Wall o' text = YES
Cutlass wrote:Thus IMHO in order to get the best possible performance out of a capitalistic system it has to be moderated (though not necessarily by the government) such that it will at least attempt to take moral and long term considerations into account.
This entire post is something that I've also been thinking of, at least along the same lines as. The collapse of Christianity and the spread of Ayn Rand doctrine (screw you I've got mine) in economics. In pervious eras the elderly who were unable to work were at least able to go to the poor house or some other charitable organisation, those social support structures are now basically gone. My argument would be that the only logical choice for capitalist moderation is the government, since the previous moderator was that of religion, and the threat of excommunication from the church no longer holds sway on most capitalists. Social isolation and other peer pressure techniques are likewise ineffective because the ultra rich have managed to insulate themselves. A side tangent is if the upper crust of the capitalists are actually part of our society, which is part of what the OP article was attempting to address.
The greatest fault in utilizing the government for these tasks is that if the government is representative in nature it will likewise be corruptible by the very groups it needs to regulate. Likewise with the rise of mass media, and the internet, these same capitalist groups have an ability to project themselves into the national discourse above and beyond the common man who might be harmed by their actions. The rise of the internet further damages things, by allowing people to gain access to the social interaction they require simply for being human, but also allowing them to be anonymous and not held responsible for their works. This enables them to eschew normal human physical contact and place themselves into a self sustaining feedback loop.
This self sustaining loop is a very bad thing because it enables people to group themselves with like minds, where all dissension from the group think is punished. If the group think is premised on a faulty idea, that 1 + 1 = 3, the entire group then interacts with physical reality incorrectly, and if allowed to spread can seriously derail a real society. Capitalists can further take advantage of this by inserting their own faulty dialog into already corrupted systems, which then is parroted into the real society. Furthermore these groups seem to like to proselytize, and thus inflict their logic errors onto others who might not sufficiently think about subject at hand and simply accept the data presented.
It also promotes division inside the real boundaries. Language was traditionally used to accomplish this, by focusing the descriptor on something other than what was important. This is not a new idea, and was discussed at length by Orwell in 1984. There is a big difference in American society between a person who needs a job and a _____ who needs a job. Simply placing white, black, homosexual, woman, man, American, racist, etc, into that slot will significantly change the thrust of the statement, especially to the employer. What the internet accomplishes is to further promote these divides and to destroy the already established divisions of nations.
I still need to develop this theory further though. Have to figure out how to approach nationalism. Since nations are very real establish boundaries, is nationalism not acceptable, and in fact should be encouraged? Hard to say, more to think about, maybe next time.
Lea wrote:sirveri wrote:Yes, but those government purchases are ultimately for the use of the people in some fashion.
It does not mean that consumers will not pay for the goods.
That's what I said, the government is a over arching group that represents the consumers of the nation, and pays for the goods, using their money, for them, for their benefit.
Lea wrote:sirveri wrote:The tanks and jet fighters and what not are used to protect the people (or in some cases exported to build better relationships with allied nations, which also is beneficial to the people of the home country by securing the good will of other can guarantee access to needed raw materials.
Money had spent on redistribution between markets, not for customers. Several spending for redistribution can destroy each other.
Possibly, however they believed it was to the benefit of the people that the government represents.
Which begs the question if the US government actually represents the American people in general, or if it is more specific than that...
Lea wrote:sirveri wrote:Banking is magic, it creates things that don't exist,
You can call it as you wish. But it's working. Not always working well but humankind can no longer live without it.
That's pretty much false. Human kind was around before there were banks and modern monetary policy. That things were more difficult back then doesn't mean that our continued existence as a species depends on banks.
Lea wrote:sirveri wrote:It also doesn't mean the system isn't closed, if I take a dollar bill and move it quickly back and forth in front of your face that doesn't mean I have more than one dollar, it just means that dollar is moving quickly, it's still just one dollar.
Only if you see money only as storage of value, treasure. But nobody sits on the chests of gold coins for a long time. You have so much money how much you can attract.
Tell that to the top 0.01% of Americans. Ultimately, all money represents is stored potential energy. I perform labor for money, which means that labor is money, labor is the expenditure of energy. Therefore money is representative of expenditure of energy. I can take this energy expenditure and use it to buy other energy expenditures or raw materials (this makes money stored potential energy until used, or an energy storage medium). All it is useful for is a fair assignment of labor. Which is based on gold, but that's another long discussion.
This nicely aligns with Marx's C-C, C-M-C, M^1-C-M theory. Trade commodity for commodity. Trade commodity for money for desired commodity. Or the capitalist system, trade existing money for commodity to sell for more money. The economy function better with money acting as a lubricant, but the money itself has no value other than as a labor(energy) carrier. The capitalist perverts the system by placing more worth on the money than it deserves, and they do so at the expense of the labor.
Either way, I don't feel like really going to deep into the bowls of financial theory, so I'll stop here before talking about inflation and other economic issues.
Lightbringer wrote:So what you are advocating is a total, 100% world ban on international commerce?
No.
What I'm advocating for is a foreign economic policy that is a net benefit to the workers and people of OUR country.
Stopping one of our businesses from going to a foreign company and constructing something there has no benefit for our country (while allowing it has benefit). Likewise importing bananas since we can't grow them here is also acceptable.
What is NOT acceptable is bending over backwards to allow American companies to screw over American workers. You don't want to pay a living wage to American computer workers and want to get a bunch of new H1B visas to pull cheap Indian labor to replace the Americans, tough **** you don't get to. Want to shutter a textile mill and ship those jobs overseas, sure thing, just give the existing workers better higher paying jobs and you can. Since that's not actually an attainable solution, we'll just put a tariff on import from whatever country you relocate to to make those goods the same price to produce (which when you add shipping costs makes them cost even more).
The fact that American business interests literally own all media outlets, and compose the majority of the government is a big part of the problem, and the reason we're even having this discussion.
Lightbringer wrote:Now, if you look at it another way. If we really "owe it to ourselves to provide ourselves with the best possible quality of life, even if that means 'the foreign' go hungry" then we should use our own labor to build and man our own weapons and slaughter every non American on the planet. Kill them all and take their resources. Otherwise we are not "providing ourselves the best possible quality of life". If someone else aside from us has even one atom of something we could use, then we fail in your prime directive.
From a conservative point of view you're correct...
[Edit by moderator, post truncated for breach of rules.]