Is Capitalism Working?

mindlight said:

Given the actual threat of a socialist government in the UK that is truly Marxist in its instincts and a growing resentment across Western society to rich people I thought I should ask the question.

Given the level of entrenched inequality in Western society, the decreasing levels of social mobility, the increasingly risk averse attitude of shareholders to positive innovations that might cost investment capital and risk existing portfolios the question needs to be asked:

Is Capitalism working?

The point about Capitalism was that the concentration of wealth in the hands of various rich people is meant to encourage risks to be made for innovation. So Elon Musk is the only one really pushing for a Mars trip right now and the technological development required for that. Gates and Buffet are busy sorting out global tropical diseases. But there are increasing signs that Musk can be really idiotic and may yet throw away his freedom and ability to push the Mars vision cause of some silly court case. Also increasingly in big companies we see a stifling political correctness that seeks to eliminate extreme risks to a companies reputation in the market place, an unwillingness to invest in risky schemes and a massive and unearned inequality of pay.

The bible Rev 18:2-3 is not that flattering about the harlot of Babylon (which many often associate with capitalism)

“‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a dwelling for demons
and a haunt for every impure spirit,
a haunt for every unclean bird,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.
3 For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries

Rev 6:6
Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "Two pounds of wheat for a day's wages, and six pounds of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"

The book of Amos seems to cite the social injustice that characterised latter day Israel (the Northern Kingdom) as a reason for her fall.

Reasons cited for the failure of capitalism as a system:

1) Failure to fund public services without a massive proliferation of costs e.g. the American health service.
2) Massive entrenched inequality accompanied by growing social immobility. Such that if you are born poor you die poor and if you are born rich your children will also most likely be rich.
3) A focus on luxuries at the expense of basics in many case leading to a growth of absolute poverty in poorer nations and shortages of basic necessities.
4) Failure to back meaningful risks associated with human expansion e.g. solar system wide space flight , research for the common good rather than profit e.g. expensive drugs for the rich but not cheap cures that work for all.
5) Social instability and disintegration caused by rising inequality. Leftist violence across Europe e.g. the recent G20 catastrophe in Hamburg is indicative of the rising sense of resentment against the entitled few.

Do you agree that the above indicates that capitalism does not work? If so what is the alternative? Which systems work best dealing with the challenges of capitalism?

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FireDragon76 said:

I really do think in many ways Angela Merkel's Germany is more of a "leader of the free world" than the US right now.

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joshua 1 9 said:

You kidding me. What a joke. California alone can out perform Germany. Germans work harder for less money but we can still produce more then they can. Of course the game now is in robotics and 3D printers and it has always been a very close race between US and Germany, but we can still out perform them. There are things they are better at in Europe then we are here. But that is because we do not care. For example, American are always lamenting about how good thing were in the past. So we do not care all that much about a modern world right now. So even Shanghai in China is more modern then we are here.

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SkyWriting said:

It's hard to see why space expansion is important, or how capitalism is failing at it.
I'd like to see underwater cities. This would refocus world efforts on ending pollution, conserving energy, social matters, food production....but mostly ending pollution in waterways would save the planet long term.

Space expansion just leads to a throw away mentality of leaving your trash behind. Underwater cities have the same challenges but much bigger benefits for improving society.

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FireDragon76 said:

As a native Californian, I'm proud of my state, even if I don't actually live there, for very complicated reasons.

California politics creates the sort of dynamic economy that makes it a success story, just as in Germany. What doesn't work is the sort of mentality that is part of America's heartland and the south, which is rooted in a mixture of reactionary social conservativism and anarcho-captilaism.

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joshua 1 9 said:

Capitalism encourages people to get out and be productive and produce wealth.

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mindlight said:

Well you may have a point there. Russian oligarchy both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union is also a case in point. Saudi riches are concentrated in the hands of those connected to the Royal family and serve to preserve that pre-eminence. I have to wonder how many Chinese Communists got to be so rich.

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Sabertooth said:

I believe that capitalism is the better system (if you can get the work), but not in its most Darwinian, sink-or-swim form. There is not a job for everybody. That is why I prefer an augmented capitalism. That is, capitalism with minimal socialist safeguards.

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mindlight said:

Recycling will be pretty essential to any moon or Mars base. I am also a fan of underwater cities. NO reason why we cannot have both. It has taken very rich men like Bezos, Branson and Musk to kick start the space race again. Since Apollo lacking any political will for space the space industry has made very little actual technical progress while managing to inflate costs considerably beyond what people were willing to pay.

You could say that capitalism is working towards this goal with Musk and SpaceX particularly but the risk here is that Musk dies or gets arrested for something stupid he says on Twitter and then the company corporate mentality is to simply milk what is profitable to maximise the bottom line and to forget about the risky next step until somebody else has paid the price for it.

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timewerx said:

Nothing will work if corrupt men are running the country.

Both Capitalist and Socialist systems have positive aspects. But if corrupt men are running everything, neither will work. Neither a new system will work.

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Doctor.Sphinx said:

It's usury which is enslaving the poor, not Capitalism, and governments entering into debt they are not authorised to enter into. Prevent usury, and you will improve the system 50%. Prevent limitless taxation (10% was the biblical standard), and you will likely improve the rest. There's also the issue of governments not doing their duty (i.e. the exercise of justice, not economy meddling), but many of these things won't be solved until Jesus returns.

In this world, we will always have the poor, but Communism, like usury, makes slaves and paupers out of everyone, and via theft.

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mindlight said:

Big multinational corporations with risk averse policies, massive inequality of pay and ability to play governments are a problem in modern capitalism. Given that it is small start ups and medium sized companies that generate much of the wealth and jobs in an economy the temptation to pander to these corporations by governments may be self defeating in the long run. Politicians are scared of big headline closures with massive job losses in marginal constituencies. But sometimes they prop up losers or fail to hold the right people to account as a result. The 2008 financial crisis is a case in point. Many of those bankers who caused the initial overexposure and bad capital ratios of their banks and who profited from that were never held to account. While millions of others have suffered a decade of austerity as countries tried to fix the damage they caused.

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mindlight said:

Yes social democracy here in Germany works very well. Capitalism is allowed to thrive in order to fund the provision of excellent public services.

However I think big corporations have too much power and influence in the German system and not all the economic decisions made by the German government have been for the good of the people. The strength of the German economy is small to medium sized companies not its giant car firms. The European project has often led to massive expense for the German tax payer e.g. the bail out of the Greeks and indeed the German banks that lent so heavily to them. Germans have a very comfortable living standard but have not seen much in terms of wage increases in the last 10 years. Company profits and the German trade surplus have been booming. But the economy has no deficit and German influence around the world continues to expand and Germany is a healthier position than America right now.

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mindlight said:

Given the actual threat of a socialist government in the UK that is truly Marxist in its instincts and a growing resentment across Western society to rich people I thought I should ask the question.

Given the level of entrenched inequality in Western society, the decreasing levels of social mobility, the increasingly risk averse attitude of shareholders to positive innovations that might cost investment capital and risk existing portfolios the question needs to be asked:

Is Capitalism working?

The point about Capitalism was that the concentration of wealth in the hands of various rich people is meant to encourage risks to be made for innovation. So Elon Musk is the only one really pushing for a Mars trip right now and the technological development required for that. Gates and Buffet are busy sorting out global tropical diseases. But there are increasing signs that Musk can be really idiotic and may yet throw away his freedom and ability to push the Mars vision cause of some silly court case. Also increasingly in big companies we see a stifling political correctness that seeks to eliminate extreme risks to a companies reputation in the market place, an unwillingness to invest in risky schemes and a massive and unearned inequality of pay.

The bible Rev 18:2-3 is not that flattering about the harlot of Babylon (which many often associate with capitalism)

“‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a dwelling for demons
and a haunt for every impure spirit,
a haunt for every unclean bird,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.
3 For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries

Rev 6:6
Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "Two pounds of wheat for a day's wages, and six pounds of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"

The book of Amos seems to cite the social injustice that characterised latter day Israel (the Northern Kingdom) as a reason for her fall.

Reasons cited for the failure of capitalism as a system:

1) Failure to fund public services without a massive proliferation of costs e.g. the American health service.
2) Massive entrenched inequality accompanied by growing social immobility. Such that if you are born poor you die poor and if you are born rich your children will also most likely be rich.
3) A focus on luxuries at the expense of basics in many case leading to a growth of absolute poverty in poorer nations and shortages of basic necessities.
4) Failure to back meaningful risks associated with human expansion e.g. solar system wide space flight , research for the common good rather than profit e.g. expensive drugs for the rich but not cheap cures that work for all.
5) Social instability and disintegration caused by rising inequality. Leftist violence across Europe e.g. the recent G20 catastrophe in Hamburg is indicative of the rising sense of resentment against the entitled few.

Do you agree that the above indicates that capitalism does not work? If so what is the alternative? Which systems work best dealing with the challenges of capitalism?

Click to expand...

mindlight said:

Given the actual threat of a socialist government in the UK that is truly Marxist in its instincts and a growing resentment across Western society to rich people I thought I should ask the question.

Given the level of entrenched inequality in Western society, the decreasing levels of social mobility, the increasingly risk averse attitude of shareholders to positive innovations that might cost investment capital and risk existing portfolios the question needs to be asked:

Is Capitalism working?

The point about Capitalism was that the concentration of wealth in the hands of various rich people is meant to encourage risks to be made for innovation. So Elon Musk is the only one really pushing for a Mars trip right now and the technological development required for that. Gates and Buffet are busy sorting out global tropical diseases. But there are increasing signs that Musk can be really idiotic and may yet throw away his freedom and ability to push the Mars vision cause of some silly court case. Also increasingly in big companies we see a stifling political correctness that seeks to eliminate extreme risks to a companies reputation in the market place, an unwillingness to invest in risky schemes and a massive and unearned inequality of pay.

The bible Rev 18:2-3 is not that flattering about the harlot of Babylon (which many often associate with capitalism)

“‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a dwelling for demons
and a haunt for every impure spirit,
a haunt for every unclean bird,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.
3 For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries

Rev 6:6
Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "Two pounds of wheat for a day's wages, and six pounds of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"

The book of Amos seems to cite the social injustice that characterised latter day Israel (the Northern Kingdom) as a reason for her fall.

Reasons cited for the failure of capitalism as a system:

1) Failure to fund public services without a massive proliferation of costs e.g. the American health service.
2) Massive entrenched inequality accompanied by growing social immobility. Such that if you are born poor you die poor and if you are born rich your children will also most likely be rich.
3) A focus on luxuries at the expense of basics in many case leading to a growth of absolute poverty in poorer nations and shortages of basic necessities.
4) Failure to back meaningful risks associated with human expansion e.g. solar system wide space flight , research for the common good rather than profit e.g. expensive drugs for the rich but not cheap cures that work for all.
5) Social instability and disintegration caused by rising inequality. Leftist violence across Europe e.g. the recent G20 catastrophe in Hamburg is indicative of the rising sense of resentment against the entitled few.

Do you agree that the above indicates that capitalism does not work? If so what is the alternative? Which systems work best dealing with the challenges of capitalism?

Click to expand...