Why I believe capitalism is morally wrong and evil...

[Aeson]

While there is an instinctual "us vs them" inborn, defining the 'us' and the 'them' is learned. There are some people who can look at all people as 'us', others can't see past their family/friends/nationality/race/religion/whatever.

A capitalistic society is going to teach a smaller grouping as 'us'. Normally that ends up being the family unit which economically takes care of each other. It teaches that division. In this case, the problem with being lazy is that those who are relying on you (which includes yourself) will have to go without, or with less than otherwise.

Socialism broadens the economic 'us'. The problem with being lazy is still the same, that those who are relying on you (which includes yourself) will have to go without, or with less than otherwise. It's not going to work unless the personal 'us' scales along with the broadened economic one.

As people gain a better understanding for things in general, we keep moving further towards socialism. Idealy we'll end up with a competitive economy where everyone has incentive and is treated equally. Taking the best parts from both capitalism and socialism, both of which are broken on their own.

Most people's mindset isn't nearly to that which would support that sort of system yet. If we are to preach capitalism as the end all, be all of economic existance, then it never will be either.

[chequita guevara]

Re: Why I believe capitalism is morally wrong and evil...

Originally posted by Sava
What capitalism has become:

become?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Good post Aeson,

I agree with your points on the focus of the small 'us' verses the larger 'us'.

My point is and was that it is much harder to make humans define themselves in terms of the larger 'us'. It is against their basic nature to do so as human nature looks after the individual first and foremost. Only after significant conditioning and more thanlikely the needs of the smaller 'us' addressed does that transformation take place.

If and only if that transformation was to take place, the real test is to see if that conditioning would hold generationally. Or would the idealism of a generation (like those of the Marxist eras) gradually devolve to our current state.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Asher

Yes, it is. It's part of the hoarding mentality. You find the necessities of life and greedily hold onto them for the survival of you and your family.

For millions of years, humans had no possessions, as food was more or less plentiful and new rocks and sticks could be picked up elsewhere. Greed would be counter-productive, since you'd be weighed down on your following the food with all these things.

"Greed" only appears in periods of scarcity. It is not the normal condition of humanity but an exceptional one.

Capitalism uses this human emotion, and over develops it. It makes us lop-sided, one-dimensional humans, focused soley on acquiring things because we'll starve (etc.) if we don't. This is not normal. Sharing has been a much bigger part of human society for a much longer period of time than stinginess has been.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Starchild
Darwinism isn't a very good thing endear an economic system to people as ecologies basically balance on a knife edge. One slip in the balance and ecologies come crashing down.

I'd hope that capitalism is a bit more stable than that.

You hit it on the head. One slip in the balance and the economy comes crashing down on our heads, every seven to ten years since 1825 (except during the post war boom when it changed to a three-five year cycle).

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by connorkimbro
Fact: the only monopolies that continue to exist as monopolies do so with the HELP of the government (for example, the us postal service has a monopoly on first class mail. or when the long distance phone companies HAD monopolies, since they don't any longer. (and prices have gone WAY down since then))

All other "monopolies" don't stay that way very long, and CERTAINLY aren't able to force people to buy anything they make anyway.

The Post Office doesn't have a monopoly. You are free to ship your letters with UPS or FedEx for much more than the USPS charges (UPS is best for ground shipping pacakges though).

Your facts do not mesh with history. In fact, it is quite the opposite, the monopolies only were destroyed by the power of government. It wasn't the market that brought Rockerfeller down, it was the Feds. It wasn't the markets that brought down the trusts and cartels, it was Roosevelt, Taft, and every government since then.

This is simple US Economy history 101.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by DrSpike
FACT: capitalism has lead to an increase in living standards that dwarfs anything any alternative could have offered.

Only in the imperialist countries. It has lead to a general decline in living standards through much of the rest of the world.

[Arrian]

[cheesy loud singing]HHHHEEEEEEREEE COMES CHE TO SAVE THE DAY!!![/cheesy loud singing]

Finally Sava gets a little backup. However:

For millions of years, humans had no possessions, as food was more or less plentiful and new rocks and sticks could be picked up elsewhere. Greed would be counter-productive, since you'd be weighed down on your following the food with all these things.

"Greed" only appears in periods of scarcity. It is not the normal condition of humanity but an exceptional one.

I'm gonna make like loinburger and call bull****. No f'in way does greed only appear in periods of scarcity. . And unless you are an anthropoligist in disguise, how in the WORLD do you assume that the "state of nature" was this utopia without greed?

-Arrian

[DrSpike]

Lol @ Arrian.

I suggest we all club together and buy a one way ticket for all the communists to, say, North Korea.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


For millions of years, humans had no possessions, as food was more or less plentiful and new rocks and sticks could be picked up elsewhere. Greed would be counter-productive, since you'd be weighed down on your following the food with all these things.

"Greed" only appears in periods of scarcity. It is not the normal condition of humanity but an exceptional one.

Capitalism uses this human emotion, and over develops it. It makes us lop-sided, one-dimensional humans, focused soley on acquiring things because we'll starve (etc.) if we don't. This is not normal. Sharing has been a much bigger part of human society for a much longer period of time than stinginess has been.

Unless you subsrcribe to reinacarnation and can remember your past lives of millions of years ago, I son't see how you can accurately describe the motivations of those eras.

On the other hand I can very easily see this prehistoric scenario playing out.

Og fashion a new tool (the birth of civilization). He calls it using his own native tongue a FERRK. It allows him the ability to shovel all the food he can itno his mouth at a faster pace than his tribemate Cheg. Og eats plenty of his share and more as a consequence. Cheg is resentful. Cheg slips up behind Og with his own invention the HAMMMEIR. Cheg hits Og on the head and takes his FERRK.

Damn cross posted with Arrian

[Ming]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
For millions of years, humans had no possessions

Millions of years?...
I guess it's time to rewrite the history books about how long man has been on this planet

[monkspider]

Ah, Dr. Spike. The old increase in living standards arguement. It is fairly easy to see where an arguement such as this one can lead. Let's take Slaves in 1860 who had considerably higher standards of living than in 1760. Does this justify slavery? In fact this very arguement was use by slavery apologists at the time. And It's a powerful arguement, there's no denying that.

Or take Stalinism, Stalinism was quite succesful in raising the standards of living for people, in short period of time as well. Does that justify Stalinism? This arguement has been used time and again throughout history by the apologists of various devious institutions.

[DrSpike]

Hehe on a less flippant note, scarcity (of resources) and potentially unlimited human wants are a fact no matter what era you are interested in.

The big question is the mechanism you use to deal with scarcity. How do you decide what to produce, how to produce it, and who gets what. Early on the mechanism is force, like Ogie's hammer. Later authority and tradition start to play a role.

In recent times we have the market economy, and the communist economy. The reason it's market _insert large number here_ - commies 0, is precisely because own greed in market economies leads to outcomes beneficial to society.

[Adam Smith]

I long ago swore to stay out of these kinds of threads. But its a slow day today, so what the hell.

Class is in session.

Monopolies

ahem... the oil industry is a collection of monopolies that collectively set the market on oil.

A monopoly is one seller or effectively one seller. There aint no such animal as a collection of monopolies. Its a contradiction in terms. In the oil industry what you might have is an oligopoly (set of firms which recognize that their actions affect a small number of identifiable rivals) which purchases a substantial portion of their product from a cartel (set of producers which jointly agree to restrict output).

Labor's Share
Roland is right about the proportion of money which goes to labor. In most industries it is on the order of 70 to 80 percent. In some really capital-intensive industries, such as railroads or petroleum refining, it may get as low as 50-50, but that is usually about as low as it goes.

Market Economies
Here is the basic argument about the desirablity of market economies in general. This is from Alan Blinder, Hard Heads, Soft Hearts, a very good, very short, and very readable introduction to economics. Blinder is a professor of Economics at Princeton, and former chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors. This is a fairly simplified version, but lets run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.

1. Resources are limited. There is only a limited amount of capital, labor, energy, and other natural resources to produce goods and services with. If resources were unlimited, we would all be driving Mercedes, living in million dollar homes, and spending our whole day posting on Apolyton.

2. More goods and services are better than less. Does not matter what particular goods and services you want individually; more houses, clothes, health care, education, or whatever is better than less. Note that more "bads" such as pollution, make us worse off. In this simple argument we will just note that "bads" such as pollution can be remedied by more of a good, environmental cleanup. In this case more environmental cleanup is better than less.

3. Therefore, the more efficiently we use resources, the more goods and services we can have, and the better off we will be.

4. Market economies make the most efficient use of resources. In market economies goods and services are purchased from the lowest cost producer - the producer who burns up the fewest scarse resources. In market economies, goods and services are sold to the highest bidder - the consumer who values them most. The combination of buying from the lowest seller and selling to the highest bidder ensures that market economies make more efficient use of scarce resources,and hence consumer better off, than other forms of organization.

5. There are three main exceptions to point #4. Markets are not the most efficient form of organization when there are natural monopolies (eg local telephone service); externalities (eg pollution) or public goods (eg charity). In these cases regulation of markets can make consumers better off.

[DrSpike]

Or as AS's namesake famously put it:

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."