You are speaking my language, Caitlin. I've been thinking a lot about how we can't even imagine how life could be different, if we didn't spend all our time making the rich richer. There's so so so much that we could do, and that doesn't mean under communism or socialism, under a decentralized system where we had power over our own lives and communities. It's possible and inevitable.
Everyone is talking about the problems, but who is talking about the solutions to our problems? We are. We have options. Decentralization. Governmental Transparency. Removing the money from politics. There is a better way to govern. Come discuss solutions with us.
Hi, Josh. I read your post and realized I'd read other posts of yours (I think on the carnivore diet). I like your thinking and writing, and I'm in total agreement that we need to be talking about solutions. I also like your digital thinktank and idea portal. My byline on my Third Paradigm card is 'a thinktank on community sovereignty.' And what my book proposes is an online simulation game so that people can model the policies for their own communities as a way of demonstrating their effectiveness.
The question I have for you is what's the minimum size population that should be allowed to control their own labor? You have some really good ideas for controlling corruption but once you give a few people the ability to control millions or hundreds of millions of people's labor, I think an individual or group with a good idea doesn't stand a chance. There's no opportunity to experiment and have 'the power of a good example.' What do you think?
Well, just wait a goddamn minute: “We can’t even imagine how our life could be different if we didn’t spend all our time making the rich richer”? But you lust for CHANGE period. Like Russia 1920, like N. Korea 1949, China, 1949. Boy, those guys changed the fuck out of things. The free market (what you sneeringly call “capitalism “), free enterprise are condemned as greed.
Self- interest, what you refer to as profit motive, is a universal HUMAN trait. It lies in every breast. It is what makes our miraculous free market so ………miraculous. Beware; what surrounds us now is cronyism. Nay , fascism, mercantilism.
People need to start doing some real thinking, here. Quit puking out word salad.
Hmmm, who did all that killing in N. Korea in 1949, and in China in 1949? I bet you got your story straight from the CIA stooge's mouth, or nipple as the case may be.
Ross, in the comment you’re reacting to, you missed the part that says “There's so so so much that we could do, and that doesn't mean under communism or socialism….” So your comment is off target.
But aside from that, the standard definition of a free market from britannica.com is “an unregulated system of economic exchange, in which taxes, quality controls, quotas, tariffs, and other forms of centralized economic interventions by government either do not exist or are minimal….” (If you have a different definition, please provide it.)
Just a simple question: under this free market system, how do you keep a river from becoming polluted?
Property rights of individuals downstream are what keep people upstream from polluting a river--but only when a society or government recognizes and protects property rights.
Under capitalism any pollution which most likely would lead to harm being done to people who have not consented to being put at risk would have to be legally prohibited. The intentional or negligent violation of individual rights, including the rights of life, liberty, and property, must be legally prohibited.
Britannica is nice but I prefer the ideal of capitalism as described by John Locke. Locke’s works derives the system of justice for human community life from the political principles of natural rights: every person is entitled to life, liberty, and property. Such a system rests on and promotes the ideals of the independence and the freedom of individual persons in their existence, actions, and productivity. No one may be forced to advance the goals of others. Relatedly, no one may be interfered with unless prior permission is secured, nor may one’s labor and produce be used, destroyed, or otherwise controlled by others without permission by the owner, regardless of the importance or nobility of the purpose at hand. These would be the basic political and legal principles of a just society, holds the capitalist, and the proper function of government is to protect the rights of the individual citizen, not to advance the “general welfare” (beyond making it possible for citizens to do so on their own and with each other’s voluntary help).
In plain terms, capitalism requires that pollution be punishable as a legal offense that violates individual rights.
I like Locke’s definition. It’s a lovely sentiment. But the devil is in the details. Your solution to preventing pollution—regulatory power—is the solution we have in the US right now. Yet, it is unsafe to drink from any major river (and even most remote streams and lakes). So, to handle the pollution (and other externalities) resulting from U.S. capitalism, communities must, at great expense, treat their drinking water, often without success (as the people of Detroit most famously discovered).
Capitalists—who often have entire legal departments working for them—can find workarounds to any existing regulation. Regulatory capture is their modus operandi. In the US and most other "democracies", it begins with corporate political contributions to elect business-friendly legislators, lobbying those elected friendly legislators to enact business-friendly laws or to nominate business-friendly political appointees to lead regulatory agencies, who then promote business-friendly senior bureaucrats who, after retirement, will work for the businesses they regulate.
Consequently, if you can find a clean river in the U.S., please report it immediately to the Society of Anomalous Discoveries.
In a capitalist society, regulations become the tool of capital, they help exclude competition and protect interests. Eventually everything becomes the tool of capital, even the basic human emotions fall prey to the extractive powers of capital writ large.
What you describe is NOT Capitalism but Facism or Corporatism. Corporations are NOT a feature of Capitalism. EACH AND EVERY corporation in the world is LICENSED and protected by some government. The government provides protections from various legal issues and makes and enforces "laws" against competition in exchange for "fees" and other "compensarions".
Government, it's military and its UN-constitutional agencies such as the EPA are the biggest polluters. What EPA did to the Animas River was cleary criminal and yet the agency still exists and has the same irresponsible people.
Detroit politicians monopolized the water system,, blocking private enterprise. The politicians got wealthy but they are not capable of delivering the promised safe and drinkable water to their tax-paying "customers". The safe and drinkable water is provided by private enterprise in sealed bottles which are also delivered by private enterprise.
and you can't see the link between the two? The perversion of water delivery by the profit motive? BTW, that bottle water isn't as safe as you might think, number one source of microplastics in human body... for now.
You raise an important point, Jack. What the 'free market' means is free of taxes and regulations for international corporations. Free trade agreements (which I've read) include an introductory paragraph or two about enhancing the lives of producers, then 99 pages of protections for investors--against labor laws, environmental protections, and interference by local gov'ts. They prohibit consumer communities from enacting 'local first' policies. In essence, they hold trade hostage unless the country complies with the IMF and WTO mechanisms to impose debt and enforce austerity. It's a part of the whole 'name things the opposite of what they are' scheme that's been so effective.
Greed and capitalism are actually considered a result of the materialism that often results from sedentary agriculture. Most hunter gatherer societies shame people for acquiring more than they need, at the expense of other tribe members, or beat their wives for not being a submissive sexual possession, at the expense of her humanity. This communal drive to help each other is what allowed humans to survive and evolve to create complex societies. Eschewing that communal drive in exchange for narcissistic greed has led to widespread ecological and economic collapse, underpinned by constant warfare, which is driven by a grotesque caricature of the profit motive. The worldwide military industrial complex holds conferences and has salespeople, like many industries. Unlike many industries, but like some, such as mining or finance, the deaths or destitution of people designated as ‘bad’ or ‘other’, by media lackeys, is required for the industry to profit and therefore continue. Have you ever read a book on cognitive science? George Lakoff is a good starting point.
Exactly. Greed nor capitalism is natural to humans, at all. It's been ingrained and we've been conditioned to accept it as natural but it absolutely is nowhere else in nature nor is it natural to humans who live in tune with the Earth.
You're right, Jennie, greed isn't human nature. The late David Graeber has a book called The Dawn of Everything that looks at the evidence for anarchy in anthropology--self-governing communities within 'interaction spheres.' He shows that they were very complex and could be large-scale but consciously chose systems that minimized accumulation and hoarding. Some were hunter-gatherers and some 'played' at farming, as he puts it, without becoming dependent on it. But there were even traditional grain cultures that avoided slavery and warfare--sometimes run by 'colleges of priestesses.' The more involvement of women, in fact, the less conflict and hierarchy there was both within communities and between them.
ps love George Lakoff and 'Don't Think of an Elephant!'
Amen brother. What these people who are pining for socialism don’t understand about capitalism is that capitalism is 100% voluntary. Capitalism is perverted only when someone comes in with force to influence what would otherwise be a voluntarily, mutually beneficial transaction. And no one has a monopoly on force and violence like a government. Governments ruin capitalism yet these fools, these misguided infantile people, want government to destroy capitalism and replace it with something more “equitable”. These people are demanding their own enslavement.
Haha, I had to read my 'puking word salad' again to see if you were responding to me or someone else. I don't mention capitalism (sneeringly or at all) or profit motive or free markets or free enterprise or greed, or change for the sake of change. I specifically state that I don't mean communism or socialism, as Jack points out, but as Dean misreads. So I don't think there's any point in arguing with you about things I didn't say.
What I did talk about was 1) decentralized 2) power over our own lives/ labor 3) power over our own community labor and 4) imagining what would be possible.
If you take it as an attack on self-interest when I say we're spending our time making the rich richer, you must be a venture capitalist. Unless you have other people working to increase your wealth, it's not in your self-interest to work for someone else's profit.
In my reply to Josh I talk about decentralization and modeling of policies so that there isn't change without understanding the consequences. Capitalism, as I define it, is a system that favors the accumulation of capital. Capital is ownership of the assets. I'm all for capitalism for communities and families, not bankers and 'investors'. You can't be for both.
Even though you seem to want things to stay the same, change is coming. The 'miracle' of the free market will be tested when the petrodollar loses its ability to take other people's products and resources with nothing in return. As JM states, keeping that 'miracle' going may have had something to do with militarism. Jus' sayin.
Again... government has perverted capitalism so much that it's not capitalism... there is nothing free about the market they've created. Government has tilted the table towards their preferred "capitalists".
Great essay, so Black Rock is worth ten trillion dollars, Trump gave them 4 trillion as a gift, lately the IMF gifted them another 5, so you know capitalism failed and the only way they can save themselves is by killing us before we figure out that they already know that it was never anything other than an ever expanding Ponzi scheme. They're up against a wall if they can't rob Russia and China, and like very soon; it's kill or be killed, that's why they don't care about starting a nuclear, because they're all dead billionaires walking.
Profit legalizes killing people, the greater the profit, the greater the killing is tolerated. A smart capitalist learns the code: Grow spinach contaminated by raw, uncomposted sewage which they are paid to spray onto fields, face an occasional recall for the spinach when excessive deaths finally occur, cost of which is already covered by profit using consumers to treat sewage, no jail. Buy from wholesale firms baby rattles, faulty cribs, unsafe baby clothes that were already recalled because they killed a multitude of children to sell into poor / lower middle-class neighborhoods, and don't face a fine or jail when caught. The larger the profit, the greater the tolerance, right Sackler Family?
It’s funny this “Canadian” topic comes up, because lately I’ve been speculating about where Zelensky will move his “government in exile” after NATO collapses in, say, late January or early February when the frostbit and starving Northern Europeans burn down their parliaments.
He won’t be able to move it to another European country because by then the Europeans will be capitulating with Russia to get the gas turned back on (and they will pay in rubles). So I’m thinking Canada could be a very good fit for several reasons. First, Trudeau and Zelensky have the same father: Klaus Schwab. Second, Canada is way underpopulated mainly due to climate, so attracting a few million Ukrainians who don’t notice a little frostbite is a win-win—Ukrainian wheat farmers will love Saskatchewan. Third, the Canadian military is always a few brigades short of a military victory, so adding a few NATO trained brigades of Azov and Right Sector freedom fighters will be celebrated. (No doubt many Canadian troops will even want to adopt their flashy uniform insignia.) Lastly, moving the world’s most corrupt government six thousand miles closer to the U.S. will greatly reduce the travel and administrative costs of international financial crime and black market arms deals for CIA supported moderate rebels.
So, I’m predicting Zelensky will soon be ending most sentences with “Ehh”.
Profits actually are a kind of function of meritocracy and economic viability.
Asking for donations in this post is a kind of profit motive.
Imagine farming, for example. If you ran a shitty ass farm and lost money/livestock/etc. in fiat or barter deals, then you would go out of business while a more industrious and efficient farmer would pick up the additional business of your poor business and farming skills. These dynamics accord with the natural world whereby an animal that was a poor hunter relative to other such animals would not be able to pass on its genes, and so on and so forth.
Your lack of understanding of what true free market capitalism really is makes you constantly blame something that you are clearly not in full comprehension of.
Caitlin, please explain how yours truly does not "understand capitalism"? You do realize that your response, while appreciated, is not an argument whatsoever.
Please clearly explain how I misunderstand capitalism, what your definition is and most importantly what your economic system solution is since you often complain about something you seem to not understand.
I could very well be wrong, but I kind of doubt it given that I have a degree in economics and can assure you that over 80% of what is taught at the finest American universities is neo-keynesian anti-free market drivel. Perhaps you are aquatinted with the Austrian school?
PS my business partner knew the main developers of bitcoin and we are currently in touch with the remaining early team as well as the hardcore btc proponents du jour.
I can assure you that they were ALL free market capitalists and continue to be to this very day which is why the blockchain was invented in the first place!
So perhaps you should abandon btc altogether Caitlin?
Seriously, I don't know what else to tell you except maybe your profit motive is in you asking daily for "donations" for your writings which is work which you monetized into a business. And you know, business is capitalism so....
Surplus value is a crude Marxist economic fallacy. Go learn basic economics. The only alternative to the "profit motive" is being a slaver and forcing people to work for free, which as a communist is exactly what you want.
These are all perfectly viable under capitalism genius, you can form whatever voluntary group you want and pool your property as you wish.
What you CANT do is use FORCE to take someone ELSE'S property and add to your "collective" without the owners consent. That is slavery, that is you using the fruits of someone else's labor by force, which as a communist is exactly what you want. Tyrant.
"public ownership of critical sectors, like .. transportation, education"
By public you mean Government? Or some collective committee? So you want to use FORCE to prevent people from creating private schools or transportation services?
Slaver tyrant, admittedly so, as all communists are.
The rest of your comment is just trowing terms around, either make an actual statement like an adult or go home.
Try worker co-operatives and collective ownership, with public ownership of critical sectors, like water, energy, transportation, education, parks/recreation, etc.
Still crickets in response to: Google public goods, externalities, and inter-generational equity.
Ouch ... I like 2nd Smartest Guy's posts, but you rightly called called out a conflation of conversational meanings of 'capitalism'. 40 years as an applied linguist here, and I kinda like that 'the clarification of a proposition is its verification' thingy. I suspect that if Caitlin, 2nd Smartest, you, (and myself), ever had the opportunity to sit down and clarify definitions, we would all find more in common with each other than different. I suspect the fundamental self-destructive nature of humanity is at the genetic level, and identifying the sociopaths and their temperaments that have herded most of humanity long before 'capitalism' was coined, will point to a failure of morality to keep up with our capacity to rationalize.
Capitalism has a crystal clear definition: an economic system based on private property rights, free markets, respect for contracts, and free voluntary trade that creates a market price system.
Anyone who opposes capitalism is by definition a communist tyrant, just like Klaus Schwab and his globalist cabal which are literally the enforcement arm of international socialism, aiming to violate private property and individual rights (ie. the free market) and have world communism.
Which is why Klaus has a bust of Lenin in his office as per my substack article link.
It's really so sad how ignorant people are and attacking the vestiges of a system that is no longer, while the actual working system is to date the superior means to true freedom.
And true freedom is not predicated on identity politrix idiocy like "equality" which is the lie that today's technocommunism espouses to con people into failure and slavery to the state. Why true capitalism is such a savior is because it gives equal opportunity for anyone to succeed based on merit.
Any system that has a central bank (esp privately owned/controlled) is de facto not free market capitalist for the price of money (interest rates) is one of the most crucial signals in a market, and that can't be set by central planners, same as printing money is anti-free markets. I could go on and on, but suffice to say the author of this article has no clue about economics and never offers solutions while asking for profits in each of her posts.
capitalism is about as moral as a tiger hunting its prey. it is amoral and efficient and free. the morals are a function of the capitalists, not the system.
which is precisely why the 'do gooder' systems like communism are the most pernicious.
Actual, moral consciousness evolved because it was, in a way, more efficient and constructive than pure competition. It's not particularly free, either, since the war of all against all requires constant, unswerving attention to one's competitors.
This is not a debate. I’m a bit painfully slow typist. Add to that this limiting medium. I mean a real debate where you would actually have to defend your thesis.
PS comrade, here is your "capitalist" Klaus with a bust of Lenin because this system is technocommunist and anti-capitalist and anti-profit which is precisely why you will own nothing and be happy:
Klaus Schwab and his globalist cabal are literally the enforcement arm of international socialism, aiming to violate private property and individual rights (ie. the free market) and have world communism. All anti-capitalists are tyrants, and need to be treated as such.
You want books? Stop reading that right wing corporate libertarian crap. Try Polanyi's "The Great Transformation". Or Bluestone and Harrison's "The Deindustrialization of America" and "The Great U-Turn"
Spoken like a true apparatchik, comrade commissar. You are a well trained unit of the proletariat. How much greater America would be if it had been more like the Soviet Union. Da, tovarisch?
Non sense. Voluntary transactions. I make something you want or need and voluntarily trade it for something you have. It’s a relative value transaction. You see more value in my product than the thing you trade it for.
And since you hate capitalism apparently term is what you’d replace it with.
Exactly, people here are being exposed for the totalitarian communists they are. The only alternative to the "profit motive" is to be a totalitarian slaver who FORCES people to work for free.
We don't know whether Russia's military is underperforming or not unless we know what it's been asked to do. What we might be observing is a "reconaissance in force"; hence, when serious opposition is offered, as at Kyiv or Kharkiv, the troops are sent somewhere else, rather than engaging in a pitched battle for rewards not worth the effort. I'm surprised Mr. Bacevich doesn't entertain this possibility.
I've noticed that accusing someone of being a Putin propagandist serves as a way of silencing dissenting views. Even the greatest haters of Putin are accused of being his allies by other haters of Putin and no one even asks the obvious questions: 1) if they are allies, what's the alliance about? and 2) how does hating Russian and loving Ukraine affect my life and my country?
The military record since the end of WWII is not inspiring. In addition to the vilest crimes committed against sovereign countries and populations, it has been the foremost producer of greenhouse gases, and a profligate money waster in unnecessary military hardware where fraud and price padding is the normal way of business. It hasn't made us safer and securer, but the very opposite, and we are on the brink of annihilation from several causes of our making, much of it involving the military in some way.
What we call a rational economic system excludes all human considerations: it is pure profit for its own sake, and for its own objectives and purposes. So it is irrational, a mad race to use up all resources as quickly as possible in a childish belief that some power will save us from our own actions. It didn't have to be this way. The answers were there and quite obvious, but we, or that is, our leaders and power wielders refused to look for, or recognize them. That is the saddest part of this mess, but it's worth a try to change it now that it can be denied only by the most perverse among us.
Round and round...I am so dizzy these days reading comments that it really shouts
out the magnitude of the problems we face. The rabbit hole l have chosen to
go down came about from a book I read not from a social back and forth tennis match.
Valcv Smil wrote a book entitled " How the World Really Works" . He is a scientist
by profession ..
"Vaclav Smil is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba."
Who??
Since retired I believe.
Bill Gates really likes the guy and reads everything by him. I do not suggest that is good or
bad. You decide. Most important though he offers no solutions to some very hard
observations from a scientist's perspective that are very hard to disagree with.
Reading a book is almost going back to horse and buggy days I know in comparison to the
immediate gratification and confirmation bias we can get via our digital handcuffs.
Do a Wiki on the guy before you all kick him to the curb. We can" t go back under our
current ideology living under capitalism....Infinite consumption on a finite planet is really
Alice in Wonderland.
He does not pull any punches and he will kick you out of your comfort zone, if anyone
has one these days, and perhaps
provide some clarity for you but no solutions because at this point there isn't any.
I remember as a teenager in the '60, the phrase "love it or leave it," as protests against the illegal Vietnam War kept growing. Back then, however, even the press turned against the war. I can't see that happening again, as the press is now a part of the deep state and only the government's position is allowed in the MSM. Now the old saying "love it or leave it" has become fashionable again. Nothing has been learned from the Vietnam folly and the country is now more divided than ever with talk of a coming second Civil War.
The underlying foundation of Capitalism is human freedom.
As Adam Smith recognized, when individuals are permitted to pursue their self-interest through markets, they are amazingly good at finding ways of bettering not only themselves but society as well.
The fact is, while the accumulation of capital (profit motive) is a feature of a market economy, it is individual freedom and the innovation that arises from it that drives the engine of capitalism.
The "profit motive" helps individuals decide how they--individually--will expend their personal energies and time (lives) to most efficiently aquire what they--individually--need and want to sustain their individual values of their individual life and that of others that they personally value.
The alternative to the profit motive is for your Master to make the decisions.
Yes. Thank you Dean. Voluntary. Funny how such a plain word can have such a soul- stirring ring to it. And, yes, the alternative to capitalism (the dirty, evil profit motive) is collectivism. Socialism. The virulent disease that has infected 80% of America.
These Notes from the Narrative Matrix should be read by 500 million people, at least.
You are speaking my language, Caitlin. I've been thinking a lot about how we can't even imagine how life could be different, if we didn't spend all our time making the rich richer. There's so so so much that we could do, and that doesn't mean under communism or socialism, under a decentralized system where we had power over our own lives and communities. It's possible and inevitable.
Everyone is talking about the problems, but who is talking about the solutions to our problems? We are. We have options. Decentralization. Governmental Transparency. Removing the money from politics. There is a better way to govern. Come discuss solutions with us.
The Top 3 Technologies We Should be Using to Take Control Of Our Governments Again, and how to create a movement to get there: https://joshketry.substack.com/p/the-top-3-technologies-we-should
Hi, Josh. I read your post and realized I'd read other posts of yours (I think on the carnivore diet). I like your thinking and writing, and I'm in total agreement that we need to be talking about solutions. I also like your digital thinktank and idea portal. My byline on my Third Paradigm card is 'a thinktank on community sovereignty.' And what my book proposes is an online simulation game so that people can model the policies for their own communities as a way of demonstrating their effectiveness.
The question I have for you is what's the minimum size population that should be allowed to control their own labor? You have some really good ideas for controlling corruption but once you give a few people the ability to control millions or hundreds of millions of people's labor, I think an individual or group with a good idea doesn't stand a chance. There's no opportunity to experiment and have 'the power of a good example.' What do you think?
Well, just wait a goddamn minute: “We can’t even imagine how our life could be different if we didn’t spend all our time making the rich richer”? But you lust for CHANGE period. Like Russia 1920, like N. Korea 1949, China, 1949. Boy, those guys changed the fuck out of things. The free market (what you sneeringly call “capitalism “), free enterprise are condemned as greed.
Self- interest, what you refer to as profit motive, is a universal HUMAN trait. It lies in every breast. It is what makes our miraculous free market so ………miraculous. Beware; what surrounds us now is cronyism. Nay , fascism, mercantilism.
People need to start doing some real thinking, here. Quit puking out word salad.
Hmmm, who did all that killing in N. Korea in 1949, and in China in 1949? I bet you got your story straight from the CIA stooge's mouth, or nipple as the case may be.
Ross, in the comment you’re reacting to, you missed the part that says “There's so so so much that we could do, and that doesn't mean under communism or socialism….” So your comment is off target.
But aside from that, the standard definition of a free market from britannica.com is “an unregulated system of economic exchange, in which taxes, quality controls, quotas, tariffs, and other forms of centralized economic interventions by government either do not exist or are minimal….” (If you have a different definition, please provide it.)
Just a simple question: under this free market system, how do you keep a river from becoming polluted?
Property rights of individuals downstream are what keep people upstream from polluting a river--but only when a society or government recognizes and protects property rights.
Amen
Under capitalism any pollution which most likely would lead to harm being done to people who have not consented to being put at risk would have to be legally prohibited. The intentional or negligent violation of individual rights, including the rights of life, liberty, and property, must be legally prohibited.
Britannica is nice but I prefer the ideal of capitalism as described by John Locke. Locke’s works derives the system of justice for human community life from the political principles of natural rights: every person is entitled to life, liberty, and property. Such a system rests on and promotes the ideals of the independence and the freedom of individual persons in their existence, actions, and productivity. No one may be forced to advance the goals of others. Relatedly, no one may be interfered with unless prior permission is secured, nor may one’s labor and produce be used, destroyed, or otherwise controlled by others without permission by the owner, regardless of the importance or nobility of the purpose at hand. These would be the basic political and legal principles of a just society, holds the capitalist, and the proper function of government is to protect the rights of the individual citizen, not to advance the “general welfare” (beyond making it possible for citizens to do so on their own and with each other’s voluntary help).
In plain terms, capitalism requires that pollution be punishable as a legal offense that violates individual rights.
I like Locke’s definition. It’s a lovely sentiment. But the devil is in the details. Your solution to preventing pollution—regulatory power—is the solution we have in the US right now. Yet, it is unsafe to drink from any major river (and even most remote streams and lakes). So, to handle the pollution (and other externalities) resulting from U.S. capitalism, communities must, at great expense, treat their drinking water, often without success (as the people of Detroit most famously discovered).
Capitalists—who often have entire legal departments working for them—can find workarounds to any existing regulation. Regulatory capture is their modus operandi. In the US and most other "democracies", it begins with corporate political contributions to elect business-friendly legislators, lobbying those elected friendly legislators to enact business-friendly laws or to nominate business-friendly political appointees to lead regulatory agencies, who then promote business-friendly senior bureaucrats who, after retirement, will work for the businesses they regulate.
Consequently, if you can find a clean river in the U.S., please report it immediately to the Society of Anomalous Discoveries.
In a capitalist society, regulations become the tool of capital, they help exclude competition and protect interests. Eventually everything becomes the tool of capital, even the basic human emotions fall prey to the extractive powers of capital writ large.
What you describe is NOT Capitalism but Facism or Corporatism. Corporations are NOT a feature of Capitalism. EACH AND EVERY corporation in the world is LICENSED and protected by some government. The government provides protections from various legal issues and makes and enforces "laws" against competition in exchange for "fees" and other "compensarions".
Government, it's military and its UN-constitutional agencies such as the EPA are the biggest polluters. What EPA did to the Animas River was cleary criminal and yet the agency still exists and has the same irresponsible people.
Detroit politicians monopolized the water system,, blocking private enterprise. The politicians got wealthy but they are not capable of delivering the promised safe and drinkable water to their tax-paying "customers". The safe and drinkable water is provided by private enterprise in sealed bottles which are also delivered by private enterprise.
and you can't see the link between the two? The perversion of water delivery by the profit motive? BTW, that bottle water isn't as safe as you might think, number one source of microplastics in human body... for now.
but that's not free market, that's communism.
Huh?
You raise an important point, Jack. What the 'free market' means is free of taxes and regulations for international corporations. Free trade agreements (which I've read) include an introductory paragraph or two about enhancing the lives of producers, then 99 pages of protections for investors--against labor laws, environmental protections, and interference by local gov'ts. They prohibit consumer communities from enacting 'local first' policies. In essence, they hold trade hostage unless the country complies with the IMF and WTO mechanisms to impose debt and enforce austerity. It's a part of the whole 'name things the opposite of what they are' scheme that's been so effective.
Greed and capitalism are actually considered a result of the materialism that often results from sedentary agriculture. Most hunter gatherer societies shame people for acquiring more than they need, at the expense of other tribe members, or beat their wives for not being a submissive sexual possession, at the expense of her humanity. This communal drive to help each other is what allowed humans to survive and evolve to create complex societies. Eschewing that communal drive in exchange for narcissistic greed has led to widespread ecological and economic collapse, underpinned by constant warfare, which is driven by a grotesque caricature of the profit motive. The worldwide military industrial complex holds conferences and has salespeople, like many industries. Unlike many industries, but like some, such as mining or finance, the deaths or destitution of people designated as ‘bad’ or ‘other’, by media lackeys, is required for the industry to profit and therefore continue. Have you ever read a book on cognitive science? George Lakoff is a good starting point.
Exactly. Greed nor capitalism is natural to humans, at all. It's been ingrained and we've been conditioned to accept it as natural but it absolutely is nowhere else in nature nor is it natural to humans who live in tune with the Earth.
You're right, Jennie, greed isn't human nature. The late David Graeber has a book called The Dawn of Everything that looks at the evidence for anarchy in anthropology--self-governing communities within 'interaction spheres.' He shows that they were very complex and could be large-scale but consciously chose systems that minimized accumulation and hoarding. Some were hunter-gatherers and some 'played' at farming, as he puts it, without becoming dependent on it. But there were even traditional grain cultures that avoided slavery and warfare--sometimes run by 'colleges of priestesses.' The more involvement of women, in fact, the less conflict and hierarchy there was both within communities and between them.
ps love George Lakoff and 'Don't Think of an Elephant!'
Amen brother. What these people who are pining for socialism don’t understand about capitalism is that capitalism is 100% voluntary. Capitalism is perverted only when someone comes in with force to influence what would otherwise be a voluntarily, mutually beneficial transaction. And no one has a monopoly on force and violence like a government. Governments ruin capitalism yet these fools, these misguided infantile people, want government to destroy capitalism and replace it with something more “equitable”. These people are demanding their own enslavement.
I'm gonna pay someone to kill you and take all your stuff before you can get enough capital to do the same to me. It's a free market.
That's dumb.
Now you figured it out.
Nah... your comment is dumb. Harming someone without their consent is not capitalism. It's tyranny. Read up on John Locke.
Haha, I had to read my 'puking word salad' again to see if you were responding to me or someone else. I don't mention capitalism (sneeringly or at all) or profit motive or free markets or free enterprise or greed, or change for the sake of change. I specifically state that I don't mean communism or socialism, as Jack points out, but as Dean misreads. So I don't think there's any point in arguing with you about things I didn't say.
What I did talk about was 1) decentralized 2) power over our own lives/ labor 3) power over our own community labor and 4) imagining what would be possible.
If you take it as an attack on self-interest when I say we're spending our time making the rich richer, you must be a venture capitalist. Unless you have other people working to increase your wealth, it's not in your self-interest to work for someone else's profit.
In my reply to Josh I talk about decentralization and modeling of policies so that there isn't change without understanding the consequences. Capitalism, as I define it, is a system that favors the accumulation of capital. Capital is ownership of the assets. I'm all for capitalism for communities and families, not bankers and 'investors'. You can't be for both.
Even though you seem to want things to stay the same, change is coming. The 'miracle' of the free market will be tested when the petrodollar loses its ability to take other people's products and resources with nothing in return. As JM states, keeping that 'miracle' going may have had something to do with militarism. Jus' sayin.
Again... government has perverted capitalism so much that it's not capitalism... there is nothing free about the market they've created. Government has tilted the table towards their preferred "capitalists".
Agreed. And my recent Substack shows how that government was set up by the very same 'preferred capitalists' of bankers, foreign merchants and financiers: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-constitutional-convention-coup
Subscribed.
Great essay, so Black Rock is worth ten trillion dollars, Trump gave them 4 trillion as a gift, lately the IMF gifted them another 5, so you know capitalism failed and the only way they can save themselves is by killing us before we figure out that they already know that it was never anything other than an ever expanding Ponzi scheme. They're up against a wall if they can't rob Russia and China, and like very soon; it's kill or be killed, that's why they don't care about starting a nuclear, because they're all dead billionaires walking.
Capitalism didn’t fail. Government failed. But hey, let’s get more government influence, give government more power. This time they’ll get it right.
Profit legalizes killing people, the greater the profit, the greater the killing is tolerated. A smart capitalist learns the code: Grow spinach contaminated by raw, uncomposted sewage which they are paid to spray onto fields, face an occasional recall for the spinach when excessive deaths finally occur, cost of which is already covered by profit using consumers to treat sewage, no jail. Buy from wholesale firms baby rattles, faulty cribs, unsafe baby clothes that were already recalled because they killed a multitude of children to sell into poor / lower middle-class neighborhoods, and don't face a fine or jail when caught. The larger the profit, the greater the tolerance, right Sackler Family?
I actually knew Alexandra Chalupa, got to hear a taxi driver in Kiev tell her to "go back to Canada!"
I don't know where she is actually from, but in Ukraine, the "Canadian nationalist" was a stock figure in jokes.
It’s funny this “Canadian” topic comes up, because lately I’ve been speculating about where Zelensky will move his “government in exile” after NATO collapses in, say, late January or early February when the frostbit and starving Northern Europeans burn down their parliaments.
He won’t be able to move it to another European country because by then the Europeans will be capitulating with Russia to get the gas turned back on (and they will pay in rubles). So I’m thinking Canada could be a very good fit for several reasons. First, Trudeau and Zelensky have the same father: Klaus Schwab. Second, Canada is way underpopulated mainly due to climate, so attracting a few million Ukrainians who don’t notice a little frostbite is a win-win—Ukrainian wheat farmers will love Saskatchewan. Third, the Canadian military is always a few brigades short of a military victory, so adding a few NATO trained brigades of Azov and Right Sector freedom fighters will be celebrated. (No doubt many Canadian troops will even want to adopt their flashy uniform insignia.) Lastly, moving the world’s most corrupt government six thousand miles closer to the U.S. will greatly reduce the travel and administrative costs of international financial crime and black market arms deals for CIA supported moderate rebels.
So, I’m predicting Zelensky will soon be ending most sentences with “Ehh”.
He'll feel right at home with the tiki torch parades in Alberta. (edit: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/canada-nazi-monuments-antisemitism/)
Let's hope they mostly remain Jokes, because when people take them seriously death follows as sure as day follows night.
Grant me the courage, dear Lord , to change the things I cannot accept
Wisdom to overcome limitations
Serenity to be free
And a way to play music
Profits actually are a kind of function of meritocracy and economic viability.
Asking for donations in this post is a kind of profit motive.
Imagine farming, for example. If you ran a shitty ass farm and lost money/livestock/etc. in fiat or barter deals, then you would go out of business while a more industrious and efficient farmer would pick up the additional business of your poor business and farming skills. These dynamics accord with the natural world whereby an animal that was a poor hunter relative to other such animals would not be able to pass on its genes, and so on and so forth.
Your lack of understanding of what true free market capitalism really is makes you constantly blame something that you are clearly not in full comprehension of.
Nobody who says this ever understands capitalism.
Caitlin, please explain how yours truly does not "understand capitalism"? You do realize that your response, while appreciated, is not an argument whatsoever.
Please clearly explain how I misunderstand capitalism, what your definition is and most importantly what your economic system solution is since you often complain about something you seem to not understand.
I could very well be wrong, but I kind of doubt it given that I have a degree in economics and can assure you that over 80% of what is taught at the finest American universities is neo-keynesian anti-free market drivel. Perhaps you are aquatinted with the Austrian school?
Thanks in advance.
「子曰：’不憤不啟。不悱不發。舉一隅不以三隅反，則不復也。’」
Let’s go Mises! Full Austrian Econ!!!
(Not sarcasm)
PS my business partner knew the main developers of bitcoin and we are currently in touch with the remaining early team as well as the hardcore btc proponents du jour.
I can assure you that they were ALL free market capitalists and continue to be to this very day which is why the blockchain was invented in the first place!
So perhaps you should abandon btc altogether Caitlin?
Seriously, I don't know what else to tell you except maybe your profit motive is in you asking daily for "donations" for your writings which is work which you monetized into a business. And you know, business is capitalism so....
Oh well.....I've done my part here and then some.
profits are the illegitimate extraction of surplus value from labor and the earth. Period.
You know little about capitalism, which by its own theory is a structural failure: Google public goods, externalities, and inter-generational equity.
Surplus value is a crude Marxist economic fallacy. Go learn basic economics. The only alternative to the "profit motive" is being a slaver and forcing people to work for free, which as a communist is exactly what you want.
"worker co-operatives and collective ownership"
These are all perfectly viable under capitalism genius, you can form whatever voluntary group you want and pool your property as you wish.
What you CANT do is use FORCE to take someone ELSE'S property and add to your "collective" without the owners consent. That is slavery, that is you using the fruits of someone else's labor by force, which as a communist is exactly what you want. Tyrant.
"public ownership of critical sectors, like .. transportation, education"
By public you mean Government? Or some collective committee? So you want to use FORCE to prevent people from creating private schools or transportation services?
Slaver tyrant, admittedly so, as all communists are.
The rest of your comment is just trowing terms around, either make an actual statement like an adult or go home.
Try worker co-operatives and collective ownership, with public ownership of critical sectors, like water, energy, transportation, education, parks/recreation, etc.
Still crickets in response to: Google public goods, externalities, and inter-generational equity.
Instead of "surplus value", try "rent" and "profit" - those are the terms of your failed model.
even the term "surplus value" is moronic.
but hey, how many (successful) businesses does the author and these commenters runs? My guess is zero.
these are ALL StANDARD neoclassical economic terms:
Google public goods, externalities, and inter-generational equity.
Ouch ... I like 2nd Smartest Guy's posts, but you rightly called called out a conflation of conversational meanings of 'capitalism'. 40 years as an applied linguist here, and I kinda like that 'the clarification of a proposition is its verification' thingy. I suspect that if Caitlin, 2nd Smartest, you, (and myself), ever had the opportunity to sit down and clarify definitions, we would all find more in common with each other than different. I suspect the fundamental self-destructive nature of humanity is at the genetic level, and identifying the sociopaths and their temperaments that have herded most of humanity long before 'capitalism' was coined, will point to a failure of morality to keep up with our capacity to rationalize.
Capitalism has a crystal clear definition: an economic system based on private property rights, free markets, respect for contracts, and free voluntary trade that creates a market price system.
Anyone who opposes capitalism is by definition a communist tyrant, just like Klaus Schwab and his globalist cabal which are literally the enforcement arm of international socialism, aiming to violate private property and individual rights (ie. the free market) and have world communism.
100%.
Which is why Klaus has a bust of Lenin in his office as per my substack article link.
It's really so sad how ignorant people are and attacking the vestiges of a system that is no longer, while the actual working system is to date the superior means to true freedom.
And true freedom is not predicated on identity politrix idiocy like "equality" which is the lie that today's technocommunism espouses to con people into failure and slavery to the state. Why true capitalism is such a savior is because it gives equal opportunity for anyone to succeed based on merit.
Any system that has a central bank (esp privately owned/controlled) is de facto not free market capitalist for the price of money (interest rates) is one of the most crucial signals in a market, and that can't be set by central planners, same as printing money is anti-free markets. I could go on and on, but suffice to say the author of this article has no clue about economics and never offers solutions while asking for profits in each of her posts.
capitalism is about as moral as a tiger hunting its prey. it is amoral and efficient and free. the morals are a function of the capitalists, not the system.
which is precisely why the 'do gooder' systems like communism are the most pernicious.
but hey, linguists and marxists in a bar....
Actual, moral consciousness evolved because it was, in a way, more efficient and constructive than pure competition. It's not particularly free, either, since the war of all against all requires constant, unswerving attention to one's competitors.
I challenge you to a debate on this. I dare you. I fucking double dog dare you. I’ll wipe the figurative floor with you.
You are debating me right here in the comments section.
What is your next point?
This is not a debate. I’m a bit painfully slow typist. Add to that this limiting medium. I mean a real debate where you would actually have to defend your thesis.
PS comrade, here is your "capitalist" Klaus with a bust of Lenin because this system is technocommunist and anti-capitalist and anti-profit which is precisely why you will own nothing and be happy:
https://2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com/p/the-one-world-government-is-communism
Klaus Schwab and his globalist cabal are literally the enforcement arm of international socialism, aiming to violate private property and individual rights (ie. the free market) and have world communism. All anti-capitalists are tyrants, and need to be treated as such.
I call them technocommunists and I have written much about that,
https://2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com/p/the-one-world-government-is-communism
https://2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com/p/how-technocommunism-will-institute
I call them techno-capitalist. No, wait, they are just plain old capitalist.
LOL, you sound like a bonafide Marxist.
Unreal.
Quit “googling “. Read some books. Economists like Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Friedman. Put a little effort into it.
You want books? Stop reading that right wing corporate libertarian crap. Try Polanyi's "The Great Transformation". Or Bluestone and Harrison's "The Deindustrialization of America" and "The Great U-Turn"
Or anything by Murray Boochin.
Hayek, Mises, Rothbard were all true free market proponents. See their interest rate position vs the neo-keynesians destroying free markets.
You stating that you will wipe the floor with an internet stranger is so stupidly presumptuous it's sad.
Who are you Ross, a renowned economist?
You should debate the author of this article and help her out.
LOL
Spoken like a true apparatchik, comrade commissar. You are a well trained unit of the proletariat. How much greater America would be if it had been more like the Soviet Union. Da, tovarisch?
all you got is smear. Another McCarthy-ite hack.
Loser. There that's an actual fact-based insult. The proof is right there in your comment.
Non sense. Voluntary transactions. I make something you want or need and voluntarily trade it for something you have. It’s a relative value transaction. You see more value in my product than the thing you trade it for.
And since you hate capitalism apparently term is what you’d replace it with.
Exactly, people here are being exposed for the totalitarian communists they are. The only alternative to the "profit motive" is to be a totalitarian slaver who FORCES people to work for free.
Correct.
If the misguided author of this article hates profits so much she really should stop asking for donations.
Oh well......
You express a fallacious false dichotomy. There are more than two options. People can eschew the profit motive and also not enslave people.
Amen.
THANKS ---- Worth careful reading:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/15/russias-underperforming-military-and-our-own/
Russia’s Underperforming Military (and Our Own) – Andrew Bacevich (9-15-22)
We don't know whether Russia's military is underperforming or not unless we know what it's been asked to do. What we might be observing is a "reconaissance in force"; hence, when serious opposition is offered, as at Kyiv or Kharkiv, the troops are sent somewhere else, rather than engaging in a pitched battle for rewards not worth the effort. I'm surprised Mr. Bacevich doesn't entertain this possibility.
About strange nude man attack on Pelosi: Paul Pelosi was most likely attacked by a male prostitute
An unavoidable conclusion about Paul Pelosi
1. Assailant in his underpants
2. Paul Pelosi knows his name and tells police he’s a “friend.”
3. Assailant asks “where’s Nancy?” to make sure she’s not home.
4. Pelosi takes bathroom break from spat and makes 911 call
Conclusion: This guy was a sex partner or male prostitute!
I've noticed that accusing someone of being a Putin propagandist serves as a way of silencing dissenting views. Even the greatest haters of Putin are accused of being his allies by other haters of Putin and no one even asks the obvious questions: 1) if they are allies, what's the alliance about? and 2) how does hating Russian and loving Ukraine affect my life and my country?
Intertribal love/hate. Facilitates something -- wonder what?
I assume from your name that you are Polish?
The military record since the end of WWII is not inspiring. In addition to the vilest crimes committed against sovereign countries and populations, it has been the foremost producer of greenhouse gases, and a profligate money waster in unnecessary military hardware where fraud and price padding is the normal way of business. It hasn't made us safer and securer, but the very opposite, and we are on the brink of annihilation from several causes of our making, much of it involving the military in some way.
What we call a rational economic system excludes all human considerations: it is pure profit for its own sake, and for its own objectives and purposes. So it is irrational, a mad race to use up all resources as quickly as possible in a childish belief that some power will save us from our own actions. It didn't have to be this way. The answers were there and quite obvious, but we, or that is, our leaders and power wielders refused to look for, or recognize them. That is the saddest part of this mess, but it's worth a try to change it now that it can be denied only by the most perverse among us.
Round and round...I am so dizzy these days reading comments that it really shouts
out the magnitude of the problems we face. The rabbit hole l have chosen to
go down came about from a book I read not from a social back and forth tennis match.
Valcv Smil wrote a book entitled " How the World Really Works" . He is a scientist
by profession ..
"Vaclav Smil is a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba."
Who??
Since retired I believe.
Bill Gates really likes the guy and reads everything by him. I do not suggest that is good or
bad. You decide. Most important though he offers no solutions to some very hard
observations from a scientist's perspective that are very hard to disagree with.
Reading a book is almost going back to horse and buggy days I know in comparison to the
immediate gratification and confirmation bias we can get via our digital handcuffs.
Do a Wiki on the guy before you all kick him to the curb. We can" t go back under our
current ideology living under capitalism....Infinite consumption on a finite planet is really
Alice in Wonderland.
He does not pull any punches and he will kick you out of your comfort zone, if anyone
has one these days, and perhaps
provide some clarity for you but no solutions because at this point there isn't any.
I remember as a teenager in the '60, the phrase "love it or leave it," as protests against the illegal Vietnam War kept growing. Back then, however, even the press turned against the war. I can't see that happening again, as the press is now a part of the deep state and only the government's position is allowed in the MSM. Now the old saying "love it or leave it" has become fashionable again. Nothing has been learned from the Vietnam folly and the country is now more divided than ever with talk of a coming second Civil War.
The underlying foundation of Capitalism is human freedom.
As Adam Smith recognized, when individuals are permitted to pursue their self-interest through markets, they are amazingly good at finding ways of bettering not only themselves but society as well.
The fact is, while the accumulation of capital (profit motive) is a feature of a market economy, it is individual freedom and the innovation that arises from it that drives the engine of capitalism.
The "profit motive" helps individuals decide how they--individually--will expend their personal energies and time (lives) to most efficiently aquire what they--individually--need and want to sustain their individual values of their individual life and that of others that they personally value.
The alternative to the profit motive is for your Master to make the decisions.
Yes. Thank you Dean. Voluntary. Funny how such a plain word can have such a soul- stirring ring to it. And, yes, the alternative to capitalism (the dirty, evil profit motive) is collectivism. Socialism. The virulent disease that has infected 80% of America.
Errant from start to finish