Capitalism in dispute

[Kiroen]

It's nice to see your interest in the debate, this is going to be absorbing

[Disparity between regions, worldwide hunger]

Kiroen, ask yourself if you care as much about a starving child thousands of miles away, as about a friend.
The answer is no, and for good reason (read: don't feel too bad about it). Our empathy has bounds (if it didn't, our minds would explode pretty much, or make us incredibly depressive). If you keep that in mind, it's easy to understand why, for example, so many people are dying due to preventable conditions. It's too far away from us, so we don't care as much.* It doesn't justify the situation, but to blame such situation fully on our economic system is a flawed argument. The disparity would still be there mainly due to our nature, no matter what system you're in (even if it conflicts with that system itself. 'Animal Farm' gives a good example for the communist system).
you don't even have to look that far to see such problems. For example, if you're not part of a certain minority, chances are it's woes are too far off your own life to really care that much.

The fact that we're unable to feel enough empathy towards hundreds of millions of people explains why we aren't rioting for world hunger, but that has nothing to do with the fact that those conditions are perpetuated because we live under a globalized capitalist system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_theory

Trying to sum it up with an example: African children and their mothers mine and sell coltan; due to the vast amount of uneducated workers in Africa and the lack of need for other jobs, illiterate work has a low trade value (workers compete between themselves); Apple buys the coltan at a very low price to make tablets at USA or China and they make a ton of money. The coltan mines may be owned by a local oligarch, and it may turn out that coltan is scarce and the local oligarch actually receives a ton of money from Apple too, but instead of using the acquired capital in improving the workers' conditions he becomes an Apple's shareholder, because If his region's workers actually had access to education, the jobs market at SadFacesColtanMine^TM's region would provoke that the people working at the mine would demand higher salaries, because If they didn't receive it, they'd happen to have an alternative.

Going a step further away that the Dependency theory goes, it also turns that African governments are specially weak, and by deciding to take social (or at the very least, patriotic) policies and raising the minimum wage by decree (or actually creating a minimum wage), it may turn out that a bunch of these local oligarchs make calcs and decide that buying weapons from American or Russian private armament companies and giving them to a bunch of fanatics that put the government in check, is actually worth the risk. And we couldn't pretend that our countries would be free or responsibility, because from the very moment that we allow weapon companies to become a financial product in stock markets, we are actually allowing people from our countries to gamble in favor of new wars breaking. Higher investment in weapon companies -> more supply -> less expensive weapons -> cheaper to start new wars.

[Advertising, consumerism]

You then proceed to describe the inherent increase of wealth disparity, which I can get behind, to then making it out to be a propaganda/slavery producer, which I can't.
You state that every person follows this logic (things you don't need, etc, etc), or is unable to think that well for themselves what they need.
One, that's not the case. People can be quite aware of what they need.
Two, a (little) bit of luxury isn't always bad, although you technically 'don't need it'. I admit, what you describe happens frequently, but not in general.
Three, advertising isn't evil, but necessary for companies to exist. You describe that it is used to make people believe that they need things they don't need, but they also inform people of stuff they do need. Example: you have a really bad case of dandruff, and you see advertising for stuff that gets rid of it. Advertising shortens the time you need to find products, whether you need it or not is left to you to decide.
The consumer behaviour you describe mostly hinges on how a person is raised. First, if someone learns how to value things properly when growing up, they will be better at judging these things. Secondly, critical thought is required for nearly everything (except religion, perhaps), so you need that skill in order to judge information better. So when you see an Axe body spray commercial, you don't (instantly) believe that spraying yourself with the expensive stench (personal opinion) causes women to flock on your pelvis.
However: parenting isn't easy. You're (almost) bound to do something wrong. Sometimes you give misguided advice to your children (example: you have to do this, that...to live happily, even though not all these things are required to live a fulfilling life). Other times you might give them too much/little. And those are just two of the myriad of small things you might accidentally do wrong.
Added to that, critical thought is something that you should be learnt in school, but takes a long time to master. If your education system is flawed on that aspect, you will notice the consequences.
The thing is, few of this is caused by capitalism itself, but rather by the people living in the system. You can argue that commercials are sometimes/often misleading, but to be mislead without critical thought is also for some part to blame on the people.

I'll start by inviting you to reread my previous post, because communication failed at some point.

In today's world, money is power: money allows you to buy a person's life in terms of hours worked, and this has created huge empires of propaganda: every single person in the first world countries has been convinced, at some moment of his lives, that they need to earn money to buy something that they don't need or don't even want, and some people even want to conquer that material wealth to impress people they don't know or don't even like.

I'll have to use more measured expressions, for the sake of the debate. I didn't mean that every person has been convinced forever, but that everyone ends up experimenting it (usually before reaching adult age). Further than that, there are huge differences between people. There is people (according to my experience, few) who has no problem in having an austere life, carefully considering what luxuries will bring them a better quality of life and even happiness, without little influence of advertising; but believing that it's within everyone's reach to easily achieve that is simply naive.

An example a bit alien to us men, is how women are expected to continuously renew their dressing. Encouraged by seasonal advertising campaigns, it's obvious that the media is able to promote (with a lot of success) consumerism, up to the point that not precisely few women suffer stress If they think their image isn't good enough for their circle's standards. An ex girlfriend of mine had similar concerns with consumerism, she often complained about how women were usually seen as less valuable basing on their looks, EVEN by fellow women, she didn't understand why she had to worry about how people she didn't care about saw her, and yet she suffered because of it; simply because of social pressure. A social pressure that advertising companies actively promote and exploit.

One thing are tools that allow people to easily find products and services that may improve their lives, and a very different one is the advertising bombardment we live under. For further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

You also got some of the workings of businesses wrong. You completely left out innovation or specifying to better appease a certain niche (it's really a kind of Darwinism, Darvan nails it with that term). All of those can lead to the growth sought. On the other hand, the wrong mutation can end unsuccesfully if it doesn't fit the environment it is in. For example: if the environment is people who demand their clothes being made under humane and fair conditions, a lot of clothing brands are going to be in trouble in that said environment. (I also would recommend to be nicer to the Chinese in general, things work quite different there. I understand your worries on that, though.)

Maybe the fact that I'm tired has something to do with this, but I don't get what you're referring to. As for the Chinese, in case it wasn't obvious, I don't have any problem with Chinese people, but with Chinese international companies (and you can actually change 'Chinese' by many other nationalities depending on the region and historical time).

[Political parties and their financing, private pressure on government]

Yes, some companies/people are more powerful than some governments with their affluence (cough*Philip Morris*cough*), and they can cripple those(*same cough*). However: 1. those actions can actually hurt those companies more than the countries they target if things backfire. 2. If governments would act rationally and fair (also non-corrupt or unbiased), their power would be way less. 3. An international approach would stop it dead in their tracks, even though such a thing happening is very unlikely. Still, I think it could be technically possible to gain similar effect without international support. (more about that later)
How parties/candidates geit money for their campaigns is different for most countries, but banks are very rarely involved like you state. It's too much money with a high risk of not getting their money back, so banks generally have no interest themselves in such an investment. Rather, lobbying groups (made up by numerous people of interest and companies) are prime investors. How it does work varies to rather fair to rather perverted.
In my country, parties get money from the state depending on their size plus membership fees. This makes them little to not dependent on sponsorship, reducing the influence of (affluent) people or companies on the parties themselves (our government in general, however, has some problems with that due to some very unique laws), and keeping campaigns fair in relative sizes.
In America, things work a little bit different, especially presidency campaigns. A clear explanation of the voting system and its problems can be found on CGP Grey's channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUS9mM8Xbbw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wC42HgLA4k, in that order).
As you said, presidential candidates rely on sponsors to fund their 100s of millions dollar campaigns, in exchange for favours to their sponsors when they are elected (this is not for all of the sponsors, but those still expect to profit from their supportes candidate being elected). Not only is this unfair to all other parties besides the two almost everyone knows (because they can't even dream of raising that much money for campaigns), but it makes those presidents less effective, not proposing certain necessary laws due to promises to their sponsors. This funding problem isn't only present in presidency, sadly.
Again, the problems aren't caused by capitalism, but they are exploited by it. The actual problem are the humans themselves. If you can cast away the problems caused by us, the grasp of bodies in the system slips away.

Maybe I was too enthusiastic in presenting the issue in a very systematical way: how parties make their finances varies greatly from country to country, to the point that your statement ["but banks are very rarely involved like you state. It's too much money with a high risk of not getting their money back, so banks generally have no interest themselves in such an investment."] is 100% false in my country, Spain*; while it may be really accurate for yours (*it's well known around here that Spanish banks forgive debts to the parties that legislate in favor of their interests). However, was it THAT different taking your example into account? If private fortunes can't directly bribe the party or candidate in question, they recur to the advertising of ideas that benefits them (be it by giving better positions to opinion makers with aligned interests in the mass media or by promoting lobbies that influence powerful individuals).

Oh, and then there's the extreme but not so uncommon case of rich people presenting themselves to elections and winning them, usually making use of their accumulated capital for it. Have you heard of Cañete? He is the Commissioner of Energy and Climate Action in the European Union, from Spain. Thankfully, several activists convoked demonstrations to make known the fact that he had important shares in oil companies (wolf watching the sheeps? Hello?), which is illegal according to the laws of the EU... So he sold those shares to his brother in law.

I don't quite understand how capitalism isn't related to this.

By

xXNasDavXx

Okay, as a history major I can say that I wasn't talking about the death and destruction that Hitler and Stalin did cause, I was more talking about how they both were able to take control of their respective countries. Stalin systematically destroyed all of his opponents and replaced them with his allies and supporters, whilst Hitler had the Night of the Long Knives where he killed his friends and foe alike and burned down the Reichstag. Part two of this, I am not to opposed to having a leader like Hitler, hear me out, the man was able to inspire Germans and was a very good speaker, however this is all lost because all anyone thinks about when you say Hitler is the Holocaust, it's very disappointing know that one bad can outweigh all the good that a person had possibly done before hand.

I could have very easily included Mao ZeDong as well but seeing as I was rushed for time I really didn't want to type it out, but society will never be able to achieve a system that is good enough for everyone, as I saw earlier human nature is the flaw if every politicalism, it's true fear and greed keep us from changing our political system. Hell I can't even say anything remotly close to communism without being told to shut up and that I'm a stupid Commie. It's all just a play and everyone right now is a willing actor/actress.

Blaming it on the human's nature seems like the easiest way to deal with it, but I don't think that will make the world a place any better when I'm retired and want to live the rest of my days without being concerned about my grandchildren having any kind of future. That is, If I have any kind of good future myself. It may be disgusting to fight against it, but If the play's curtain isn't tore out by the people who knows that it's rigged, it won't be revealed as what it is until it's too late.

And @Jericho: No hurries, I understand that this takes a lot of time and we don't always have it.

Edited August 9, 2015 by Kiroen

[laggless01]

I think we've all been arguing about something misunderstood.

Capitalism is the notion that things can be (largely) privately owned, and ownership is bought with money.
Communism stands opposed to that, which is structured upon common ownership on means of production, and absence of money, state (and social classes, but that one isn't so pronounced today as in the Ancien Régime)

We in this thread are most of the time nagging about structural problems related to the economic systems which work on the concept of Capitalism (like Free Market, for example). The arguments most of us are making (myself included) have been mainly blaming Capitalism for the woes of the economic systems we use based upon them. It's like blaming the concept of ball games for baseball to be boring (PURELY HYPOTHETICAL).

As such, this thread is kinda mixing up what two separate threads should be about: one about the problems of the economic systems, and one about whether we should change the very foundations of private ownership and trade it for a system based on collective ownership. Or perhaps, maybe find a middle way.
We should make this clear distinction in order to get anywhere. That way, arguments stated will be less confusing and more accurate.

[NickCrash]

I may as well put in a few words, even though I am by no means an expert on the matter.

In my opinion the two subjects belong to the same discussion for the mere purpose of reaching a conclusion. It is understandable that the discussion may fly in circles and at some points is is easy to derail it either by mistake or on purpose, but the separation will ultimately lead to one ranting thread and another that begins setting the basis of the debate whether to switch or not, but will end up being a v2 of this one, as transcendance from one system to another cannot be abrupt.

We should at this point consider whether it is humans that exploit the system's flaws, or it is the system itself that urges the humans to move towards that direction. The usage of the basis the system sets might be a slightly different discussion, aimed towards eg the money spent on defense while the educational systems face the most serious of issues, in terms of critical thinking, amounts of useful information gathered, and creation of skills for later use.

As correctly stated, the farther the problem is, the less you care about, due to lack of empathy. Of course "far" may not always be described in terms of length-distance. Jericho mentioned the companies that thrive on the market while creating jobs for more people as their capital increases. Of course they cannot be considered a charity, as the social benefits their actions create are caused by the need to move forward in the competitive scene. Their higher taxation will hurt them due to the sudden loss of capital, and the flow of money will decrease on their part. At the same time, with proper legislation, smaller companies will get the chance to compete with them, which in turn will continue the process of creating more jobs, coming from either the economic collosus or the smaller ones trying to reach a higher standard. The point is that in cases like this it is not the system that causes the problems, but the way your enforcement of laws allows exploitation or lets companies run wild and create monopolies, in fear that the current situation collapses and leads to something worse, no matter how small your current gain is. Given how intertwined the various types of companies are, it's not surprising.

Moving along those lines and straying a bit from the main axis of the topic, I'd like to make a point on how the state/country/continent prefers to still enforce the same agenda on the current events, investing more on certain things it doesn't need (like the army) and letting others under-subsidized or underdeveloped, due to the give and take from their sponsorship and how this downgrades the economy.

Regarding the vast amounts of war expenditure and the infographics posted above, it stands to no reason to invest that much money in the army, the political campaigns and non-renewable sources of energy. Following this argument, and given that almost everyone can undestand that the problems arousing in the current capitalistic society have as a major factor the *human nature, investing in education (especially being free for all, but that's another subject) and trying to make it more efficient from the very first grades of elementary school, to the highest classes in uni, seems to be the best start in creating solutions for the problems in capitalism, or, if we decide to follow that path, in the creation of a new system that is in theory fairer and distributes wealth based on intelligence, working hours, difficulty, and amount of knowledge needed for the job.

((*here, I am referencing human nature, as the model of humans created in the current society, the ones that follow the basic norm "do what you want and strive only for yourself, disregarding the others" and follow a mentality that "other's problems do not concern me"))

Since education has been industrialized, and up to a point it has become just another company field, it could also follow the basic rules any capitalistic model does. However the case is not as such, due to the only source of steady income being the tuition. Certainly the sponsorships and state funding helps, but that is more targeted towards research, which in turn means that the company-uni is more inclined to spend their money towards that field, rather than encourage more sufficient learning in the classrooms. Certainly there is constant progress in that domain too, but it doesn't skyrocket like the others, for the mere reason that money runs the company, and money goes where the investor wants it to.

Solving this issue, or at least balancing it, leads to the creation of more self-aware individuals with empathy and of course higher academic knowledge and skill, which leads to the creation of a more efficient workforce which at the same time puts the general good above the personal gain, simply because it can see that the profits outweigh the problems that are possibly caused by this mentality.
Certainly the statements above might contain flaws caused by the non-fluency of the English language and might sound a bit optimistic, but bear with me there.

Returning to the foundations of the discussion, and replying partially to posts above, a successful model of Communism cannot be illustrated here, because it has not existed yet. In theory the various pros could be seen in the early USSR under Lenin, but that's it. Human nature again leads to corruption, and while someone might say that an individual is less qualified to hold a country than a group of "experts", they should be reminded that those "techs" are humans too. Ideas are always subject to lobbying and as such, even if several minds may be more efficient than 1 in 7/10 cases, bad decisions are always part of the game. Especially when those stack on each other, either by following a route that is fundamentally flawed, or by sheer inability to fix earlier problems and trying to patch them with disputable solutions, they can lead an economic system to fail miserably and be treated as an atrocity in certain western societies.

The very concept of Socialism includes the benefits of Capitalism with the social concern of Communism, at least in theory. Several models of basically capitalistic economies with varying levels of socialism (seen more in the northern European countries) are being proven more effective than the mere notion of "put more capital on the capital" that are now in place in US/UK. As mentioned before, moving to the other system means having in theory closed the loopholes and in order to do that, a complete view of the "new" system needs to be already put in paper. Moving from one system to another will need constant changes in legislation and that's not only hard to do because of reliance to certain interests due to sponsorship (solved by the change in voting methods, if the links from Grey are correct -- can't see them now due to bad internet connection, but I suppose are the ones on the animal kingdom) but also difficult to implement because behind all changes hides the human mentality, afraid of change and complacent on a system that may not be good enough for them, but is the one that they know how to work around in order to survive or just "have it better than the guy next door", and perhaps some with -communication power- know how to manipulate the system's anomalies in their favor.

The latter is the main reason any system that is not doomed to fail immediately after the first hardships arise (and of course not dealt with massive bloodbaths) keeps on surviving with periods of prosperity and others of crisis. As Jericho mentioned the pendulum as a simile for the system to get back on track when the shit hits the fan, it is actually in the very essence of capitalism to have periods of problems, because the constant accumulation simply leads to that point. The only problem is that the gradual redistribution may not work in the people's favor all the time, as the prerequisite to remove the people who control the media and have influence over presidential candidates or politicians in general (to speak of more countries and political systems) is far from being applied, since they inherently become a part of the system itself as much as the political parties in question allow them to, thus turning a democracy into an oligarchy (but that's for another time). Even if we bypass this obstacle, the whole world has the same system, meaning that the start needs to global and simultaneous for it to work. Otherwise, assuming one country with enough economic power (in order to maintain it) starts moving towards the new system, the others will lobby against it because their short-term interests are being hindered, thus forcing it to fail with multiple embargos and propaganda. Recap: before providing measures to enforce the "pendulum" one must realize the reasons why the people, the system, or even the economy itself will not accept it or project it as a viable solution.

[Maelstrom]

I still need to read more in here and write a more in depth post but... I found this now and figured you guys would appreciate it.

[laggless01]

I may as well put in a few words, even though I am by no means an expert on the matter.

In my opinion the two subjects belong to the same discussion for the mere purpose of reaching a conclusion. It is understandable that the discussion may fly in circles and at some points is is easy to derail it either by mistake or on purpose, but the separation will ultimately lead to one ranting thread and another that begins setting the basis of the debate whether to switch or not, but will end up being a v2 of this one, as transcendance from one system to another cannot be abrupt.

We should at this point consider whether it is humans that exploit the system's flaws, or it is the system itself that urges the humans to move towards that direction. The usage of the basis the system sets might be a slightly different discussion, aimed towards eg the money spent on defense while the educational systems face the most serious of issues, in terms of critical thinking, amounts of useful information gathered, and creation of skills for later use.

As correctly stated, the farther the problem is, the less you care about, due to lack of empathy. Of course "far" may not always be described in terms of length-distance. Jericho mentioned the companies that thrive on the market while creating jobs for more people as their capital increases. Of course they cannot be considered a charity, as the social benefits their actions create are caused by the need to move forward in the competitive scene. Their higher taxation will hurt them due to the sudden loss of capital, and the flow of money will decrease on their part. At the same time, with proper legislation, smaller companies will get the chance to compete with them, which in turn will continue the process of creating more jobs, coming from either the economic collosus or the smaller ones trying to reach a higher standard. The point is that in cases like this it is not the system that causes the problems, but the way your enforcement of laws allows exploitation or lets companies run wild and create monopolies, in fear that the current situation collapses and leads to something worse, no matter how small your current gain is. Given how intertwined the various types of companies are, it's not surprising.

Moving along those lines and straying a bit from the main axis of the topic, I'd like to make a point on how the state/country/continent prefers to still enforce the same agenda on the current events, investing more on certain things it doesn't need (like the army) and letting others under-subsidized or underdeveloped, due to the give and take from their sponsorship and how this downgrades the economy.

Regarding the vast amounts of war expenditure and the infographics posted above, it stands to no reason to invest that much money in the army, the political campaigns and non-renewable sources of energy. Following this argument, and given that almost everyone can undestand that the problems arousing in the current capitalistic society have as a major factor the *human nature, investing in education (especially being free for all, but that's another subject) and trying to make it more efficient from the very first grades of elementary school, to the highest classes in uni, seems to be the best start in creating solutions for the problems in capitalism, or, if we decide to follow that path, in the creation of a new system that is in theory fairer and distributes wealth based on intelligence, working hours, difficulty, and amount of knowledge needed for the job.

((*here, I am referencing human nature, as the model of humans created in the current society, the ones that follow the basic norm "do what you want and strive only for yourself, disregarding the others" and follow a mentality that "other's problems do not concern me"))

Since education has been industrialized, and up to a point it has become just another company field, it could also follow the basic rules any capitalistic model does. However the case is not as such, due to the only source of steady income being the tuition. Certainly the sponsorships and state funding helps, but that is more targeted towards research, which in turn means that the company-uni is more inclined to spend their money towards that field, rather than encourage more sufficient learning in the classrooms. Certainly there is constant progress in that domain too, but it doesn't skyrocket like the others, for the mere reason that money runs the company, and money goes where the investor wants it to.

Solving this issue, or at least balancing it, leads to the creation of more self-aware individuals with empathy and of course higher academic knowledge and skill, which leads to the creation of a more efficient workforce which at the same time puts the general good above the personal gain, simply because it can see that the profits outweigh the problems that are possibly caused by this mentality.
Certainly the statements above might contain flaws caused by the non-fluency of the English language and might sound a bit optimistic, but bear with me there.

Returning to the foundations of the discussion, and replying partially to posts above, a successful model of Communism cannot be illustrated here, because it has not existed yet. In theory the various pros could be seen in the early USSR under Lenin, but that's it. Human nature again leads to corruption, and while someone might say that an individual is less qualified to hold a country than a group of "experts", they should be reminded that those "techs" are humans too. Ideas are always subject to lobbying and as such, even if several minds may be more efficient than 1 in 7/10 cases, bad decisions are always part of the game. Especially when those stack on each other, either by following a route that is fundamentally flawed, or by sheer inability to fix earlier problems and trying to patch them with disputable solutions, they can lead an economic system to fail miserably and be treated as an atrocity in certain western societies.

The very concept of Socialism includes the benefits of Capitalism with the social concern of Communism, at least in theory. Several models of basically capitalistic economies with varying levels of socialism (seen more in the northern European countries) are being proven more effective than the mere notion of "put more capital on the capital" that are now in place in US/UK. As mentioned before, moving to the other system means having in theory closed the loopholes and in order to do that, a complete view of the "new" system needs to be already put in paper. Moving from one system to another will need constant changes in legislation and that's not only hard to do because of reliance to certain interests due to sponsorship (solved by the change in voting methods, if the links from Grey are correct -- can't see them now due to bad internet connection, but I suppose are the ones on the animal kingdom) but also difficult to implement because behind all changes hides the human mentality, afraid of change and complacent on a system that may not be good enough for them, but is the one that they know how to work around in order to survive or just "have it better than the guy next door", and perhaps some with -communication power- know how to manipulate the system's anomalies in their favor.

The latter is the main reason any system that is not doomed to fail immediately after the first hardships arise (and of course not dealt with massive bloodbaths) keeps on surviving with periods of prosperity and others of crisis. As Jericho mentioned the pendulum as a simile for the system to get back on track when the shit hits the fan, it is actually in the very essence of capitalism to have periods of problems, because the constant accumulation simply leads to that point. The only problem is that the gradual redistribution may not work in the people's favor all the time, as the prerequisite to remove the people who control the media and have influence over presidential candidates or politicians in general (to speak of more countries and political systems) is far from being applied, since they inherently become a part of the system itself as much as the political parties in question allow them to, thus turning a democracy into an oligarchy (but that's for another time). Even if we bypass this obstacle, the whole world has the same system, meaning that the start needs to global and simultaneous for it to work. Otherwise, assuming one country with enough economic power (in order to maintain it) starts moving towards the new system, the others will lobby against it because their short-term interests are being hindered, thus forcing it to fail with multiple embargos and propaganda. Recap: before providing measures to enforce the "pendulum" one must realize the reasons why the people, the system, or even the economy itself will not accept it or project it as a viable solution.

I agree with this in the general sense. In my opinion, the main problem that stands in the way of progressing any system is that a minority of people can maintain an unfair status-quo in favor of themselves, on politic and socio-economic grounds. That's why I think that the system you choose mainly affects how you have to solve said thing.