last decade. Trillions to bankers to avoid the most recent collapse. 1929,1987,2002,2008,2019, always money for Capitalists.
But that money is pure fiat, Monopoly money, which is why de-dollarization is happening much faster than most anticipated. The problem now is CBDC... Also backed by nothing, but gives the criminals who run this scam the ability to steal your money more easily and shut you out of your funding if you resist.
No one should be fooled by crypto or digital currency. If the currency isn’t moored to a tangible asset, it is illegitimate.
I feel this system has to collapse on its own... We will all need to take care of each other and ourselves. My fear is more of a Walking Dead situation, however, as humanity will not have been de-programmed of the poison in their hearts and minds, and we will rip one another to shreds to be on top of yet another Bullshit Mountain!
Chris Moses--Nothing wrong with capitalism that honesty can't fix. Sadly, it may be too late for that.
In capitalism you only run out of OP money because of what people bring to capitalism. It's the driver, not the 'car' that's at fault.
SamFox
The need for "things" is a sign of a weak mind. All money is the mystified right of command; people who are such slaves to shiny metal that they will debase themselves for it are arguably even less sane for actually pricing themselves.
1929? The banks didn't get state support until 1933. Even then the people got more.
Yes, 1929 the banking system was on life support and FDR nationalized the system in March 33 just after taking office. Banking should never have been return to private equity, along with our oil, utilities, healthcare, education.
They get the money because they can be trusted to use it to preserve the order of society. Pesky working-class people get the money and they want to own the means of production, which is fine from a material production standpoint. But the non-division of labor destroys a culture's organs of social reproduction, which means that the ownership class, who have sacrificed their living embodied experience to immortalize themselves in history, finally dies totally.
Well said, Philip, in response to an excellent post. And that's why I continue to develop plans for small scale sovereignty, as a third paradigm to both. Any centralized system that gives some people power over others will lead to corruption because it starts that way already.
I agree, and where I particularly run afoul of just about everyone in discussions about imagining and developing holistic and complementary/cooperative systems is that people can't imagine them because they have never been attempted in modern society.
As an example, a commune operating within a nation that is Capitalist in nature has no chance because its overarching system is still competitive and exploitative. It necessarily becomes corrupted in order to survive in a corrupt system.
What I think we need to look at is at the root of Consciousness itself in which every particle moves in directions that not only benefit itself but also all of Consciousness at the same time.
If we look at nature, and resist the urge to humanize its behavior, we can clearly see this system of cooperation in practice.
Our brains, and the "thinking" animal we are could be used to our great benefit if we could simply act NOT in lack. Lack is at the root of all competitive commerce.
Our amazing brains and ability to reason could easily utilize the great limitless bounty that the Earth offers us, and our technology could allow us to solve lack worldwide were we to just move in that direction.
Instead we act like children fighting over toys, and never realize the gifts we have in our physical reality.
This WILL come to pass. It's up to us WHEN that is going to occur.
We will discover how to Consciously Create, to instantly manifest anything. I hope that we don't have to wait for that to happen in order to begin moving in different directions of cooperation and sustainability of our ecosystem.
You and I are in complete agreement on that, Philip. We have an economy based on exploitation that we put up with because of the limitations we put on Consciousness. I don't know if you're consciously quoting from A Course in Miracles when you say, "This WILL come to pass. It's up to us WHEN that is going to occur." It's certainly consistent, especially with my reading from this morning 'My Self is ruler of the universe.' The all-inclusive Self, of course.
You'll have just gotten my new post, which I did before I replied because it seemed pertinent. It's from my book and presents Ch. 16: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/what-if-money-was-no-object? I think you'll find the ideas fit yours nicely. And it's followed by a link to one that quotes Caitlin on being ineffable, as a Consciousness bonus :-) https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/meaning-is-all-there-is.
Familiar with CIM, but have not studied it.
My comment arises from knowing that as we have now entered the third decade of the objective portion of the Shift in Consciousness, there is no stopping this train.
The Shift has occurred - this Master Source Event has already taken place.
WE are wearing the proverbial electric dog collar but don't realize that the electric fence has been turned off.
This is why every step we take - every movement is supported in Consciousness. All we have to do is move forward.
Beautifully put and great analogy. Having studied the Course for almost 20 yrs, there's no one path and yours is heading in the same direction. That certainty is a great thing to share. And thank you for 'liking' my post, Philip!
You're welcome Tereza.
One thing I have learned is that we each have a different piece of this puzzle. We each bring our own uniqueness to the game. That's the best part is that not any one of us has to do it all.
Let us recognize each other on the way to our future and know we got this.
We're a work on progress. When we master ourselves to the necessary degree, we may be given the keys to the car, as it were. What the Law of One material calls "intelligent infinity", or the Shakti in another tradition.
As I said elsewhere, the electric dog fence has been turned off, and we are the dogs standing at the edge of the yard barking and don't even know all we have to do is step through it.
It's not a matter of us being given the keys to the car, we already have them, we just don't realize it yet.
So the work is not to become good enough, it's to become self-aware enough to realize that we ARE good enough.
Found it: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/12/07/self-validating-circle-jerk-of-war-psyops-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/
>The capitalism cultist’s solution to caring for developmentally disabled children is that their families care for them at home for their entire lives. Society gets those families’ labor, for free. Free stuff! Sweet, huh? But the problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people’s free labor.
Tricks? What about BRIBES?
Like bribing elected officials to write laws that provide tax breaks, subsidies, patent and trademarks rights, right to work/anti-union laws, starvation minimum wages, and lax worker safety, public health and environmental oversight and standards laws?
Like hiring government officials in a revolving door system of corruption and regulatory capture?
Like paying think tanks and public relations firms to generate all kinds of corporate propaganda about the glories of capitalism and freedom?
How about buying endowed University faculty and polluting the science and academic literature with corporate money?
It's all laid out for you, in the Chamber of Commerce's own words, in the infamous "Powell Memo" (Attack on American Free Enterprise)
https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/
Big Money roolz.
Capitalism 101. If you can't beat'em, buy'em and shut'em down. Or, send B52s.
Nah man. Send B-1s. Much higher profit margin.
B52s. Bombs away, but we're ok!
It is FAIRLY obvious that running your entire society on the sole basis of "Can someone make private money from it?", will not end well.
And it doesn't really matter WHAT you call it.
But it is VERY important to mentally distinguish between Feudalism, and Capitalism.
Remember, we weren't all living in some wonderful Socialist Paradise and then along comes "Capitalism" and ruins it.
That is the kind of nincompoopery one expects from tweenies, or media.
It was already-existing Feudalism that created the Haves/Have Not situation, that Capitalism inherited.
And then you get into the debate about what "Capitalism" MEANS.
Some think petite-bourgouse worker-ownership is Capitalist, others think it is "Socialism". Whichever it is, it is obviously a counterpoint to the FEUDAL system, of minority-ownership and control.
At the end of the day though, all definitional arguments aside, what is ACTUALLY meant by "The Market will solve it", is that IF SOMEONE with access to resources can MAKE A PROFIT, then it will be done.
If not, then it will not be done.
It is FAIRLY obvious that running your entire society on the sole basis of "Can someone make private money from it?", will not end well.
And it doesn't really matter WHAT you call it.
"It was already-existing Feudalism that created the Haves/Have Not situation, that Capitalism inherited."
Kindly consider the end of the USSR. It wasn't feudal. They tried to decentralize ownership. The public immediately centralized ownership anyways. It was human nature and not a holdover from feudalism.
Sorry Patrick, but I disagree. The first group the Bolsheviks turned upon after defeating the "White Russians", were the actual worker-owned soviets, many of whom if they refused the new Party control were 'sent to the Wall'.
The USSR, in terms of democratic ownership and control of their workplaces, was not much different to the Corporate structure in the USA. Which of course also use the powers of the State, and organised crime, to enforce minority ownership, and destroy and collective action or ownership.
It is NOT "human nature", to wish to be a wage-slave of exploiters. Anymore than people &qu