Get Rid of Capitalism?

[SilverEagle]

"Millennials Are Ready to Talk About It"


Well shit there goes the neighborhood.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... k-about-it

[Zlaxer]

"Millennials Are Ready to Talk About It"


Well shit there goes the neighborhood.


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... k-about-it

Can you blame them? The powers that be proclaim that what we currently have is capitalism, when in reality it's crony capitalism/corporatism.....What has the current system provided them? Massive debt, a hyper-inflated housing market, and decreasing numbers of jobs.....why so surprised....

The problem is, while the Millennials are correct that the current system sucks donkey ballz....they would rather move to socialism and/or communism, when I think the better option is to de-trench the special interests and return back to traditional capitalism, you know, where the elites aren't consistently bailed out by the government at the expense of the middle class...

This is what happens when the upper class goes too far...just like 1780's France.....

[apeman]

Socialism's "benefits" are openly displayed for all to see, its negatives are hidden away and take some measure of effort and critical thinking to understand.

Capitalism's negatives are openly displayed for all to see, its positives hidden away and takes some measure of effort and critical thinking to understand

Socialism will always be appealing.

[Speaker to Animals]

We need to figure out something completely new. Both capitalism and socialism have essentially failed.

[Zlaxer]

Socialism's "benefits" are openly displayed for all to see, its negatives are hidden away and take some measure of effort and critical thinking to understand.

Capitalism's negatives are openly displayed for all to see, its positives hidden away and takes some measure of effort and critical thinking to understand

Socialism will always be appealing.

True, but I would argue that our present corporatism is unsustainable - it's cannibalizing the middle class. In other words, for most Americans, the negatives of our current system outweigh the benefits, whether you can see them or not.

[Zlaxer]

We need to figure out something completely new. Both capitalism and socialism have essentially failed.

This is the conversation the right and left should be having....the problem is, the left is infatuated with communism and/or stateism...they love themselves some BIG Bro....

Also goes back to Hash's point about the left and the right having fundamentally opposite views of the role of government.....The questions is, how many lefty's actually hold limited government as something that should be striven for in a government/economic system?

[Speaker to Animals]

We need to figure out something completely new. Both capitalism and socialism have essentially failed.

This is the conversation the right and left should be having....the problem is, the left is infatuated with communism and/or stateism...they love themselves some BIG Bro....

Also goes back to Hash's point about the left and the right having fundamentally opposite views of the role of government.....The questions is, how many lefty's actually hold limited government as something that should be striven for in a government/economic system?

The thing is that, in my experience, you can actually have that discussion with the left. To a lot of the right, capitalism is nothing short of a religion. A lot of people on the right actually believe capitalism is like some final end of economics. As if the fundamental basis for any economic system at all cannot change. There is actually a book titled "The End of History" with this kind of thesis. It's quite farcical.

In my opinion, capitalism is an extremely short-lived transitional economic system that gets us from the medieval period to something else. That much even the Marxists can see. But they want their ideas to be that something else, and obviously that's just not the case. I am not sure what comes next. I have some ideas, but I could be wrong about it.

And it's not like I think capitalism is some kind of evil thing. It's pretty awesome for what it does and where it's gotten us. But to deny that technological advances make the axioms of the capitalistic system irrelevant -- to my mind -- is just childishness. This is our childhood's end. Time to start thinking about the future and the great big beyond out beyond our world. The old constraints won't be constraints there. Something new has to emerge to solve the basic problems of economics under the new constraints (or lack thereof).

[apeman]

True, but I would argue that our present corporatism is unsustainable - it's cannibalizing the middle class. In other words, for most Americans, the negatives of our current system outweigh the benefits, whether you can see them or not.

Agreed, and moreover, our quasi-capitalist corrupt patronage system is beyond broken. We fucked it up so bad that socialism looks appealing.

The thing is that, in my experience, you can actually have that discussion with the left. To a lot of the right, capitalism is nothing short of a religion. A lot of people on the right actually believe capitalism is like some final end of economics. As if the fundamental basis for any economic system at all cannot change. There is actually a book titled "The End of History" with this kind of thesis. It's quite farcical.

In my opinion, capitalism is an extremely short-lived transitional economic system that gets us from the medieval period to something else. That much even the Marxists can see. But they want their ideas to be that something else, and obviously that's just not the case. I am not sure what comes next. I have some ideas, but I could be wrong about it.

And it's not like I think capitalism is some kind of evil thing. It's pretty awesome for what it does and where it's gotten us. But to deny that technological advances make the axioms of the capitalistic system irrelevant -- to my mind -- is just childishness. This is our childhood's end. Time to start thinking about the future and the great big beyond out beyond our world. The old constraints won't be constraints there. Something new has to emerge to solve the basic problems of economics under the new constraints (or lack thereof).

Good post, what are some of your ideas?

[Speaker to Animals]

For instance..

Consider the only viable way to prop up the capitalistic system in our near future is through some kind of tyrannical patent/copyright regime.

Capitalism depends upon capitalists owning the means of production (i.e. factories) and paying workers wages to use those capital goods to produce goods that are sold on the market. In a nutshell, that's all capitalism really means. The idea of a free market is independent of capitalism, but is an important aspect of the system. It's not, however, the basis of it and it's not like any new system won't have such a thing as a free market (I suspect free markets are here to stay).

That said, in the past, capitalists could easily do what they do because owning the means of production was itself such a hurdle that only other capitalists could possibly compete, and it took a great deal of capital to fund the construction of new capital goods the size and expense of factories. They certainly had patents, but patents weren't such a big deal until the means of production became so cheap that the barriers to entry in a market were much lower. By the time we got to the tech explosion in the 1990s, the idea of software patents took off because there's really nothing stopping me from duplicating some idea in software. The entire tech industry is absolutely strangled to death by patents. That's why there are only a few large corporations in any single tech industry where potential revenue is very high (such as wireless devices). They spend more time just building patent portfolios now than actually innovating, and it's extremely difficult for competitors to break into the market because a few corporations own a lot of vague and generalized patents to block competitors out.

Now imagine what happens when 3D printing really takes off. Imagine what happens when the average dude can order a 3D printer from Amazon for a hundred dollars and have it delivered to his doorstep by the end of the day by some drone. That hundred dollar printer is the equivalent of an entire fucking factory in the 19th century. There is nothing stopping him from manufacturing parts for his automobile, or really much of anything that doesn't require metal. Maybe we will even have printers that can print metal alloy parts too. The only way to keep capitalism going at that point is to build into these printers measures that detect "patent violations" and require some form of licensing payment to print parts of any kind. We will spend more economic activity trying to keep patents working and restricting access to technology than we will actually spend innovating better technologies.

Then there is the issue that we won't even have enough jobs for everybody. We discussed that problem to death. The capitalists on the forum just start virtue signaling and talking about culling the nonworkers and whatnot. Maybe they need to cull their bad ideas instead.

[apeman]

Thanks.

Re: your 3D printing insights, I could see the sheer absurdity of unlocking so much wealth/power, but simultaneously keeping it locked up thru patents, as the straw that breaks the camel's back.