Capitalism only works...

[2ndRateMind]

If you don't have capital, it won't work for you.

This is because people, even those with masses of money, are loath to part with it. If you don't have money, and need to earn your living, you will be paid the absolute minimum people who do have money can get away with, so as to maximise their profit from your labour.

This is not a 'good' system for the majority of humanity. If it is not good, then it cannot be Christian.

Discuss.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 1 by 2ndRateMind]

To borrow from Churchill capitalism is the worst economic system except for all the others that have been tried. Sure it has its downsides especially for those who don't have a lot of resources, but alternative is there that doesn't have bigger cons.

That's an interesting take. Of course, Churchill's view was that democracy is the worst political system, apart from all the others. That is not the same as saying capitalism is worst economic system, apart from all the others.

The difference is that democracy is a human invention, while many people, myself included, tend to view capitalism as the default, natural system of organising production and wealth. But when one leaves things to the state of nature, the result tends to favour the strong over the weak, the powerful over the powerless, the rich over the poor. Jesus' mission was in part, (and this is why the Roman and Jewish establishments both wanted rid of Him) to re-enfranchise the weak, the powerless, and the poor.

And there is no reason why, I suggest, we cannot improve upon the capitalism biased state of nature as provided, as we do with land use and housing and transport and a myriad of other interventions in nature, and build civilisations that dispense with the disparities of strength, power and wealth. If we will it to be so, and forego our own ambitions to exceed our neighbours, then it will be so. That's a democracy thing.

And, I dare say, Jesus would approve.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[2ndRateMind]

This is because people, even those with masses of money, are loath to part with it.

This is false. People part with their money all of the time. That is how money works.

Of course they do. But only when they are persuaded the goods and services on offer are of greater value than the cash price asked for them. If you disbelieve this reluctance to otherwise part with money, pm me for my paypal account, and donate me $1000.00. I bet you won't do it.

Cheers, 2RM.

You are correct and that is my point. Your argument is that to some people little green pieces of paper are more valuable just sitting around than they are invested in productive activity. This may be true for the hoarder, but few hoarders are actually wealthy. The wealthy generally don't have any more little green pieces of paper than the average guy on the street. What they have is assets in production. When they are required to, for the sake of a transaction, they take assets out of production and trade them for goods and services, using those little green pieces of paper, as they go, just as the average guy on the street does. The only real difference is that they have more assets in production. So, regarding your offer, if I deemed your well being to be a better use of the assets, I already have invested elsewhere and which I could sell for the equivalent of 1000 little green pieces of paper, I would cash out that investment and either purchase or invest in your well being, depending on whether your well being is for my enjoyment, or for my enrichment. However, as of this moment, I have not determined that would be a better use.

Uh huh. And that was my immediate point, that mostly people need a good reason to part with their money, and generally a selfish one, or they just won't do it.

As it happens, I don't need $1000, from you or from anyone else. But there are plenty of people in the world who really do, to whom $1000 would mean the difference between a life of grinding, abject poverty and a viable, sustainable business of their own, that will provide them income for the rest of their lives. If you google with some degree of determination, I am sure you could find an appropriate charitable home for that sort of cash, that will make for such a lifelong livelihood. But I don't expect you will do that, either.

And that is my underlying point, that the tendency is for the rich to want to stay rich, whatever the consequences may be for everyone else.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[2ndRateMind]

If you don't have capital, it won't work for you.

This is because people, even those with masses of money, are loath to part with it. If you don't have money, and need to earn your living, you will be paid the absolute minimum people who do have money can get away with, so as to maximise their profit from your labour.

This is not a 'good' system for the majority of humanity. If it is not good, then it cannot be Christian.

Discuss.

Best wishes, 2RM.

Socialism at this point easily ensures a practice that suppresses law-abiding people who have ideas for this or that end, even well within their private rights. When everything is supposed to be equal and to the common good, the condition may well turn into a kind of "terror" against "the basketball players who do well".

I am not arguing for socialism/communism/state dictatorship. Indeed, if this/these were the dominant political/economic systems of the world, and the result was the disparities of wealth I highlighted earlier in the thread (post #9), I would be arguing against them just as vigorously. But they are not, and capitalism is. And I think we owe it to ourselves, and each other, to cast a cold, critical eye on the economic status quo.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[Aetixintro]

[Replying to post 29 by Furrowed Brow]
(Also reply to 2ndRateMind and post 33.)

Firstly, there is a difference between crime and capitalism. Capitalism under democracy and human rights tries to sanction crime.

Secondly, you can't blame all sorts of human behaviour on capitalism. Crime and the threats and terror of crime have to take their share.

Thirdly, "capitalism may serve to deliver profit to the capitalist" as long as the capitalist serves the market (and thereby the people).

Fourthly, internet and other publishing opportunities now secure that the best ideas in a sense direct the World.

Fifthly, even if "the tendency is for the rich to want to stay rich" (Thomas Piketty), it doesn't mean that (a lot of other) people can't get rich themselves. This is exactly the reason for:

"Principally,
1 Mn people service the same 1 Mn people, including oneself. Then 1 Mn services if individual services by administration of robots. Then this means 1 Mn $ income by 1 $ for each person served, affording 1 Mn products and services including the service to oneself.
Proof: Everyone can become dollar-millionaires on Earth and at the same time affording many products and services if not exactly 1 Mn services and products, i.e., living the life of a dollar-millionaire!
The future looks really BRIGHT!"

If so, if people really want to relax and merely live the decent life there should be plentiful opportunities for this to happen given a better capitalistic system still under democracy and human rights.

Finally, the capitalism isn't the problem. The (rife) crime is the problem and corruption with it with subversion of the politics, the political system, and the media as result.

(Besides, I have a suggestion for corporate tax system in rewarding companies that hire a lot of people with low taxes and companies that only have robots to be taxed harder. This way one can fight unemployment and more people can take part in creative, productive life.)

(Besides more, I do see capitalism as the way to Utopia, one form or other.)

[2ndRateMind]

Fifthly, even if "the tendency is for the rich to want to stay rich" (Thomas Piketty), it doesn't mean that (a lot of other) people can't get rich themselves.

This is the convenient fallacy, congenial to those that have, complacently sufficient to blame those that have-not for their own state.

Fact is, at time = now, there is just so much wealth in the world, rationed by so much currency. If I hog the currency, and thus the wealth, it means others can't have it, whatever worthy use they might want to put it to. At any given point in time, the distribution of the wealth of the world just is a zero sum game. What I get, you, and everyone else, must lose. What you get, I, and everyone else, must lose. I cannot spend your money on stuff I want; you cannot spend my money on stuff you want.

I would have no problem with this, if everyone got and lost in approximately equal measures, but that is not the way the world is (see post #9 on this thread), and that is my issue.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[help3434]

Fifthly, even if "the tendency is for the rich to want to stay rich" (Thomas Piketty), it doesn't mean that (a lot of other) people can't get rich themselves.

This is the convenient fallacy, congenial to those that have, complacently sufficient to blame those that have-not for their own state.

Fact is, at time = now, there is just so much wealth in the world, rationed by so much currency.

False, wealth includes assets.

If I hog the currency, and thus the wealth, it means others can't have it, whatever worthy use they might want to put it to. At any given point in time, the distribution of the wealth of the world just is a zero sum game. What I get, you, and everyone else, must lose. What you get, I, and everyone else, must lose.

False, wealth is not a zero sum game. While it is true that there are only so many natural resources currently on the Earth, resources can be used in a more productive manner than they are now. Innovations increase the efficiency of resources, thus creating new wealth rather than taking wealth from others.

[WinePusher]

Let’s test this. The list of the poorest countries in the world is dominated by African Countries. According to wiki Somali has the smallest GDP per capita. I’d hazard a guess Somalian poverty has something to do with war. Next is the Central African Republic then Burundi and again war. Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Niger, Eritrea are next. What features do these countries share? It is a similar picture of ex colonies beset by corruption, rebels, war, and neo-colonial intervention. Neo-colonnial intervention may mean coups and assignations and invasions or it may just mean corporations bribing local politicians or it may mean ensuring Western friendly elites and groups get all the funding they need. As John Perkins points out debt is a tool of this kind of capitalism. Working up from the bottom of the list we start to to see Asian and South American countries. As a rule of thumb ex colony/corruption/war/neo-colonial intervention is a more reliable pointer to the causes of poverty than arm waving about socialism. What is common to the countries towards the top top end of the list of poorest and richest nations is the richer countries have had much longer periods of political stability, have had until recently a more stable financial and banking sector, achieved industrialisation earlier and have been better at exploiting other nations and using them for cheap labour or forced markets or assets stripping.

I read this twice and I'm not able to find anything that remotely resembles a lucid point. So I'll ask you directly, what point are you trying to make about Africa?

Is your point that Africa is locked into a perpetual cycle of poverty because of western oppression? I'd actually agree with you on that! And it's actually your fault!

In case you're not familiar with it, the European Union that you probably desperately want to remain apart of has this little thing called the common agricultural policy. As a result of the enormous agricultural subsidization of European farms, the EU is able to relentlessly dump subsidized agricultural products on Africa at rock bottom prices, thereby effectively destroying Africa's primary (agricultural) sector. In addition to that, the EU heavily taxes agricultural imports from Africa. So African farmers can't sell to native Africans cause the EU is cheating and subsidizing their products, and African farmers also can't sell to Europe cause Europe has high tariffs.

Developing regions like Africa are HIGHLY dependent on their primary (agricultural) sectors as their main source of economic activity, and yet it seems that the EU is hell bent on obliterating African farms.

But to generalise and blame socialism as the poverty creator and characterising it as THE problem is looking at the world with one eye closed and ignoring the evidence provided by the very poorest countries.

Africa, which is probably the poorest region in the world, has been set back for decades due to protectionist EU trade policies. The other poor regions of the world, throughout the middle east, Asia, and Latin America, are NOT politically or economically liberal, unlike their thriving counterparts. In Asia, we have four countries that have been named the "Asian tigers" due to their fast paced economic growth. They are all capitalist. Chile is the most economically free nation in Latin America and is also the most prosperous.

For a sobering picture of how capitalism really works I suggest becoming acquainted with the writing and talks of John Perkins or the documentaries of John Pilger and other similar commentators who have had their feet on the ground of the poorest countries and have seen how neocolonialism plays out in reality.

Uh, ok. And for an academic, unbiased, professional, objective analysis of capitalism and developing nations I suggest becoming acquainted with a development econ textbook. FACT: Free trade and free markets lift nations out of poverty. No serious academic economist argues otherwise. ALL respectable economists understand that emerging market nations need capitalism and sweatshops.

[Aetixintro]

Fifthly, even if "the tendency is for the rich to want to stay rich" (Thomas Piketty), it doesn't mean that (a lot of other) people can't get rich themselves.

This is the convenient fallacy, congenial to those that have, complacently sufficient to blame those that have-not for their own state.

Fact is, at time = now, there is just so much wealth in the world, rationed by so much currency. If I hog the currency, and thus the wealth, it means others can't have it, whatever worthy use they might want to put it to. At any given point in time, the distribution of the wealth of the world just is a zero sum game. What I get, you, and everyone else, must lose. What you get, I, and everyone else, must lose. I cannot spend your money on stuff I want; you cannot spend my money on stuff you want.

I would have no problem with this, if everyone got and lost in approximately equal measures, but that is not the way the world is (see post #9 on this thread), and that is my issue.

Best wishes, 2RM.

To call those that have-not for have-not may be a crime upon the crime on them.

Ideas may indeed create values (in terms of money) so this is an extra consideration for adding wealth to the World.

So, with GDP, we can consider the value of all products and services. In the case of lower unemployment, we get more people to the workforce to exactly create more products and services. Therefore I have been supplying the proof envisioning a possible rich (or at least decent) future for all of us. Robots serve humanity, actually, making it possible for people to do what's more natural for us, to use humanity for creativity or any other human-specific activity.

To your view of fixed wealth in the World: the amount of money is usually increasing every year in the World and it's for two reasons (as I see it and apart from estimated asset value, whether idea or company) and they are the budget deficits of governments, that they spend more than the income from taxes, thus "printing" money and the central banks move to stimulate the economies by offering more money to the markets, thus also "printing" more money. Now, these two measures in turn usually generate inflation, but that's just life.

By inflation, it takes (hard) work to remain at inflation-adjusted wealth level and not all wealthy people actually make it. They can lose their wealth.

Some useful links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_growth

This for now?

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 36 by help3434]
[Replying to post 38 by Aetixintro]

Actually, you may both have missed my stipulation, which is important. I specifically said, at time = now.

It may be that, at some point of time f in the future, there is is more wealth to go around, due to production efficiencies and economic growth. But at the point of time p in the present, there is only so much wealth, rationed by so much currency. I cannot spend future wealth, and nor can you, and nor can anyone else. And therefore the distribution of the world's wealth at time = now just is a zero sum game.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[help3434]

[Replying to post 39 by 2ndRateMind]

You are wrong because new wealth can be be created now! It is happening everyday. Now the redistribution of wealth is a zero sum game because it doesn't involve creating new wealth, just taking from some people and giving to others.