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Small scale capitalism has always worked well. Local production and trade of commodities and manufactured items is a stable and productive system. What the article points out is that the means of production have been taken away from the local economies and transported to disconnected areas. Mutual trade can compensate if the local economies have enough residual production, but a long running trade deficit on either side will impoverish the debtor partner in the trade, leading to eventual social collapse.
The biggest weakness for capitalism(which I define as deployment of capital to be decided by their creators to satisfy their customers to facilitate the free trade of labor and products of labor) is that it cannot maintain itself against the parasites. It has no natural defense against monopolists. It only lasts long if a monopolizing force becomes desperate for its productive abilities due to external threats or the regime is unusually enlightened , typically lasting a generation or so.
Small scale capitalism has always worked well. Local production and trade of commodities and manufactured items is a stable and productive system. What the article points out is that the means of production have been taken away from the local economies and transported to disconnected areas. Mutual trade can compensate if the local economies have enough residual production, but a long running trade deficit on either side will impoverish the debtor partner in the trade, leading to eventual social collapse.
I agree. That is why it will never work in this country unless state power becomes a challenge to Washington.
No, quite the contrary. With no government regulation, capitalism always fails. We have thousands of years of history to prove it.
Your statement above is beyond absurd. You can start by identifying a society where there were thousands of years of capitalism free of all government regulation.
We have known for decades that capitalism is not a stable system. It leads to panics, depressions, and social conditions that lead to political instability.
Such a good article. Capitalism cannot help but get so greedy that it begins to destroy people and the country where it is prevalent. There's no such thing as greed-less capitalism. It must either be controlled or it will first kill everything around it, and then itself. Like a homicide-suicide.
This is from the article:
Globalization meant above all a sudden increase in the global supply of labor power, yielding an historically unprecedented buyers’ market for labor. By relocating production facilities out of their old centers, capitalists drastically cut labor costs.
At the same time, such shifting of production provoked unemployment in the old centers, loss of higher-paying jobs that moved abroad and increasingly, the descent of workers into lower-paid, largely service-sector jobs. Old-center economies thus exhibited stagnant or falling real wages alongside soaring profits. The gap between rich and poor – between those whose incomes depend chiefly on profits and those who depend chiefly on wage work – starkly widened.
At the same time, wealth rose rapidly for the new-center partners of the old-center capitalists.
It likewise spread the usual effects of such inequality: speculation, real-estate bubbles, gross conspicuous consumption by the rich, political corruption and so on.
Everywhere, those extremes provoked revolutions against feudalism that eventually yielded that system’s demise.
No, quite the contrary. With no government regulation, capitalism always fails. We have thousands of years of history to prove it.
No, what you have is thousands of years of governments failing to control capitalism. They're not the same thing. In the cases that they've tried the hardest underground economies form and black markets take over.
The folly comes from the idea that you can control people all the time. That's the inherent flaw of the regulatory crowd because every single time they end up causing more problems than they fix. Whether it's black markets and underground economies or massive transfers of wealth or any other unintended consequences. That's why free markets work because not only is there a motive to provide things people want at a price they can afford when a company can't do that it fails. In the case of banks if they create toxic loan programs they would then have to bare the burden of immense suffering when their shortsightedness gets the best of them. At that point their capital is sold off at extremely low costs to companies that didn't slit their own throats.
Now let there be no misunderstanding. Some regulation is needed as well as some government. The argument over how much is an academic one.
There is nothing evil or greedy about capitalism since capitalism is not a person with the ability to even have those traits. Capitalism is a property theory.
Last edited by BigJon3475; 07-19-2014 at 11:21 AM..
No, quite the contrary. With no government regulation, capitalism always fails. We have thousands of years of history to prove it.
My goodness! This thread is NOT ABOUT SOCIALISM!
Such a good article. Capitalism cannot help but get so greedy that it begins to destroy people and the country where it is prevalent. There's no such thing as greed-less capitalism. It must either be controlled or it will first kill everything around it, and then itself. Like a homicide-suicide.
This is from the article:
Globalization meant above all a sudden increase in the global supply of labor power, yielding an historically unprecedented buyers’ market for labor. By relocating production facilities out of their old centers, capitalists drastically cut labor costs.
At the same time, such shifting of production provoked unemployment in the old centers, loss of higher-paying jobs that moved abroad and increasingly, the descent of workers into lower-paid, largely service-sector jobs. Old-center economies thus exhibited stagnant or falling real wages alongside soaring profits. The gap between rich and poor – between those whose incomes depend chiefly on profits and those who depend chiefly on wage work – starkly widened.
At the same time, wealth rose rapidly for the new-center partners of the old-center capitalists.
It likewise spread the usual effects of such inequality: speculation, real-estate bubbles, gross conspicuous consumption by the rich, political corruption and so on.
Everywhere, those extremes provoked revolutions against feudalism that eventually yielded that system’s demise.
Quote:
The first law of thermodynamics is often called the Law of Conservation of Energy. This law suggests that energy can be transferred from one system to another in many forms. Also, it can not be created or destroyed. Thus, the total amount of energy available in the Universe is constant.
That law explains how resources are conserved and disseminated.
Quote:
Heat cannot be transfer from a colder to a hotter body. As a result of this fact of thermodynamics, natural processes that involve energy transfer must have one direction, and all natural processes are irreversible. This law also predicts that the entropy of an isolated system always increases with time. Entropy is the measure of the disorder or randomness of energy and matter in a system. Because of the second law of thermodynamics both energy and matter in the Universe are becoming less useful as time goes on. Perfect order in the Universe occurred the instant after the Big Bang when energy and matter and all of the forces of the Universe were unified.
That law explains what ultimately happens in closed systems.
Quote:
The third law of thermodynamics states that if all the thermal motion of molecules (kinetic energy) could be removed, a state called absolute zero would occur. Absolute zero results in a temperature of 0 Kelvins or -273.15° Celsius.
That law explains how no matter what you do you're freaking screwed eventually.
I guess now you have something to think about when Mircea speaks of the immutable Laws of Economics.
So, why do some of you want to be selfish and deny the things you get to take for granted to the rest of the world? You'll lose in the end no matter what you do but how epic your failure is is determined by how shortsighted you are in your policy making.
We have known for decades that capitalism is not a stable system. ...
That's called assuming your conclusion. Not a particularly good way to make your case.
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