[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ironically, capitalism destroys many small-scale operations like this.
[/quote]
How?
Legit curious as to how this happens, according to you.
Maybe small businesses go under because there is no market for the goods the business is attempting to sell. Maybe the business owner made bad business decisions. I just fail to see how capitalism destroys small businesses.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]mbm693 wrote:
You guys seem to have a lot of history together, so forgive me if I’m overlooking something, but you both seem to be trapped in a false dichotomy. There isn’t only capitalism and socialism. Intelligent regulation is capable of creating a hybrid that’s the better than either system.
Also, if anyone was curious, T-Nation’s spell check objects strenuously if you put an e in gray. [/quote]
“Intelligent regulation is possible” ?
Where is it then?
[/quote]
you beat me to it. intelligent regulation is near impossible. It should not be considered an option in the absence of a strong constitution or regulatory limits. We have neither.
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
People voting themselves favors from the treasury is called “nature” now?
[/quote]
Yes exactly, you dispute that?
[quote][quote]
It’s human nature that rules will be bent at a point when the strongest competitor(s) will cross some line and the others will have to follow in terms of roughlessness.[/quote]
Without the power of government to coerce, the strongest have absolutely no line to cross that won’t benefit the consumer.
[/quote]
Again, the opposite is true, and that is human nature. The consumer is irrelevant, as it’s about quarterly figures, which can be measured with tools that have little to do with consumers or real markets.
[quote][quote]
I have zero problems with free markets, but how do I let them stay that way?[/quote]
It’s called a constitution. We have one. People are ignoring it because they think markets aren’t “really” free. The irony is painful.[/quote]
Markets are free the split second they are created. From there it goes downhill because of human nature and bad system management. You can try to reap benefits as long as you can.
Hong Kong was an artificial island. The western world, or better: earth, is not.
[quote][quote]
Humans have the tendency to cheat and act dumb, or better to create systems too complex for them to understand.[/quote]
So why are you trying to control them? You can’t. They WILL abuse a system if a system has power. So let there be no system with sufficient power to abuse. The ONLY system like that? Government.[/quote]
I’m not trying to control, merely observe, for the time being.
Nice work parroting ideology, however.Power is always there in the first place. Again, human nature. One of the prime errors of libertarianism.
There is a steep hierarchy the moment the number of men is greater then “1”. (woman are no exception but,project and organize power differently)
Also, government isn’t necessarily the top dog, even in, for instance, “modern western socialism”.
[quote][quote]
But also, multinational companies that harvest a third world country’s ressources that nobody from upper management will ever see with his own eyes. No identification with a product and no ties or responsibility to the land.[/quote]
This is a problem… how? They’re paying workers right? No coercion? No slave labor?[/quote]
Slave Labour, no perspective, ecological pigout, bribe-orgies…
[quote]
Why is this at all a problem? And nations don’t “own” resources. So third-world country’s don’t have any. Individuals or groups of individuals own resources, the only time this isn’t true is when a government owns something.
The problem with this statement is that you’re pretending an entire nation is a single entity, when such a thing is preposterous. [/quote]
Again, nice mantras you’re chanting there.
The resources Germany had, for instance, helped to build structures, that make us one of the economic top dogs today.
We can now do pretty good without them.
Nations and borders are real, deal with it.
If you’re a poor chap in Africa, and some multi-national entity is exploiting your backyard and has the power and chuzpe to leave you only a pile of stinking shit, that’s reality, too.
It may be your capital, but they will simply take it, using the secret trick a libertarian pretend he doesn’t see: Theft.
Again: Nations are there mainly for the reason to protect capital.
[quote]Dustin wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ironically, capitalism destroys many small-scale operations like this.
[/quote]
How?
Legit curious as to how this happens, according to you.
Maybe small businesses go under because there is no market for the goods the business is attempting to sell. Maybe the business owner made bad business decisions. I just fail to see how capitalism destroys small businesses.[/quote]
In fact capitalism provides the healthy environment for those competitive enough to thrive and thus makes it possible for even more businesses to come into existence. And it is all managed with free floating market prices.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ignoring the important role that government has played in facilitating and, in many instances, actively contributing toward the wealth of private companies (read, you’re wrong), it doesn’t matter, because they wouldn’t have had the funding if left to the market anyway.[/quote]
My brother in law saved his money for several years, quit his job and opened a furniture store, that was 7 years ago. He does pretty well with that store, he has 8 employees, and pays his taxes on time.
Now tell me how did government help him? I can tell you how they hurt him, but how exactly did they help him?[/quote]
It printed currency that everyone used and recognized to purchase his goods. It made sure that nay banks that stored or loan him money, didn’t just walk away with it, raise interest rates through the roof and FORCE him to pay-up. It provided a police force which protected the business from thieves and vandals, and on the occasion it failed, it had a justice and compensation system in place to deal with it. It also insured that any privately purchased insurance contract he might have partaken in was upheld by both parties. It built public roads so that customers could get the the business relatively quickly and safely. It provided water and electricity, so he didn’t need his own well, water-treatment, sewage system, and power-plant. I think the list goes on.
[quote]Spartiates wrote:
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ignoring the important role that government has played in facilitating and, in many instances, actively contributing toward the wealth of private companies (read, you’re wrong), it doesn’t matter, because they wouldn’t have had the funding if left to the market anyway.[/quote]
My brother in law saved his money for several years, quit his job and opened a furniture store, that was 7 years ago. He does pretty well with that store, he has 8 employees, and pays his taxes on time.
Now tell me how did government help him? I can tell you how they hurt him, but how exactly did they help him?[/quote]
It printed currency that everyone used and recognized to purchase his goods. It made sure that nay banks that stored or loan him money, didn’t just walk away with it, raise interest rates through the roof and FORCE him to pay-up. It provided a police force which protected the business from thieves and vandals, and on the occasion it failed, it had a justice and compensation system in place to deal with it. It also insured that any privately purchased insurance contract he might have partaken in was upheld by both parties. It built public roads so that customers could get the the business relatively quickly and safely. It provided water and electricity, so he didn’t need his own well, water-treatment, sewage system, and power-plant. I think the list goes on.
[/quote]
And why is the government needed for any of this?
[quote]Spartiates wrote:
[quote]ZEB wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ignoring the important role that government has played in facilitating and, in many instances, actively contributing toward the wealth of private companies (read, you’re wrong), it doesn’t matter, because they wouldn’t have had the funding if left to the market anyway.[/quote]
My brother in law saved his money for several years, quit his job and opened a furniture store, that was 7 years ago. He does pretty well with that store, he has 8 employees, and pays his taxes on time.
Now tell me how did government help him? I can tell you how they hurt him, but how exactly did they help him?[/quote]
It printed currency that everyone used and recognized to purchase his goods. It made sure that nay banks that stored or loan him money, didn’t just walk away with it, raise interest rates through the roof and FORCE him to pay-up. It provided a police force which protected the business from thieves and vandals, and on the occasion it failed, it had a justice and compensation system in place to deal with it. It also insured that any privately purchased insurance contract he might have partaken in was upheld by both parties. It built public roads so that customers could get the the business relatively quickly and safely. It provided water and electricity, so he didn’t need his own well, water-treatment, sewage system, and power-plant. I think the list goes on.
[/quote]
So you see what they have done but you do not consider if what they have done is necessary or if it being necessary that it is a necessary service requiring a monopoly of compulsion to enforce. After all, market participants do not need to use firearms to require contracts to be enforced.
Why can markets handle the delivery of telephones and computers, for example, but not electricity, sewage and water? What are the criteria that make these goods unique to the other goods that you can walk into any story and freely purchase?
Isn’t it telling that the majority of these services are operated and managed by private coops in the first place even though they may be administered by bureaucracy?
Slavery was not continued after industrialization because it is not feasible. However, capitalism was just fine with slavery until it became impracticable. This should not be a surprise when you consider that personal gain is the entire point of capitalism.
Moreover, while those accomplishments are significant, it is fairly misleading to call them “results of capitalism.” The vast improvements in human welfare seen since the Industrial Revolution are due to, surprise, industrialization. Private ownership of means of production had existed for some time before the advent of the steam engine and the factory, yet the mass of people were still impoverished. The Soviet Union also saw a dramatic rise in their quality of life after industrialization, yet this is certainly not attributed to capitalism (the question over the degree to which the USSR can be considered “socialist” notwithstanding).
I direct you to the graph of pirate vs global temperature.
Certainly, capitalism has done a very good job of developing society’s productive capacity, but that task is completed now. Furthermore, you still seem reluctant to talk about the less benevolent things it has been responsible for, yet these types of misfortunes which occurred under a socialist regime are always cited as evidence of that system’s barbarism. Even you must acknowledge the double standard.
[quote]And you miss the point in that those scientist or governments that might have occasionally discovered were most likely driven and funded by capitalistic endeavors.[/quute]
Proof? Which ones are you talking about? Scientists have been around for thousands of years. It was very clever of capitalists to take credit for them. Of course, to the extent that wealth is produced by a capitalist society and then redirected toward research in such-and-such an area, then you’re right, but 1) we’ve seen how a capitalist mode of production is by no means necessary to produce things, so innovation and research will not die away with its passing, just as they did not sprout into being with its arrival., and 2) because the state was required to divert the funds away from their “natural” destination, regardless of their source, then the resulting discoveries cannot rightly be credited to the capitalism or the free market.
Yet you have really no reason whatsoever to believe this. Why is this the case? What led you to this conclusion?
[quote]orion wrote:But, but you dont understand!
When they do that they become BIG BUSINESSES THAT CRUSH SMALL BUSINESSES!
Sure, those small businesses built shitty mousetraps that nobody wanted, especially not at the price they sold it, but it is the path to destruction anyway.
Or something like that.
[/quote]
Well, you’re the one that posted a video crying about some girl and her lemonade stand, jackass. Schizophrenic much?
[quote]Dustin wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ironically, capitalism destroys many small-scale operations like this.
[/quote]
How?
Legit curious as to how this happens, according to you.
Maybe small businesses go under because there is no market for the goods the business is attempting to sell. Maybe the business owner made bad business decisions. I just fail to see how capitalism destroys small businesses.[/quote]
Well, according to the admittedly obscure source of every single economics 101 textbook in the world, what makes capitalism so great is competition. Do you suppose that there are “weight classes” for this competition? Isn’t that a frequent complaint against Wal-Mart? That they come in and decimate local businesses?
In addition, some government regulations disproportionately burden small businesses, to the advantage of larger firms, of course.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]mbm693 wrote:
You guys seem to have a lot of history together, so forgive me if I’m overlooking something, but you both seem to be trapped in a false dichotomy. There isn’t only capitalism and socialism. Intelligent regulation is capable of creating a hybrid that’s the better than either system.
Also, if anyone was curious, T-Nation’s spell check objects strenuously if you put an e in gray. [/quote]
“Intelligent regulation is possible” ?
Where is it then?
[/quote]
you beat me to it. intelligent regulation is near impossible. It should not be considered an option in the absence of a strong constitution or regulatory limits. We have neither.
[/quote]
Except that it kept us out of this kind of a recession for 40 years, jackass.
Don’t bother to let the real world intrude, though. I’ll close the door behind me. And the windows. And I’ll shut off the TV. And radio. And I’ll take your newspaper.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
[quote]Dustin wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ironically, capitalism destroys many small-scale operations like this.
[/quote]
How?
Legit curious as to how this happens, according to you.
Maybe small businesses go under because there is no market for the goods the business is attempting to sell. Maybe the business owner made bad business decisions. I just fail to see how capitalism destroys small businesses.[/quote]
In fact capitalism provides the healthy environment for those competitive enough to thrive and thus makes it possible for even more businesses to come into existence. And it is all managed with free floating market prices.[/quote]
Actually, government (oh no!) provides the healthy environment for these companies to thrive, making it possible for more to come into existence. Otherwise, they would be immediately swallowed by larger companies.
This recession was also managed with free floating market prices. They’re not a panacea.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]dhickey wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]mbm693 wrote:
You guys seem to have a lot of history together, so forgive me if I’m overlooking something, but you both seem to be trapped in a false dichotomy. There isn’t only capitalism and socialism. Intelligent regulation is capable of creating a hybrid that’s the better than either system.
Also, if anyone was curious, T-Nation’s spell check objects strenuously if you put an e in gray. [/quote]
“Intelligent regulation is possible” ?
Where is it then?
[/quote]
you beat me to it. intelligent regulation is near impossible. It should not be considered an option in the absence of a strong constitution or regulatory limits. We have neither.
[/quote]
Except that it kept us out of this kind of a recession for 40 years, jackass.
[/quote]
No it didn’t. It just delayed it and allowed it to become worse than it otherwise would have been had the market been allowed to correct. Regulation cannot prevent anything because prevention implies the regulators not only know when something is going to happen but also what precisely will cause it.
The regulators so far have not seen this coming but the free market economists have been railing against the policies directly related to it…?
There are many people who could use a dose of the real world…not many people here who are proponents of free markets though.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:So you see what they have done but you do not consider if what they have done is necessary or if it being necessary that it is a necessary service requiring a monopoly of compulsion to enforce. After all, market participants do not need to use firearms to require contracts to be enforced.
Why can markets handle the delivery of telephones and computers, for example, but not electricity, sewage and water? What are the criteria that make these goods unique to the other goods that you can walk into any story and freely purchase?
Isn’t it telling that the majority of these services are operated and managed by private coops in the first place even though they may be administered by bureaucracy?[/quote]
That’s a great idea! Let’s have privately built and managed water lines, sewer systems, power grids, roads, and the whole nine yards. Oh, except that they would each need their own set of facilities, though. After all, I’m not gonna build a road and let just anyone drive on it. You’ve got to pay me. So if you want 19 competing electrical grids and sewer lines, and toll roads everywhere, knock yourself out.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Actually, government (oh no!) provides the healthy environment for these companies to thrive, making it possible for more to come into existence. Otherwise, they would be immediately swallowed by larger companies.
This recession was also managed with free floating market prices. They’re not a panacea.
[/quote]
No company is “swallowed”. The fact that you use improper verbs to describe market activities is one of the reasons why you are confused.
Companies can be bought and sold…so what if smaller companies are forced to go out of business because they cannot deliver desired goods at the right price…? It is a shame though that big business can use big government through fascistic policies to ensure their own success.
It is a bigger shame that you keep arguing the same invalid point. We are arguing that coercion is the problem and you keep pointing to a form of coercion being the problem. Capitalism makes no reference to coercion. You do not accept our definition of the marriage of government with business as fascism so we cannot carry on this discussion any further with you.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Ironically, capitalism destroys many small-scale operations like this.
How?
Legit curious as to how this happens, according to you.
Maybe small businesses go under because there is no market for the goods the business is attempting to sell. Maybe the business owner made bad business decisions. I just fail to see how capitalism destroys small businesses.
Well, according to the admittedly obscure source of every single economics 101 textbook in the world, what makes capitalism so great is competition. Do you suppose that there are “weight classes” for this competition? Isn’t that a frequent complaint against Wal-Mart? That they come in and decimate local businesses? [/quote]
I don’t understand your point considering Wal-Mart was once a small, local business.
[quote]
In addition, some government regulations disproportionately burden small businesses, to the advantage of larger firms, of course.[/quote]
And this isn’t capitalism. This is economic Fascism, which Lifticus has already pointed out.
How can we discuss capitalism if you don’t even know what it is?
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:So you see what they have done but you do not consider if what they have done is necessary or if it being necessary that it is a necessary service requiring a monopoly of compulsion to enforce. After all, market participants do not need to use firearms to require contracts to be enforced.
Why can markets handle the delivery of telephones and computers, for example, but not electricity, sewage and water? What are the criteria that make these goods unique to the other goods that you can walk into any story and freely purchase?
Isn’t it telling that the majority of these services are operated and managed by private coops in the first place even though they may be administered by bureaucracy?[/quote]
That’s a great idea! Let’s have privately built and managed water lines, sewer systems, power grids, roads, and the whole nine yards[quote]
Yes, it is an awesome idea.
Why could not one company own the facility and rent the service to operating companies? Of course this is but one of many possible market solutions. Besides you cannot convince me that government bureaucracy can deliver these services better than the market. I have driven on toll roads – quite often, in fact – and I love the fact that they never have bad traffic on them.
This is good because then the price of these services would accurately represent rents and it would be cheaper in the long run. Paying taxes to subsidize it actually makes these services more expensive because there is no competition to keep them efficient.
Heck, land owners could get free electricity just by merely renting out the use of their property to the utility company? You see this as a bad thing?
Why should people have their land stolen from them for “public use”.
Whatever makes you feel comfortable. Interesting though, that we had no major incidents like this after the post-Depression safeguards were put in place, but after we started to repeal them late last century, it didn’t take too long for us to run into another one.
But whatever you say.
The free-market “economists” (I hope you realize how generous I’m being here) have been shouting that the sky is falling for decades. I can do that, too. Just keep it up long enough and eventually something bad will happen, and the libertarians will worship you.
Aside from that, off the top of my head, Nouriel Roubini, Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and The Economist magazine ALL predicted this (in some cases, WAY ahead of time; I think The Economist had actually been predicting it for a couple of years before they apologized in about 2005 for crying wolf).
Especially those who are proponents of free market. They don’t work for 200 years and you guys just pound harder. They get us into the Great Depression and you brush it off. They get us into this housing and financial crisis and you don’t even notice. Pathetic that some people are so scared of changing the way they think.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Whatever makes you feel comfortable. Interesting though, that we had no major incidents like this after the post-Depression safeguards were put in place, but after we started to repeal them late last century, it didn’t take too long for us to run into another one.[/quote]
It has happened every decade since the depression. You are ignorant of history or willfully blind.
[quote]The regulators so far have not seen this coming but the free market economists have been railing against the policies directly related to it…?[quote]
The free-market “economists” (I hope you realize how generous I’m being here) have been shouting that the sky is falling for decades. I can do that, too. Just keep it up long enough and eventually something bad will happen, and the libertarians will worship you.
Aside from that, off the top of my head, Nouriel Roubini, Robert Shiller, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, and The Economist magazine ALL predicted this (in some cases, WAY ahead of time; I think The Economist had actually been predicting it for a couple of years before they apologized in about 2005 for crying wolf).[/quote][/quote]
They predicted that inflation causes malinvestment? Don’t think so. Try again.
Um, it’s pretty easy. Companies get big and then suppress competition. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but someone (I forget who now) was crying about it earlier. Anything else I can help you with?
[quote]And this isn’t capitalism. This is economic Fascism, which Lifticus has already pointed out.
How can we discuss capitalism if you don’t even know what it is?[/quote]
And just why isn’t it capitalism? Because you say so? Because you don’t like the outcome? Sorry, regulation does not equal fascism. This is simply yet another dishonest attempt to evade any criticism of capitalism by whittling down the definition to a point such that nothing that has ever existed meets its definition.
You’re left in the situation in which you now find yourself: you’ve got a hell of an economic system, but too bad it can never exist even for an instant. So in relentlessly contorting both logic and definitions of words in a desperate attempt to avoid thinking or changing your opinions, you’re stuck promoting a system that can never be established and couldn’t exist for five minutes if it was. You’ve made yourself utterly irrelevant, a zealot, with all the religious connotations of that word intact. Is this where you want to go?