The evolution of Capitalism

The Coffee Shop
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Just curious on where people stand concerning the direction Capitalism should logically take in it’s evolution. Like any other system it’s a changing idea. The capitalism of today is certainly no way similar to what is was 100+ years ago. Is the Socialism we are seeing more of in our govt. the direct result of Capitalism’s metamorphosis, or man’s inability to take personal responsibility for their actions, i.e. the need for social programs to survive, and if so would a completely state run govt be the next result of Socialism until that too undergoes change?

Was the Communism in Soviet Russia a failed system because it didn’t go through an evolutionary system of Capitalism/Socialism/Communism and therefore didn’t have the checks/balances that would be slowly built into an developing system? Or is any state run system going to change, because change is inevitable?

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man’s inability to take personal responsibility for their actions, i.e. the need for social programs to survive, and if so would a completely state run govt be the next result of Socialism until that too undergoes change?

Personally I think this correct, but only part of the issue. An equally disturbing issue it a group of politicians that try to derive additional power by exploiting this weakness. Its my belief that the democrats (politicians, not normal people) want to constantly make more people rely on the government teat for there existance. If they can make more and more people rely on them, it increases their power.

So in my opinion, its a two-fold problem. Its human nature to seek the easy way out. A portion of the population takes this to extreme and would rather have a handout rather than work for what they get. When it goes too far, its a major societial weakness. The other side is more calculating and therefore more evil. They observe this tendancy, and look for ways to exploit it for personal gain.

Personally I think that a huge portion of this country needs a boot in their ass. As my granddad would say, “straighten up and fly right, boy”. Well I am about to experience that myself. With wifey’s income about to take a huge hit, I am having to reassess our priorities. Lots of should haves are going through our minds now and its time to really tighten our belts. Had plenty of opportunities to take steps in the past to make this situation less difficult, but choose to live large instead. So now I am going to have to pay for those lost opportunities. Oh well, it will make me a better person in the long run. Eventually there will be a silver lining.

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Its my belief that the democrats (politicians, not normal people) want to constantly make more people rely on the government teat for there existance.

I’m not defending the democrats by any stretch, but why did you single them out? Hasn’t the government grown out of control under the Bush administration backed by a Republican congress?

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I don’t disagree that the government grew out of control under the last administration. But I believe that is more associated with defense rather than social programs. Strictly my opinion, but there are more politicians on the left trying to exploit the poor for gains of power than there are on the right. That is why I singled them out.

I will also grant you that not all left leaning people are out to exploit. Some are simply misguided, lol.

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I don’t disagree that the government grew out of control under the last administration. But I believe that is more associated with defense rather than social programs. Strictly my opinion, but there are more politicians on the left trying to exploit the poor for gains of power than there are on the right. That is why I singled them out.

I will also grant you that not all left leaning people are out to exploit. Some are simply misguided, lol.
Good points. I won’t hold it against a liberal for thinking with their heart, but every once in a while they need to be reminded that they have a brain too.

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As the production of resources like oil, steel, aluminum, fertilizer, etc start to decline rather than increase like they have for decades

the capitalist mantra of growth growth growth will become challenging.

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Is the Socialism we are seeing more of in our govt. the direct result of Capitalism’s metamorphosis

You are getting close there. Capitalism requires some method of boosting wages to achieve the kind of prosperity we’ve seen. Unfortunately in most (all?) societies this was achieved via labor unions and other forms of wage fixing and job protection which spread inefficiency and tend to stifle prosperity.

The trick IMO is how to boost wages while also allowing companies to hire and fire at will. I think we’ve reached a point in technology where we could rather quickly achieve a very high living standard while also working less, if an effective means could be found to maximize these two objectives.

Was the Communism in Soviet Russia a failed system because it didn’t go through an evolutionary system of Capitalism/Socialism/Communism and therefore didn’t have the checks/balances that would be slowly built into an developing system? Or is any state run system going to change, because change is inevitable?

I think a big factor was corruption (a form of inefficiency) which is a natural result of having a single entity with too much power and control.

I don’t think the state should “run” things… at least not very much. The state needs to pass intelligent laws and regulations and enforce them… they are the referees in charge of the economic playing field… but outside of that, the market will be more efficient (and more prosperous) if it is allowed to function and compete freely.

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I tend to agree with you. I think that the original idea of helping, providing safety nets to the poor and indignant, was a noble idea. Ideally, we don’t want anyone starving or living on the streets or getting no education. Unfortunately that noble ideal has been twisted to where it’s now the norm to look for the easiest way out of every situation. Govt. grew, and every political party is guilty of growing some part of the government, so it’s not an us vs them thing. In building an infrastructure you only have support for so many levels until the walls start to collapse. God knows we have had signs for a long time that the walls were starting to crumble.

Too many social programs, too many wars, too much foreign aid, unchecked growth and free credit have all compounded the issues to where the solution appears to many to be the govt. will fix “X” if you let them have free reign, regardless of where the $$$ comes from and how/when it will get paid back. And that is not a viable solution to me or for us I hope. I think the decline, which has been happening slowly over the last 40+ years, has increased its pace, perhaps even outpacing our ability to react in a well thought out manner because of a supposed need that we MUST react quickly to all threats. This is an unforeseen consequence of the ability of anyone to get data anytime anywhere, a consequence of the age of information. The thought that **Perception that something being done, anything, immediately is more psychologically important then something actually being done successfully later, **just occured to me, and that is scary if it’s true.

Thus you have $$$ being tossed at the problems, but no real solutions to the problems, leaving us with a total infrastructure that is quickly crumbling and this includes morals and values. We may be living through the final days as an old style of govt dies and we watch the birth of its replacement. It may be a bastard, but it’s going to be our bastard.

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The thought that **Perception that something being done, anything, immediately is more psychologically important then something actually being done successfully later, **just occured to me, and that is scary if it’s true.

Thus you have $$$ being tossed at the problems, but no real solutions to the problems, leaving us with a total infrastructure that is quickly crumbling and this includes morals and values. We may be living through the final days as an old style of govt dies and we watch the birth of its replacement. It may be a bastard, but it’s going to be our bastard.

i agree.

furthermore, i think that we should actually support a continuous feedback loop between problems in the financial markets leading to problems in the real economy leading to problems in the financial markets and on and on.

the first step would be to let all the big banks fail and not provide insurance payments to the depositors who lose all their money. screw them if they were dumb enough to deposit money into banks in the first place.

if they were smart, they would have kept their money hidden under a mattress or in a vault in a basement.

above and beyond that, if they were smart they also wouldn’t be conducting transactions using inherently worthless paper bills which are no longer backed by physical gold held by the central bank. this whole “money by fiat” fiasco is really the source of all our problems.

to take up your point on the moral decline of america, we should also ban usury. we’re violating a basic tenet of christianity every time we demand payment of an interest rate on loans for basic things such as housing. moral decline indeed!

10

I would question whether capitalism has changed at all or is it simply that we are calling something “Capitalism” that simply is not so?

IMO capitalism has not changed, what has changed is the way we choose to try and practice it, or parts of it.

In fact I would argue that it is this very “Attempt at evolving” capitalism that is in part the reason we are having troubles. Maybe instead of trying to “Evolve” capitalism we need to devolve back to capitalism.

~Matt

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Capitalism has always had troubles.

Every decade has had troubles

I would question whether capitalism has changed at all or is it simply that we are calling something “Capitalism” that simply is not so?

IMO capitalism has not changed, what has changed is the way we choose to try and practice it, or parts of it.

In fact I would argue that it is this very “Attempt at evolving” capitalism that is in part the reason we are having troubles. Maybe instead of trying to “Evolve” capitalism we need to devolve back to capitalism.

~Matt

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mjuric is right.

we should contract the money supply by a factor of 20 ASAP.

tomorrow at 5pm, if at all possible.

i really don’t care if it means that everyone who has a mortgage that can’t pay it back tomorrow loses their house. fuck them and their paper wealth!

anyway, such fears are probably overblown given that the money economy has no impact on the real economy, as we all know from macro101.

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That’s a good point. You can’t be a capitalist if you are no longer practicing capitalism.

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I think we’ve seen some of this pointed out in the “Free market” discussions and how “the free market” did or didn’t get us to this point. The “Definition” of a “Free market” has changed from “Free market” to something that isn’t necessarily so “Free”.

I’m not passing judgment as to one being better or worse, just that changing the definition of something doesn’t change the “thing” itself.

We don’t have “Free markets” anymore than we practice pure capitalism. The question of whether we should or shouldn’t is a different question.

~Matt

15

That’s a good point. You can’t be a capitalist if you are no longer practicing capitalism.

i beg to differ. that’s clearly faulty logic. it would be like saying you can’t be trailer trash if you’re not in a trailer park. yet, as we all know, though you can take the girl out of the trailer park, you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl!

what facet of economic philosophy will we discuss next? perhaps how a truly free and unencumbered market could solve our current dilemnas, yes?

i daresay that if we are to make such a modest proposal, we should refer to an expert in that field: jonathan swift.

16

I agree w/ you and Locke.

I also think some well-meaning people are misguided when it comes to “helping people”. My opinion (and possibly a psychological opinion) is that people are most happy and fulfilled when they are self-reliant. True, they might not have much, but what they have is theirs, by earned events.

I don’t think that, in general, people on welfare and other assistance programs feel all that good about themselves. I think it adds to their low self-image. There is something very fulfilling about being “independent”, even (perhaps especially) if one struggles to attain it.

I think that “false philanthropy” as Bastiat refers to it, does come from well-meaning people as a means of helping them out. But, it is analogous to the situation of one allowing a friend to “sleep on your couch” for a few months while they get back on their feet, only to realize that by having a free place to stay, free food, etc … that person’s desire to “get off your couch” actually decreases, unless you put some pressure on them. When people live like this for generations, the shame, desire, etc to be independent seemingly vanishes little by little, and we end up with what we have now, and this is a subsculture that has been and continues to be reliant on the government (Teet is a good word) for their living, without making a concentrated effort to be self-sufficient or even more self-reliant … almost to the point of viewing work/labor as a “sucker’s gig”. I stated in another thread, we are seeing that given a choice of “being poor and working v. being poor and not working”, more and more are choosing the later.

It is not too difficult to see that in the future we may have a very well established two group system of society … those that work, and those that don’t, as a primary means of living. To me, that goes against everything our nation was founded upon, built on, made great by, and should continue to represent.

I would like to think that we are just experiencing an ebb and flow of the situation, but I do not see many situations where the government returns power/responsibility to the people, or where people have chosen to work harder once they have tasted “EZ money” … especially once the shame/stigma of the ‘handout’ has been removed.

Anything more said, would likely be overkill. But, really I wanted to put the idea out there of whether “giving” people the means to live without effort toward self-reliance is REALLY helping them.

I think many would agree that allowing your kids to live at home until they are 35 is not in their best interest … and I think that the smae reasons apply in that situations will also apply in essentially all long-term welfare & government assistance programs … especialy those that continue to “reward” or give “financial incentives/assistance” for children in the home (especially Special Education children). I think tha both sends the wrong message, and actually enables the type of behavior/mindset we should be seeking to minimize.

I do also agree, that whether by result or design, a more dependent society on the government leads to more power for politicians as well as job security and prestige.

17

“I would question whether capitalism has changed at all or is it simply that we are calling something ‘Capitalism’ that simply is not so?”

BINGO!!!

The thing that the OP called “capitalism” is more accurately described as a “mixed economy.” Such systems are fundamentally unstable cybernetically, and the “evolution” of which he spoke is simply the normal progression of such a system as its inherent internal positive-feedback loops are played out (for a detailed description, see http://www.humanactioncourse.info/pp/cf/HI40050.html and the pages that follow).

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That’s a good point. You can’t be a capitalist if you are no longer practicing capitalism.

i beg to differ. that’s clearly faulty logic. it would be like saying you can’t be trailer trash if you’re not in a trailer park. yet, as we all know, though you can take the girl out of the trailer park, you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl!

what facet of economic philosophy will we discuss next? perhaps how a truly free and unencumbered market could solve our current dilemnas, yes?

i daresay that if we are to make such a modest proposal, we should refer to an expert in that field: jonathan swift.
I think we want to consider ourselves capitalists, however our present form of economics is related to, but not equal to, the tenants originally established in doctrines of laissez-faire, the basis of capitalism. To use your analogy, if I was raised in a trailer but then moved to a condo would I still be the same trailer trash lovin guy to my friends or would I now be uppity? :wink:

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“…however our present form of economics is related to, but not equal to, the tenants originally established in doctrines of laissez-faire, the basis of capitalism.”

I suppose one could say that they are “related” in the sense that everything in the universe is related. You’re right that they are far from being one and the same. BTW, our system wasn’t created by “tenants”; many of them considered themselves actual landowners. :wink:

20

We don’t have “Free markets” anymore than we practice pure capitalism. The question of whether we should or shouldn’t is a different question.

Capitalism, socialism, communism… they are just words.

If you could design your own socio-economic system, what would it be… and what would it be like to live in?