Why do people bash capitalism? Is there any other alternative (company, interest)

[RememberMee]

Originally Posted by survivingearth

A couple of my friends who are liberals bash capitalism but they can't come up with a real world alternative to it. In my opinion at this day and age there is no alternative to capitalism. Thoughts? Ideas?

It is sounds like there is no alternative to suicide. If there is no alternative, it must be found asap. I dont even talk environment, but that's a major factor too. On pure humanitarian grounds, concentration of more and more power and wealth in fewer hands leads to radical redefinitions of our ideas about our basic humanity, meanings, social ideals, what does it mean to be a happy content human/society. One must get mighty Orwellian, Prozaced, drugged or lobotomized to feel good in the Capitalist world, or one must run the treadmill and just dont think about it. Sure, humans are just like rats and they can adjust to the most inhuman conditions, but even if we all turn corporate zomboids heavy on positive psychology, we still must trash this planet to keep Capitalism alive. Socialism a.k.a state capitalism is fundamentally the same.

[Pub-911]

Originally Posted by nmnita

I would love to see SS be an option or a % of our contribution be privatized. That is the answer but it isn't going to happen in our life time, certainly not mine anyway.

This is what Bush-43 thought. Studies of his SS privatization plans showed disastrous drains out of what were supposed to be people's individual nest-eggs and into Wall Street pocketbooks instead. It's amazing what can turn up once one actually takes a peak behind the curtain.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by survivingearth

A couple of my friends who are liberals bash capitalism but they can't come up with a real world alternative to it. In my opinion at this day and age there is no alternative to capitalism. Thoughts? Ideas?

A better question is
Why do people bash socialism? .... but would never take a job where they have to work on weekends or more than 40 hours a week (given to us by socialists)

[Pub-911]

Originally Posted by survivingearth

As an European, this Denmark "talk" is completely BS.

The point again is that while paying ritual lip-service to mythological notions of meritocracy, the US is in fact very far from actually being one. We for instance have one of the lowest inter-generational economic mobility rates in the developed world. Denmark gets into the discussion only as a suggestion of a place where "The American Dream" might these days be reasonably pursued, given that -- shoe boxes of Horatio Alger anecdotes aside -- the US reality is that it is not really such a wonderful place to try that any more.

[RememberMee]

Originally Posted by Dopo

take a job where they have to work on weekends or more than 40 hours a week (given to us by socialists)

Those jobs are going the way of the dodo birds. And strictly speaking there is nothing socialist about that. Yes, cardholding socialists fought for that, but it bites their cause in the butt 100 years later. Bearable working conditions allows the peons a luxury of not thinking about or even noticing power structures behind those 40hrs jobs, it lulles them into servitude to the class socialists wanted to undermine. In a way socialists helped capitalism by throwing it welfare makeover. It appears 100 years later capitalists are certain that they can herd the masses without welfare pretences.

[artillery77]

When Marx launched socialism, he had marveled at the largess produced by manufacturing at the time, and how little went on to people working in the plants. While he didn't have the right cure for the ails, the ails were still there.

At the face of it, a capitalism system that has controls has outperformed a socialism system in nearly instance. Sure, China is a powerful economic engine today, but it truly ought to be given the number of people living there. Look closer at their development timeline, and you'll see that it was when central planning was released that growth took off. You see this trend continue in aspects of India, Ireland, the Eastern Bloc, Sweden etc.

The fundamental question is, do I deploy resources based upon a perceived need in the marketplace I believe people will pay for, or do I deploy resources based upon what a central government believes it needs produced.

Look at today's President. Trump. Would you be happy if he, especially as a businessman, were able to dictate what industries were open to investment? How about Obama? While he did many things well, was his step into venture capital (aka Solyndra) really his crowning achievement?

Capitalism needs to exist because it is what takes resources and channels them into projects that will make more capital. The government can exist because it can tax the success of capitalism to put forth investment in underserved areas...according to its own whims and values. Putting a sick person in a hospital that can't afford it is something that should be done. Having a government that uses tax revenues to pay the person taking care of someone makes more sense than trying to have the government build its own hospitals.

The marketplace has so many transactions. Capitalism gives all of us the opportunity to try and achieve the best that we can. Certainly there is corruption, but if a company becomes corrupt and inefficient, so long as it is not a monopoly, it will fall to less corrupt competitors who believe they can provide a good or service better. It encourages competition.

There are natural monopolies, and these should be and are regulated. It would not make sense to have 7 competing companies all trying to lay water pipes to each home in town. It would not make sense to have 7 companies all with different roads or with their own electrical grids.

The problem with socialism is that it has no fundamental way of allocating funds based upon demand. It becomes the primary creator of demand and supply. As resources ARE scarce, the resources spent on items that have low or no demand further impede a country's ability to generate more resources. Eventually there is simply not enough capital left to develop as fast as capitalistic societies. As things start getting short, corruption ensues. Everyone is right in thinking crony capitalism is horrid, but understand crony socialism is worse. There's no legitimate means to get rid of it. It merely grows, and shortages mount as incompetent people continue to dictate where resources go, in a declining process.

Most recently we have Venezuela as our next victim of socialism. The country should be experiencing a boom due to its oil and population, but is instead starving.

Socialism doesn't work. It never has. When automation is complete, labor is truly worthless and no further advances are needed, it might work. Until then...not a chance.

[RememberMee]

Originally Posted by Pub-911

The point again is that while paying ritual lip-service to mythological notions of meritocracy, the US is in fact very far from actually being one. We for instance have one of the lowest inter-generational economic mobility rates in the developed world. Denmark gets into the discussion only as a suggestion of a place where "The American Dream" might these days be reasonably pursued, given that -- shoe boxes of Horatio Alger anecdotes aside -- the US reality is that it is not really such a wonderful place to try that any more.

The concept of meritocracy is rotten in itself. It does not make a darn difference who controls me, old money or hungry & fresh meritocratic upstarts.

[Pub-911]

Originally Posted by artillery77

Socialism doesn't work.

Probably not for those who can't distinguish it from a command economy.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by IDtheftV

This is an incomplete definition.

It also values the idea that when you work the fruits of your labor are yours ( after taxes ). There isn't some government entity looking at your life and deciding that "a lot" ( for varying degrees of "lot" ) of what you produced would be better "utilized" if "they" utilized them ( redistributed them ).

This was the life of people all the way into the industrial revolution and under communism. Capitalism has enabled people to have, yes, material things, like clothes and a bed and a home and a bike or car and other material things that make our lifestyle something that could only be dreamed about by even the ruling class of just a couple centuries ago.

Trying to claim that the miserable material life of the people of Bhutan is something that we need to emulate is just nuts. No matter how small the country is, re-distributing stuff from the top causes people to NOT create wealth.

They are never going to have a decent material life without emulating the American/European model.

Great evidence of this is to look at the material life of places like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan who's living standards are far superior to the technologically-advance Soviet Union. Former client states such as Poland and the Balkans, et al are far better off just a generation away from the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Unless you live in a dirt shack and wash your clothes by hand and only eat what you grow, dissing "material things" rings pretty hollow. Material things are good, everybody likes them, some people go overboard with them, but overall, they are good, important, and necessary.

Nobody said anything about re-distributing stuff from the top. With economic development, the populations' capacity to earn more increases. They can do what they want with their earnings. The gov't has been working to stimulate economic development in Bhutan. You seem to be conflating Bhutan with the USSR, for some reason. Here's a quick sketch, taken from a World Economic Forum report:
This is a nation that has had remarkable success in fighting extreme poverty. The percentage of people living below the poverty line fell from 47% in 1981 to 3% in 2011. In percentage terms this is the sharpest fall, a shade faster than China’s decline from 84% to 6% over the same period. As reported in the Bank’s Bhutan Poverty Assessment 2014, growth in the country has been inclusive and Bhutan is a society graced with a high degree of social mobility.

But I never said we should emulate Bhutan. The OP asked for alternatives to capitalism, so I presented one. Bhutan's "Gross National Happiness" measures leave a lot to be desired; the system is a work in progress. Officials were surprised to learn, for example, that domestic abuse is rampant in the country. Somehow, that hadn't shown up in their GNH surveys. Also, depression among the nation's many monks, and venereal disease among not only adult monks but pre-teen monks, are other issues that took the government by surprise.

However, there's something to be said for striving toward a system that provided educational opportunities and effective health care for everyone. In the US, one can accumulate personal goodies, but what good does that do, when individuals or a couple or a family is bankrupted due simply to medical co-pays, or to paying for expert medical care out-of-pocket because insurance-based doctors are too limited in the conditions they treat? Most economic systems need improvement. Though a couple of the European countries seem to have found a pretty happy medium.

[Pilot1]

It is trendy to bash Capitalism right now, and look to Socialism/Communism because the Media, Education, and the Democrats are promoting it as 'FAIR". Nothing could be further from the truth, but young minds (and some older ones) are easily brainwashed, and indoctrinated.