Please, don't talk religion. I am not superstitious, and therefore not religious. To link religion with morals is, IMO, a massive contradiction.
'If a child doesn't want to clean his room because he "doesn't voluntarily feel like it", you kick his ass and get him to do it because it needs to be done. This is why rights must always be balanced by responsibilities.' Quote from earthjade. If this is the type of violence that one needs to resort to to get the most innocent amongst us, that is our children to learn and understand the value of a good days work and woking togeather as a family and as a community then the world is well and truly f****d. Violence and force ARE NOT THE ROADS TO FREEDOM!
So instead of attempting to stop the rich and powerful from corrupting the best system man has ever known (capitalism)we should give up on it? Communism didn't die because it encouraged dictatorships. Communism died because at it's core it fundamentally does not factor in human action and there fore will always fail. You are right such a paradise never existed. Ok so we learnt that Child Labour, Slavery are not what society wants and don't have to go back there. Consumer protection laws only go so far now anyway and for the most part the free market would fix the majority of those problems and the rest can be fixed through criminal laws etc. The BIG one is honest money! Bank runs can happen if you have honest money but they are not an issue and a bank will still be left standing if one does happen under a system of honest money. The fact that they happened and are caustic to the system is proof that we never had honest money in the first place. Fix this one issue and a SH!TLOAD of systemic problems go with it. You are right it didn't exist in perfection and I don't want to go back to 1840's USA because there was systemic errors that have clearly been identified that can be easily overcome and need never be repeated. How you stick sustainability issues in with an economic system I don't know. Any alternate system will have the same issues. Only under a free market can the most efficient use of those resources be achieved. No problem there and the Austrians have been calling for that for a long time = the end of FRB Whats wrong with the stock market? If the banks are utilities and money is sound (100% reserve) there is no problem with the stock market....And is probably the most efficient. Very few entrepreneurs can actually go out and make things happen without capital. How do they get that capital? From a bank that is a utility? Who is giving that money to the bank? Answer = someone that is speculating that they will get a return on their savings. Ok so I am an entrepreneur, I go out with a great idea, make things happen and get rewarded monetarily for it..... So am I supposed to just live off my windfall and get fat and die (assuming I don't have another great idea to spend it on) or should I investing someone else's potentially good idea that could change our lives and make society better? Oh wait that would be speculating and gambling wouldn't it! With no FRB and no bailouts there is no incentive to gamble. Capitalism is about profit AND loss. Great, about time someone other than pure capitalists can see this is a must... but oh wait. Hard money and a true free market already solve this. What? you talk about the economy like it is some machine or government. This is the fatal flaw in socialism/communism and Keynesians.........Time to wake up, the economy is US. We serve ourselves at the core and the product of all of us doing this makes up the economy. There is nothing to "serve" in the first place. As soon as you have some sort of central planning that has a goal of "full employment" you are guaranteed to get a result that is further from it than without intervention. The goal can not be to have "full employment". It has to be organic with the most efficient use of resources and the best productivity and flexible wages. I do agree with you that there needs to be regulation on environmental issues as this can not be done by the free market. This is one of the most absurd ideas I have ever heard. It is a communistic micro economic model that is bound to fail like it did on the macroeconomic level. Humans will always when given a chance take the easiest route and attempt to benefit themselves. The bosses would be chosen on who benefited the workers in the shortest time frame and then when it all fell apart they would turn on them like a posse. For the same reason we had the great depression, when things turned south (like the recession after the 1929 crash) the urge for them to refuse to take a pay cut would be enormous and instead of causing the great depression the companies would fail on a micro one instead of a macro one. EDIT: Lets look at this in reality: The entrepreneur invents something, he manages to find the capital to start his business. You want him to give the control of that business over to potential employees to make the most profit out of it? This idea alone would stifle entrepreneurs and people taking risks to advance society and civilisation more than any other idea I have ever heard of including communism. You have to ask yourself why these jobs are going overseas in the first place. Sure the answer is it is cheaper to do so. But why is it cheaper to do so these days? Maybe as I have said above "Sticky Wages"? or too much un needed government regulation? Also while you are quick to point out the job losses that results from this, the result is the consumer gets a product at a better price. Those saved dollars can be spent elsewhere in the economy (creating other jobs?). If we were growing better oranges than the USA at a competitive price in the first place there would be no need to import in the first place. Productivity needs to be addressed first and the rest will fall into place. Agree with you whole heartedly in your first sentence but you seem to have a central planing slant in your ideals that would ultimately mean far more government than the basics of "Law and Infrastructure" While I like your ideal in the first two sentences here and I have the same Ideal (Direct Democracy = Executive Office of President/PrimeMinister and 1 level of cheques and balances made up of independents representing individual districts) How would you stop them forming alliances or parties? Like the Tea Party in the USA they are all republicans and don't have their own party in opposition for voting purposes. If government was cut to "Law and Infrastructure" there would be no need for all of these Bureaucrats in the first place. How would you staff these jobs, who is going to volunteer for such a job when they can be rewarded much better in the market place. Fully agree and the only way to achieve this has already been touched on heavily. "A government that governs least governs best"! Hasn't Macro Economic planning already proved to be a failure? Lets just name a few, USSR, Western Germany, USA in the Great Depression and oh the whole world nearly 5 years after the GFC. Here's an alternate idea: 1. Direct Democracy with absolute minimum powers.m (environment/Law/defence/contracts) 2. 100% Gold Backed currency. 3. Free Markets in everything that can be provided by the free market including interest rates. 4. A flat tax rate with a generous tax free threshold. No more 80% of the population agreeing to rob the top 10% of their wealth, sprinkling a little on themselves on the way to propping up the bottom 10% (I'm paraphrasing Milton Friedman here but don't want to go as far as his Negative Income Tax) 5. A limited safety net that provides for the Sick, Elderly(Until we are able to live off Super), Disabled etc As long as each citizen does not pay disproportionately for it (see point 4). When the population has an equally invested share in providing that safety net then surely there will be more scrutiny of it and thus accountability. I know my point 5 is from a pure capitalists perspective a socialist policy but I think it is necessary if you are not going to go to pure anarchy.
If employees are to share the profits then what shouldn't they share the risks? The owners of the business take on all of the risks, liens, mortgages, encumbrances and obligations. They get none of the protections or entitlements that employees receive. Employers take huge risks and responsibilities to launch and build a company, that's why they eventually take the profits, or lose their house if the risk doesn't pay off. So if employees are to take a share of the profits they should take a share of the risks too. The "Noble Worker, Greedy Boss" hype doesn't work for me.
You are right revolutionary things can happen under communism but at what cost? Was getting first into space and the first satellite a fair trade off for people starving and disinters being executed? Centrally planned economic models starve one sector to benefit the other. Creating winners and losers and the moral hazard we see today. Keynesians also don't get this. That Keynes V Hayek (Round 2) rap executed it perfectly. "If every worker was staffed in the Army and Fleet We'd have full employment and Nothing to eat. From 2:55 http://www.youtube.com/embed/GTQnarzmTOc
^^ We collectively tried this at the last election - it failed dismally. ^^ +1 Absolutely agree Jonesy. That's why the mining tax stinks - one group takes all the risks, then those who risk nothing pilfer the rewards.
People can idolise communism and demonise capitalism all they like. I think that it can be sorted with one question: Would you rather live in America or in North Korea?
Well, the Americans proved it was possible for "big government" to land a man on the moon without too much famine and murder...in America anyway. They were also in the middle of "promoting democracy" in Vietnam at the time.
Actually, a (Swedish) freind pointed out something interesting to me the other day: quite a large number of countries that have or have had left-leaning systems of government - ranging from very socialist democracies to full-blown Marxist communist structures - tend to have very cold winters. His (very broad) theory is that people in those countries tend to favour systems where people "stick together" because if they don't then there is a good chance that those people who somehow find themselves at the bottom will either starve or freeze to death during the winter. Interesting idea to consider.
They also defaulted in the process and landing man on the moon and "promoting democracy in Vietnam" were the two biggest reasons for that default. IF the cold war had not been going on at that point and the whole world wasn't shit scared of the Russians winning the arms race, the rest of the prosperous world would have dropped the USD like a hot rock in 1971 and they would have been treated like Greece is now, WELL before they managed to rack up 14Trillion in foreign debts. It simply wouldn't have happened.
Is this a hypothetical world where Cuba could afford to go to war you mean? Then I pick the USA any day.
It's not a hypothetical question. Cuban veterans get treated far better than US Veterans. Not saying Cuba is better than anywhere etc etc.
EJ There may be some ultimate truth in what you say, but your solution only succeeds in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is much to recommend Capitalism - it may have its flaws, but as Lovey80 has suggested, it's the best economic system we've got. Up until recently, which do you think was responsible for the West's prosperity? Was it Communism or Capitalism? You can't blame Capitalism for there being corrupt politicians - and it's a stupid generalization to suggest that somehow we are all corruptible. We are not. What you should be doing is blaming Capitalism's current but inevitable woes on stupid, incompetent, crooked politicians/public servants. Or all three. For example: the abolition of the gold standard, excessive creation of fiat money, rampant fractional reserve banking, artificially low interest rates, unwinding of Glass-Steagall, a catastrophic failure to regulate the derivatives market prior to the 2008 crash, massaging business cycles by the aforementioned implementation of low interest rates and Bernanke's helicoptering of crate-loads of free money. Not to the people who need it most, but fraudulent banksters. You may think the two are inextricably intertwined, but not to the degree you suggest. When you fail to prosecute the criminals who perpetrated these crimes (mortgage fraud, liar loans, etc), and therefore encourage more of this flagrant law-breaking, why blame Capitalism? It's like those first two drinks that go down pretty good. The one's which come later just make you puke up. The SYSTEM is bloated. You cannot drink yourself sober. A good place to begin would be to throw the lobbyists out of Washington and abolish campaign contributions. If not voluntarily, then ultimately by force. Because If you continue to govern for a select privileged few, rather than all the people, revolution will be the only answer. For no economic or philosophical system will hold any of the answers. If you are a bank and make bad loans, you should be made to eat those bad loans. That's what Capitalism is and should be. As suggested by one sharp commentator, Karl Denninger, the simplest and quickest way to end this fraud and thereby cleanse the SYSTEM is "One Dollar of Capital." One Dollar of Capital simply says that you cannot issue unbacked loans. Period. You can lend against an asset, but only to it's immediate liquidation value in the marketplace. That's it. Something drastic needs to change. Without drastic change, no economic system can save us. That is not the fault of Capitalism per se; it's the fault of Crony Capitalism. Period.
I can't respond to everything because there's too much, but I do want to address some of the points that stuck out: This is a good point. Let me get away from analogies to explain myself more clearly: The rights we enjoy are because other people in civil society respect those rights. If they do not respect my right to private property and take it away, then clearly I do not have this right in anything but a theoretical sense. Therefore, the realisation of our rights from the theoretical to the actual comes from others. This is what a civil society is. If our rights come from others, then that means that I also realise the rights of others by respecting them and protecting them from abuse. This is a responsibility. Therefore, for members of a society to enjoy their rights, they must adhere to their responsibility of protecting the rights of others. This is not voluntary or negotiable. If you enjoy your rights but give nothing in return, then you are simply gaming the system, which is what the Objectivists are essentially doing. Personal property rights should of course be protected. Everything I buy with money that I've earned is mine and should not be taken away from me. Given this logic, I agree with paying for council rates as it provides a service, but I disagree with land tax - if I own the land it is mine in its entireity. A land tax is a rent extraction on what is already mine. About "macro economic planning", I have this to say, also in answer to Lovey80: Macro economic planning has proven to be a very effective tool in developing a nation's economic capacity. If you look at Japan after WW2, the technocrats targeted key industries to develop and heavily directed investment into them and protected them from foreign competitors. The result in autos, steel, chemicals and electronics was that Japan became the world's second largest economic power. They've messed it up now through rampant stock market speculation and government debt, but this doesn't remove the fact that MITI was very effective in the economy that it built. Other successful stories would include Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. So it is a lie to say macro economic planning is a bad thing - it depends on how you do it. Take Australia as an example. We have no macro economic planning so we cannot take advantage of any medium to long term opportunities. Governments can only think three years ahead and most corporations only think to the next annual report or deem medium term investment too risky in an unstable market. When we finally dig out the last of our iron ore and coal, what will we have to show for it? All that wealth will have gone to foreigners to be frittered away who knows where. We still use coal-fired power stations. If we had some kind of technocratic planning, we might have been able to focus on solar power and become a world leader. We had the technology under development but lack of investment saw it go overseas. Now the Chinese are the world leaders in that field. The answer is: they should! To clarify, while owner/managers still exist in small business, owners of the bigger companies are shareholders. The risks of the company are born by the company, which is a legal person. It's the managers that take the risks and if they go wrong, it is the shareholders that pay for it. If the company goes bankrupt, the ones that managed it do not suffer - they usually escape with a big fat bonus to go wreak havoc somewhere else. This is what happens when ownership is removed from management and risk taking. If you were risking your own money - you'd be a lot more prudent. Economic democracy is about reuniting the risk and reward with the ownership. This is because the employees are the owners. Workers need to share in all the profits of the company and they also need to share all the risks together. This is because they are the company. It also encourages employees to work harder because they know they will directly share in the wealth that they help generate. Decisions are made on their economic and technical merits and voted on by the body corporate, who are no shareholder speculators, but employees with a real stake in the success of the corporation. Those with proven skill of leadership become entrepreneurs in the company and are rewarded for this extra effort. As a social service, the company could allow a certain quota of non-productive shareholders to buy a stake in the company - that is, people saving for retirement or who are disabled. Communism would fail not because everybody who can work hard would stop working to support people who worked less. It would fail because enough people who work hard would stop working to support people who worked less. In the same way, capitalism's woes are not caused by everybody being corruptible. Capitalism's woes are caused by enough people being corruptible to the power of money and wealth.
I prefer Stefan Molyneux's solution: just raise your children intensively and without violence and they will be smarter, centred and won't crave material excess. Eventually a society raised like this will outgrow any formal institutions and will want to make its own rules as opposed to being ruled over. No sustainable solutions will come from a top-down approach, the change must come from the grass-roots. Top-down change will not come freely anyway. Unfortunately, through politics mixed with representative democracy, the state has bred a welfare class of dependent voters. Meanwhile, middle class families have to spend extra hours working, away from their children, to fund this welfare class. When this all comes to a head, expect some withdrawls as society weens itself off of the debt-funded vote-buying morphine. Jonesy, very well put re: employee democracy. Recipe for disaster unless employees have some personal stake, without corporate unlimited liability protection.
Earthjade, do you own a business? If you do, where do I send my application? I want to work for your company and take my share of your profits.
Ah hah...but they are your profits - you earned them. Conversely, if we failed in our enterprise, I'd expect you to pay up your share to our creditors - the utility banks. We would all be joint partners in the enterprise. Mondragon is a good example of how it could work. They are the 7th biggest company in Spain and are doing quite well even though the rest of that economy is tanking.
