I Don't Hate Capitalism....

Any system that looks good on paper(ie we would all be happy if it performed flawlessly) would be fine if the people within it accepted it and held themselves to it. You won't fix anything by changing the rules if you don't address the personal morals of the people it is meant to serve. No system will ever succeed without morally responsible people to enact it.

rugadd wrote: Any system that looks good on paper(ie we would all be happy if it performed flawlessly) would be fine if the people within it accepted it and held themselves to it. You won't fix anything by changing the rules if you don't address the personal morals of the people it is meant to serve. No system will ever succeed without morally responsible people to enact it.

It's called democracy. Right now, people spend half their lives at work for a capitalist where they are told what to do, when to be there, how long to be there, and what will be done with the fruits of their labour. That's called a dictatorship. Everything is dictated to you by the ownership class.

In a democratic workplace, each worker gets a vote. And, yes, they vote in their own self interest and no their company doesn't collapse. But yeah they have rules like the highest paid worker gets no more than 4.5x the lowest worker. They have almost no crime in their city, no inequality, and the money goes toward things the people want like: life, food, water, health care, pensions, child care, safety equipment, etc.

Whyte Horse wrote: Right now, people spend half their lives at work for a capitalist where they are told what to do, when to be there, how long to be there, and what will be done with the fruits of their labour. That's called a dictatorship. Everything is dictated to you by the ownership class.

That person you refer to may or may not be a capitalist and by the description you give him its impossible to tell, because none of these qualities are adressed by capitalism .

Also, FYI, dictatorship and democracy are forms of government and have nothing to do with economy whatsoever. Capitalism, in theory, for as much as it can exist and persist at all, can do so in monarchies, aristorcracies and democracies as well as in tyrannies, dictatorships and theocracies, oligarchies, and even anarchies without changing a bit about them. And by the way, if your argument is that capitalism and dictatorship are inately intertwined, then there has never been a day when the US, the benchmark in sociopolitical innovation and democratisation of a nation, was anything other than a dictatorship - except on the day when it stopped being capitalist which you don't seem to recognize because you keep ignoring what the word means and misusing it on purpose.

In a democratic workplace, each worker gets a vote. And, yes, they vote in their own self interest and no their company doesn't collapse. But yeah they have rules like the highest paid worker gets no more than 4.5x the lowest worker. They have almost no crime in their city, no inequality, and the money goes toward things the people want like: life, food, water, health care, pensions, child care, safety equipment, etc.

Name me one such work place that has actually prospered in any sort of economy at all, let alone a free market.
But even granting such a work place can exist: How exactly does the internal political and economic structure of a company have an effect on the entire city's social parameters, such as crime rate, behavior towards the different, or the city's expenses for survival goods and social services? What is the mechanism by which one company can have an impact on the entire city and by what method does the city community get to gather the citizens' wealth to redistribute it in the form of goods to the people according to their needs? Also, how exactly is this any different from socialism and how exactly is a central redistribution hub that gets to decide who needs how much of what and when an improvement over a dictatorship? Is there any way to make it less free and less democratic at all?

Welcome to the internet.

So i had this long response about moral hazard and the inherent relationship between the acquisition of capital and indiscretion. However, my internet crapped and I don't have it in me to retype six paragraphs right now. Short version is that due to the inverse relationship of self interest vs compassion and social/physical proximity its impossible to eliminate "greed" in the negative sense from capitalism. So ultimately we're left with keeping that greed out of those things which directly damage quality of life. That is to say basic utilities, food supply, health care, and housing either through public control or subsidy to increase supply to the point at which cost is minimized.

Whyte Horse wrote:

rugadd wrote: Any system that looks good on paper(ie we would all be happy if it performed flawlessly) would be fine if the people within it accepted it and held themselves to it. You won't fix anything by changing the rules if you don't address the personal morals of the people it is meant to serve. No system will ever succeed without morally responsible people to enact it.

It's called democracy. Right now, people spend half their lives at work for a capitalist where they are told what to do, when to be there, how long to be there, and what will be done with the fruits of their labour. That's called a dictatorship. Everything is dictated to you by the ownership class.

In a democratic workplace, each worker gets a vote. And, yes, they vote in their own self interest and no their company doesn't collapse. But yeah they have rules like the highest paid worker gets no more than 4.5x the lowest worker. They have almost no crime in their city, no inequality, and the money goes toward things the people want like: life, food, water, health care, pensions, child care, safety equipment, etc.

What's the name of that company & city and where are they?

Red Lila wrote: So i had this long response about moral hazard and the inherent relationship between the acquisition of capital and indiscretion. However, my internet crapped and I don't have it in me to retype six paragraphs right now.

So unfortunate for us.

Rickie The Grey wrote: What's the name of that company & city and where are they?

Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in Mondragon, Spain.

Gisteron wrote: The money is the root quote is from the King James Bible btw and in countless other translations, including revised KJVs its different and way more accurately describing reality.

As for capitalism.. The way its defined, the way its intended, its a wonderful system, as a matter of fact. If you read Adam Smith's observations about free market capitalism during the industrial revolution, his idea of everyone working for his own good resulting in wealth for the entire society, really makes sense and is beautifully illustrated. What he didn't see coming in his day is, that at some point people are going to unite into greater companies and outrun smaller ones forcing them into labour way improportionate to the wages.
So the system isn't bad, its just not taking into account that it can be broken. That is why in most civilized countries the economic system has been refined beyond the reach of impossible or inaccurate models into something that can actually work in the long run. While its basic idea maybe found in there somewhere, original capitalism itself doesn't exist any longer.

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
Chapter I, Part II, p. 770
~Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Not specified, that this is also in the fifth book and not right at the beginning of Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations, but eh, there goes my pickiness again.
Anyway, there are two things about that quote that I'd like to say.
The first one, and there is a reason it is the first, is, that this is an often presented quote to make all kinds of mutually exclusive points, and the reason this is so is, that of course rarely anyone ever cares to take it in context but rather mines it out of it to produce a meaning it doesn't have. Yes, Mr. Smith admitted, that not everyone will be equally successful on his quest of wealth acquisition and how could he not being the honest philosopher that he was. He goes on to say in that very same paragraph, that in order to maintain the security of wealth, there needs be a civil government to protect the property of the citizens. In fact, the entire chapter is on the concerned society's sovereign's duties, with this part being about its duty to protect every citizen from injustice and oppression from every other citizen. So yes, I admit, I read only a few excerpts from Smith's work in school, just enough to understand what he was essentially saying, but quote-mining parts I might not have read really doesn't do the case any favours, because people here with the power of the internet (that's why the welcome in my last post) can double-check things. So either you are being dishonest in that you have read even the entire part of this chapter, let alone the entire fifth book of the work, and still mine a quote that is beside the point of it, misrepresenting that way what Adam Smith was saying, or you are pretending to have extensive knowledge of his work, and doing that so badly that it took me only a few minutes on the internet to find faults with the attempt. And if to make your case you have to refrain to either of those tactics, just how good of a case can it reasonably be?
Besides, the disagreement we are having is that I have a classical, accepted and correct definition of capitalism, while you don't. Your argument against it and in favour of prehistoric or communistic lifestyles can hardly be even adressed before we are clear on what we're meaning (warm and hairy frogs) when we say capitalism.

The second point I wanted to make can only be made when we ignore the dishonest nature of the quotation and just take its meaning for granted. And I think this can be a basis for a whole new topic on the board: On the virtues of equality.
Is equality really a worthy good? I know I wouldn't want to be considered equal. People are different and so they should be viewed and treated - each according to their deeds and attributes.

Also, a quick note on the Mondragon Corporation:
According to one Wikipedia article the wages of the managers can be anywhere between three and nine times that of a regular worker (depending on the respective cooperative) with an average ratio of 5:1. A different language Wikipedia article states that the managing class wages can be up to eight times that of a regular worker. So 4.5x max isn't accurate at least according to those, but they may be outdated, haven't double-checked those yet. According to the latter article (the German one) there are also complaints workers raise which have led to split-offs and independant companies aiming for more democracy. Overall the Mondragon Cooperative is not one single company but rather a federation of approx. 300 small businesses. Even ignoring the previous points, with the three hundred companies combined amounting to under 4% of the GDP of only the Basque Country (which is a relatively prosperous province in a country that still hasn't recovered from the 2009 financian crisis), its significance to the nation is negligible and it is disputable wether it qualifies as prosperous.

Alright, take 2 on this. I'm not going to right the long form like I did before but I'll cover the premises if a Proposition/Conclusion format.

Definition 1: Capitalism: A system under which resources are distributed via privately owned enterprise.
Definition 2: Socialism: A system under which resources are distributed via public/commonly owned enterprise.
Definition 3: Moral Hazard: A situation that arises when someone stands to benefit from risk but is not subject to the negative consequences of that risk.

Assumption 1: The participants in a capitalist system are human and therefore comply with human limitations and tendencies
Assumption 2: The goal of an economic system is the distribution of resources to best improve the quality of life and advancement of a society.
Assumption 3: Competition promotes ingenuity/invention.

Assertion 1a: Humans vary in their adherence to authority (obedience) as opposed to conscience based on the perceived legitimacy of the authority, the perceived status of the location, and peer support. ( Source 1a )
Assertion 2a: Humans tend toward compassion/cooperation by nature. ( Source 2a )
Assertion 3a: Humans choose self interest over compassion when there is anonymity or a lack of identification of those being negatively impacted or whether they will be identifiable to those negatively impacted. ( Source 3a )
Assertion 4a: Anonymity or lack of identification is related to social and physical proximity. That is to say social status, economic status, racial ethnicity, direct observation, ideological similarity, and group dispersant of responsibility.
Conclusion A: Humans act in self-interested unconscionable ways when they will not feel responsible for said actions. Per Moral Hazard's definition, when situations of Moral Hazard arise the tendency will be toward self-interested unconscionable decision.

Assertion 1b: Without perfect knowledge by all participants, moral hazard is a fact of economic activity.
Assertion 2b: Moral hazard, when exploited creates inequity in the economic system.
Assertion 3b: Moral hazard creates waste of resources as those taking the risk are not those losing resources.
Assertion 4b: Free Market capitalism is capitalism without enforcement of regulation beyond contract and property law.
Assertion 5b: Businesses in Free Market capitalism are subject to negative risk in the form of wasted capital/resources, negative public opinion/loss of customers.
Assertion 6b: Perfect complete information is the only way to insure truly fair exchanges of resources.
Assertion 7b: Perfect complete information is, to date, an impossibility.
Assertion 8b: Businesses take advantage of the lack of Perfect complete information to take advantage of other businesses and customers.
Conclusion B: Free market capitalism cannot eliminate Moral Hazard and will remain inequitable and always tend toward unconscionable outcomes.

Assertion 1c: Total Socialism distributes resources based of popular need.
Assertion 2c: Total Socialism determines need via census data and public survey.
Assertion 3c: Census data always misses some portion of the population.
Assertion 4c: Census data takes a long time to collect and analyze.
Conclusion C: Total socialism leads to slow distribution of resources and in inefficient manners.

Assertion 1d: Corporations distribute responsibility across the employees.
Assertion 2d: Corporations use management layers to provide legitimate authority.
Assertion 3d: Corporations hold a profit motive
Assertion 4d: Corporate management have responsibility dispersed/divested due to management of a board of directors.
Assertion 5d: Corporations maintain as much information as they legally can away from public eye.
Conclusion Corporations create a perfect environment for self-interested, unconscionable behavior.

Assertion 1e: Quality of life is initially dependent on basic needs: Food, Housing, Utilities, Healthcare.
Assertion 2e: Quality of life is secondarily dependent on self actualization via creative or economic opportunity.
Assertion 3e: Inequitable conditions lead to poverty for a portion of a population.
Assertion 4e: In capitalism, poverty make basic needs and self actualization uncertain.
Assertion 5e: Uncertainty of needs diminishes quality of life.
Conclusion E1: Capitalism fails to satisfy basic needs and self actualization for a portion of the population.
Conclusion E2: Socialism fails to satisfy self actualization via economic opportunity for an entire population.

Summary Conclusion: It is impossible to remove inequality from capitalism and once inequality begins it will only worsen. Socialism, however, fails to efficiently manage resources in a timely manner and can lead to uncertainty, also diminishing quality of life. In order to best promote quality of life and advancement a mixture of the two is necessary. Moral Hazard can be reduced through regulation but it cannot be eliminated from capitalism. Economic opportunity and efficient resource management can't be forced into Socialism with current technologies but cooperation of private and public industry can lead to more efficient distribution while maintaining the stability/certainty/accountability of publicly owned ventures. As such utilities such as electric, water, and internet as well as banking would be best administered as a public services. Meanwhile regulation and subsidy could be used to increase both food and housing supply to such an extent that their price drops to levels where they are no longer the majority of the income of the lower waged earner. With these necessities taken care of it leaves the majority of each individual's income available for economic and creative ventures without negatively impacting the quality of life of others.