C. S. Lewis wrote that “the devil always sends errors into the world in pairs of opposite.” Whether one believes in God or not, one cannot help but notice that clashing dyads tend to work together: their noisy opposition frames further discussion, making people oblivious to subtler and more balanced positions.
Some months ago, one of these pairs of mistakes has been exposed here on Return Of Kings. Some feminists cast an essentially negative view of all heterosexual sex, where men are mostly rapists and women mostly victims, while other feminists claim to be “sex positive” and value sex as an empowering pleasure. Ultimately, both views contribute to the hypersexualization of society and both agree on female autonomy over sex, a point often taken for granted whereas it leads to female domination and the inversion of traditional roles.
Here I would like to dwell in another pair of mistakes, a pair still highly relevant to us, and bound to be so as long as we don’t find at least a consistent third option: capitalism versus socialism.
It is no mystery that the ROK community mostly leans towards capitalism. At first glance, capitalism fosters a spirit of initiative and invention, stimulates entrepreneurship, creates opportunity to thrive professionally as well as a rich market. Isn’t that better than the repressive, politically correct, power-hungry socialism? Well, “the devil relies on your extra dislike of one [error] to draw you gradually into the opposite one”, Lewis added. Ultimately, capitalism and socialism agree on stuff that should be considered as abnormalities, and both are faces of the same modern coin.
The obscure origins of modern capitalism
Libertarians, the prime defenders of capitalism, constantly say that laws of economics are natural, that supply and demand spontaneously appear everywhere and create a no less spontaneous order if let run their course with minimal rules—non-theft being the most important. From such spontaneity, they conclude that capitalism is “natural” and opposed to “unnatural” efforts that, trying to regulate it, only create friction and further problems.
A lot could be said about the short-handedness of the argument. Suffice it to notice three things.
First, capitalism, “Enlightenment” liberalism and later libertarianism are all based on a matrix of concepts that only sprang up at modern times. The most important ones are a so-called state of nature with fully formed, but isolated and cultureless individuals, who would discover spontaneously that bartering is good; said isolated, cultureless, abstract individuals as the brick and mortar of future societies; or focusing on material needs, on virtues as means for utility, and so on. Actually, all this was made out of a rather reductive and simplified view of the world, and is much less natural or spontaneous than it pretends to be.
Second, the “natural” processes of supply and demand, of bartering, of prices adjustment according to the availability and needs of a given product… were already known in classical antiquity and hence not discovered by the modern authors who were later dubbed “enlightened”. They were simply kept in check by the political power through rulings, numerus clausus, guilds or corporations, as to ensure the harmonious functioning of the city and that everyone had his fair place.
Third, so-called natural laws of economics bear a strange analogy with the universal struggle of living species according to Darwinism. One could argue that this is a proof of the “naturalness” of supply, demand, price adjustment and the likes. Perhaps—but then, the analogy should be made fully and lead us to consider economical systems just like ecosystems, endowed with a need for equilibrium and stability, without which life is conspicuously “nasty, brutish, and short.” Darwin himself felt some dismay at the struggling he was reducing nature to (see Origin of Species, end of chap.3), and his cousin Galton wanted the process of selection to be put at the service of good birth rather than let loose.
The German sociologist Werner Sombart defined capitalism as what happens when money or capital trumps technical expertise or any other consideration. Traditional societies weren’t like that. In the Middle Ages, when the Western world was still living in what can be called a traditional civilization, prices were often regulated by local authorities, and merchants that were taking more than their fair share got expelled, sometimes even seized. Was that a problem? Middle Ages civilization let us magnificent cathedrals that were built for something much higher than profitability—and aside from times of hunger, even the humblest workers could eat lots of meat:
In 1308, the people of Frankfurt (Oder) were eating 100 kilos of beef meat per individual. Men who came to work with the Friars Preachers of Strasbourg received 600-700 grams of meat per day, at a time when multiple decrees explicitly ordered, all over Europe, that hired workers should eat meat products twice a day. At the time of Saint Louis, in the 13th century, more than 8 million pigs were being raised in France; in 1789, only 4 million pigs could be found—although France had become much wider and more populated. In Berlin, at the end of the 14th century, an individual could eat 3 pounds of meat per day, namely 12 times more than a 19th century fabric worker. (Source)
All this was possible because profitability, and economics in general, were deemed much less important then.
The emphasis on employer-employee “free” relationships (outside of family, guilds, and castes), on accumulating capital, on profitability, on capital lending… is as “natural” as excessive greed. It came under various masks through catharism, intriguing families such as the Italian Medici, rogue kings who borrowed money or bought war supplies from Jewish merchants while oppressing their own nobilities, and barely religious bourgeois glad to overthrow the throne and altar so that trade would go unchecked.
The end result of capitalism and socialism
Some thinkers, appalled by the philistinism of the bourgeois class or by the harsh life conditions near the steaming factories, started to work on a new answer to these problems. Namely, they would try to reorganize social life from above: the Robert Owens, Saint-Simons and other Charles Fouriers laid the ground Marx and Engels built upon later.
Now I think most readers already know that this kind of answer is usually named socialism and that, honestly, it sucks. Modern socialism means infatuated bureaucrats micromanaging millions of lives, denying citizens their most basic rights to self-determination, destroying opportunities of economic growth out of ignorance or neglect, and pretending to be paragons of altruism when they are mostly parasitic and corrupt.
Yet, is unrestrained capitalism so much better in the long run? People motivated by greed will always want more. They will resort to underhanded practices, speculate ruthlessly, buy out their neighbours’ small companies, support the invasion of new countries in order to open up new commercial outlets. Mafias will crop up, and then oligopolies, and perhaps even monopolies. Global companies will reduce the majority into corporate slavery. Once libertarian bosses will buy up politicians in order to secure their economic rent.
Before you say that this is crony capitalism and “not a free market anymore”, like an erudite libertarian would do, let me answer that an unregulated market is inherently unstable and bound to destruction. Such a market opens the path for hyper-powerful bankers and corporate monsters like Monsanto. People are greedy, self-interested, and some will always go to such lengths—unless societies are regulated by higher principles.
Want more opportunities to invest? Force other countries to open their markets to your capital and lead them to rent money at a high rate. Likewise, once every home features everything a family need and even more, how do you create more economic growth? Simple: destroy the families, so that individuals who were living happily together will need to have their own flats and furniture; feminize men, so that they will consume mindless entertainment and be more obedient; create wars, so that there are more opportunities to sell weapons… All these phenomenons can be boiled down to a soulless search for profit.
In The Bell Curve (chap.22), Charles Murray pointed out that the extended welfare State destroyed healthy small-scale initiatives—such as, say, neighbor fundraising for a little girl with cancer—by replacing them by cold bureaucratic stuff. This is absolutely true, and it should be said that Wall-Mart destroying local shops does the same thing. Here the modern (statist) Left and the neoliberal (market-idolizing) Right concur in destroying normal sociability and atomizing individuals. Is that so much better to be a slave at MacDonald’s than at a public administration? The managerial State, half-Big Corp and half-nanny administration, is merely a fusion of these trends.
So, what’s the third option?
To avoid bouncing between Super-Market and Super-State, or worse, the fusion of both, we can break down the problem in a few variables. The first is production, the second motivation, and the third ensuring that the right people at their right place.
The first variable is the most essential from an economical point of view: without goods, there is no economics. Any society needs a decent quantity of several goods to function, or it will go through starvation. It also needs some quality goods or people will experience nasty side effects due to exposure to toxicity, lack of healthy nutriments and so on.
In a capitalistic system, people produce a certain quantity of work in order to sell its product and buy what they need. As the customers’ taste and the drive to innovation produce better products, the theory says, niches appear and some skilled entrepreneurs start focusing on quality products, such as organic food or high-end venues.
In practice, what we’ve seen is the rise of mass production: low-quality products are widely sold, thus producing fat, ugly and chronically ill people who are addicted to junk food and entertainment, whereas quality products are becoming increasingly expensive.
The second variable is motivation: what motives you to work as you do? Do you want to produce quality, to get easy bucks, to maintain a position inside an unstable market? Traditional craftsmen would aim at quality, not because they expected a higher profit, but because they knew quality was good and desirable in itself.
This is a very different mindset than the hunt-for-bucks one. The psychologist Neel Burton (Heaven and Hell, chap.9-10) once said that capitalism was motivated by greed while socialism was motivated by envy: let me remind that both emotions were considered sins, and it may not be an accident that both billionaires and social engineers tend to entertain a God complex. If your work is motivated by a soulless will to power over others, the end result will be ugly.
At last, the third variable consists in ensuring that the right people are at their right place. Socialists say individuals can be at their right place out of equal chances, Murray wrote that “IQ will put you at your place”, and libertarians are faithful that blind free-market processes will. In my opinion, all these bear some truth but are bound to be ultimately wrong.
A socialist State is too riddled with bureaucratic cabals, too disgusting for entrepreneurial minds, and too seething with envy to ensure that a real meritocracy can arise. IQ means innate abilities, but there is no necessity for a high-IQ guy to get a high position, since he can be overburdened by an environment that won’t suit his needs: IQ is merely a predictor, i.e. an indicator with a decent correlation, not an imperious necessity. As for the markets, they are too unstable, too prone to select on differing criteria according to the epoch’s bigger opportunities, and at the end too plutocratic to really ensure people are at their right place.
So, we should want a society where people produce quality stuff without encroaching on the others’ wealth or subsistence out of greed (or envy). A society with better motivations, where jobs are diverse, whose members produce a decent quantity of quality goods. How do we get there? Answering this question can require a break from modern totem poles. At least, I hope I have shown that bouncing endlessly between libertarianism and socialism is without end, and that better options are available.
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Good article. Good to see this kind of thinking expressed.
As a Conservative I have a mixed approach to economics.
I favour low taxes for individuals and small business. Higher taxes on large corporations and capital gains from land income. Monopolies (especially where natural resources are concerned) taxed accordingly.
Less national/federal level, moreso local level. National taxes should be for space exploration, not welfare or pointless unwinnable wars.
On top of all this, we need a family oriented ethos. Family, community, country. In that order.
This will reintroduce self dependency and intra family support. Your Grandma is lonely, poor, etc?? Go see her. Solve her problems. That’s not the state’s business.
That’ll do for a start
This is a stupid article. Literally all of the things you’re pointing out as positive things can be done under capitalism. .
Strawman argument.
What is attributed to ‘capitalism’ and ‘liberalism’ is often due to the good will of people, not the systems themselves (which do lead to the excesses pointed out in the article).
“This is a stupid article.”
Objection – argumentative, your honor.
It’s a stupid article because it make no argument, it says socialism is bad and capitalism is bad… But literally offers no fucking alternative that make any sense what soever. Happy jackass?
Both Capitalism and Socialism suffer from Greed and Selfishness. The only difference is that the one allows you to keep what you earn and the other one takes what you earn.
Both are apolitical systems that believe in egalitarian theories which is required for their system to work. For example socialism believes that there are no corrupt people that will run the system and Capitalism believes that anyone will have no problem with the economic freedom of others.
In fact they are blank-slate ideas that lack any understanding for the human condition and this is the reason why socialism fails alone and capitalism allows itself to be toppled by socialists.
For an economic policy a mixture of state monopolies (instead of multinationals) and small-steady taxation for all, would be okay. The only welfare that should exist should only be for seriously wounded veterans, all else not. The state’s reason for existence is for the safeguarding of the system and the protection of it’s subjects.
What should the state monopolize that you feel is in better hands of the government?
The Army
Yeah, forgot that!
water, electricity, weapons for the army only, commuting vehicles and things that never fail but are trivialities like matches.
On top of that it should have some appearance in agriculture, not by monopolizing though, the tech industry and communications.
In general the state should have a control over the 10% of an economy by actively participating in it but not an inch more.
Needless to say in my head I do not have a state that is taken over by hostile groups like most modern states or that it is democratic, because it is to the benefit of the candidates to take more control of the economy to make room for their followers, ruining the economy in the process, as in Greece and probably many other modern socialist states.
Basically fascism then?
The one small good thing the govt has done is regulate product safety – so dangerous junk doesnt get on the market – even huge motor companies have released death trap cars and ttried to cover it up.
In my mind I have a concept closer to that of most European Monarchies. Fascism of Mussolini copied communism but put into it some capitalist and nationalist ideas, while reviving some older institutions, although not in name, for example the worker unions were structured like medieval guilds, which cared for how much work there was, not raising the wages. All in all though the problem with it is that it still is too interventionist.
We will never go to anything like a monarchy.
At least in our life-time! Heh, can’t a man dream?
Anyway, anything closer to this that does not glorify failed leaders would still be okay for me.
Well after the nuclear apocalypse (next year if the CIA have their way), if you survive you can carve out a little Kingdom amongst the ashes of civilisation… 😛
You’re a fucking statist piece of shit.
At least I ‘ll be a king of flies :^D !
That’s pretty much how the current system started and look what happened. You think the current system doesn’t suffer from greed and selfishness?
Yeah, well we aren’t going back to your Serengeti plain/ bushman economy. The current system is only at fault insofar as the masses have been psy-wared into apathy and helplessness. Society goes through cycles, and we are just at the shit stage where everything is decedent and corrupt, which will force good people to resist and reclaim the country from the parasites.
What makes you think that I want to go backwards?
The current system is corporatism, has mostly the bad of both systems. To avert this some control is required.
But don’t we have control already?
It is not good control it is bad control.
For example for most people to be free the laws need to be kept, the laws should be broken ONLY when fighting against people who wish to topple the system or/and BYPASS the laws.
Corporatism is when a few BIG companies can create law through indirect influence to politics. What they do is to make life miserable for smaller companies and enterprises to destroy competition and have control over monopolies that are handed pre-emptively to them. It is the reason why windows, as an OS, are not the best. Control should exist to make sure that things like that DON’T happen.
Now the second bad of corporatism is that the beneficial control of the state is being neutered and as such qualitative standards tend to fall while you still have interventionist policies, although in a socialistic state these tend to the good of the state, in corporatism it tends to the good of a few big companies, while the state is left to rot, and everybody else too.
So, control is needed only to keep the laws, the system running in order to create stability. Today we have control that promotes instability and wants to make it permanent. If you want to be more philosophical you can call the modern system anarcho-tyranny a system that exists only to prolong chaos, and through it tyranny by rendering law inefficient or neutering it’s implementation (by destroying policing and by making laws far too lenient on criminals).
In conclusion, control makes the good life possible, but it can render it impossible if it is allowed to fall to wrong hands. In the west we thought once: “Hey what possibly can go wrong if we elect the guy that says that power corrupts and denies that some people are corrupted, so that when he is found to be corrupt he simply throws it to power”. That mistake every one pays today dearly… with anarcho-tyranny.
So who decides what is good and what is bad control? And how would you enforce the good control? And how do we keep the controllers under…. uh control? To stop them becoming corrupt. Power corrupts…
I’ll work backwards from last point to first point:
Power doesn’t corrupt, some people (don’t know the proportion) are corrupt, to differing degrees, if a police officer is known for taking bribes making chief of police will do nothing to make him more corrupt, the bribes though will grow proportionately, if he was known for arresting anyone who tried to bribe him on the, he would do so even when he would have been a chief of police and have more power under him.
For keeping the controllers clean you remove most passive monetary gains (i.e. salaries) and give them proportions through a stable income tax, so that when the people do better they do better. This discourages people that wish not to do any work of their part but it does not discourage be itself bad people, for these you have an agency, styled like the medieval inquisition possibly even ran by equivalents of monk, which means religious fanatics that have NO right to ANY property, to scan the ones that are in or are about to go into the system and check their orthodoxy to the rules. The ones that fail should be removed.
Good control will be understood by a higher, by this it is meant infallible, dogma that no one questions, that will allow stability and law to exist and persist. It won’t have to be perfect it will have to be able to allow the vast majority of people to live their lives normally and productively with enough freedom to be happy but never enough to start living parasitically (note if one can secure his livelihood without working but by not being a burden to anyone he does not live parasitically ), or promoting immorality (note living an immoral life does not mean that one promotes it), or challenging said so dogma (that shouldn’t be too prohibitive like the quran)/
I think that the trouble with the corrupting influence of power is that the more power you have, the greater the temptation you have to use it to favor yourself. Consider the Whisky Rebellion for example. Or the overall the growth of the US Federal Government. How quickly the rebels became tyrants. But perhaps power does not corrupt one person but rather positions of power attract corrupt people. And so the greater the power of the US Federal Government, the more corrupt it becomes.
The trouble I have with what you are suggesting that this is how the US Republic was set up. And rapidly it became corrupt. Which is why I think that the only ethical form of control is self-control. It will not work to have some group elevated over the rest of us.
This is a very good question!
In my mind I do not have a democracy. I have more European Monarchies. While NOT perfect the average monarch acted better than the average democrat. The reason is that in monarchies bureaucracies, are designed with the least possible positions and it is very difficult for people to get into them. In a democracy the government may actively create more bureaucracy only to support people who vote for them. This goes to a comment of Plato concerning the ethics of democratic rule: “the masters make the mass more vulgar and all the good it has they diminish while all the bad is being advanced”. It states that the masses are self corrupting.
Yes self-control is the only ethical form of control, but few people master it or even consider it. A system for control exists so that the effects of self control may become more common.
Also it is needed to pointed out that no system in uncorruptible, but a system is needed, for the above reason and some systems decay much faster than others and some might cleanse themselves (in monarchies one very good monarch can do it, in democracies this translates that the elected need to move against the wishes of the masses).
The U.S.A. was made following 2 very wrong ideas: exceptionalism, which means that we can do what anyone else failed to do (a recipe for disaster, Trump scared people due to him being a nationalist, sort of, not an exceptionist) and republic, here meaning though, that this was more closer to an oligarchy than a democracy. It was system that allowed only rich landlords to vote, the moment that changed the other parameters were done for, as they were designed to work in a different cohesion. Still it suffered from the problem of emancipation, as the one who would give the right to vote to let’s say landless people they would stick with him so the temptation not only is great but an incorruptible person would be at a great disadvantage.
What I mean is that one system is one thing another is a different one, as one is made it has different traits that can manage to keep it up longer, give it the ability to rejuvenate, be with the people, for most of the time and try to make a good job in general. But due to the effects of modern life and life in general to allow stability to develop a system is required, the fact that modern system is bad does not make the idea of a system bad, if it was as such then systems would have never developed.
Do you think that the US Republic became more corrupt as the right to vote was extended to more groups of people?
Yes. This stands true for every country.
A glaring case: if women had not the right to vote most liberal victories would gave been impossible. Also, if women did not vote most welfare states would again have never been overdeveloped (originally they existed to provide basic healthcare and basic schooling in Europe to taxpayers). Also if workers of the public sector were not allowed to vote Greece wouldn’t have been in it’s sorry situation (by promising more jobs in the public sector, from which you cannot be fired, has been proven as the only way to be elected). The list can go on and on, but in general with pop-governments the people have a tendency to vote based on their baser instincts, disregarding the make up of the system and forcing it to it’s knees, or making too vulnerable to infiltration, or both as was allowed to happen.
The best argument for capitalism ironically comes from Pablo Escobar who poured millions into local hospitals, football teams, arenas, built enitre housing complexes etc. Once a person is wealthy from successful endeavors of their own intelligence who better to devise community projects. Trump puts out the same logic.
Whats more is that the overiding ambition of even the greediest robber baron is social acceptance which is also why Escobar went on a killing spree against the Govt. He wanted them to accept him come hell or high water… but of course a better way is simply giving away the gains.
The article is wrong because Walmart, Monsanto, Macdonalds, Amazon etc. can only exist because of armies of Govt trolls produce so much red tape that the little businesses are demolished. These mammoth companies sponsor Govt red tape and bills to benefit them and kill the competition. That is not capitalism.
Capitalism is literally just the mutual exchange of goods and services. It’s not even an “ism” like socialism.
In theory, true. In our reality it’s almost as complex as a planned economy.
It’s complex but it’s not be directed by force from a centralized power…. That’s the entire point, are you not able to follow basic logic?
It is though. Fiat currencies, federal reserves. What the fuck do you think these are??
“Fiat currencies, federal reserves. ”
These are not the product of capitalism, especially the latter which is basically banking taking control and putting themselves in power like they’ve done in every system in existence for the last 2k+ years.
I want to go on a philosophical tangent for a second about this.
It is observable that we are increasingly Socialist in our economic model. Taxes are ridiculously high, wealth redistribution measures take up almost half the federal budget, and the idea that government is the true possessor and owner of our nation’s wealth (and not the people) has become internalized.
These, along with federal reserves and fiat currencies, are not Capitalist notions. But is it fair to say they are not the product of capitalism?
Capitalism contains within itself only the barest rudiments of a morality, expressible with the “enlightened self-interest” idea. But what does Capitalism do to enlighten? Scarcely anything. Instead, some other morality and philosophy must provide enlightenment, so we can act in a way that produces both short-term and, more significantly, long-term benefits.
But Capitalism has within it the natural paradigm of “nature red in tooth and claw.” A philosophical code that produces short-term benefits has great power over the minds of men, and so it is easy to sell. This allows for a virtual monopoly on ethics and ideology, as most people are naturally inclined to seek immediate gratification.
The short-term “benefits” of the federal reserve, higher taxation, wealth redistribution, etc. make the product appear desirable.
And so it is that, while these ideas are not Capitalist, they are the product of Capitalism in the absence of a philosophical code to protect the people from what prove to be destructive ideas.
Capitalism is really simple. Is it moral to steal from other people (taxes) and do I own control of my own production? If you answer no and yes, you support capitalism, whatever you call it.
I am not sure that any banking instruments that do not tie to real goods can be considered capitalism in the strict sense. All securities not associated with the “means of production” (such as investing in debt) are not capitalistic in the strict philosophical sense. I think Adam Smith would look at our current monetary arrangements and call it some other kind of thing (like astrology). Think Marx would have a hard time identifying our system as “capitalism,” too.
Maybe “capitalarchy?” How about “monitarism?” I think I like that one.
Agreed. Fractional reserve lending (aka naked shorting of the currency) is not capitalism. Karl Denninger has frequently talked about the “one dollar of capital” rule that should be required for lending.
I think capitalism does have a moral core, and it is this: randomness and the unexpected are not to be feared. Capitalism accepts the unpredictability of nature, and allows it to blossom. On the other hand, socialism abhors the unpredictable– in fact, unpredictability is a direct ontological threat to the Marxian ethos. That is why secret police, rampant propaganda, re-education camps, and mass executions are inevitable under Marxist regimes.
The fear of randomness also makes socialism an evolutionary dead end, because it persecutes the raw material of change, itself.
Cool. Time for me to read some Denninger.
He’s unfortunately deleted 99% of his posts as he has more or less given up on awakening America at this point. He has a good book called Leverage that covers it though that he published a ways back.
Herein lies the problem. What is it about Capitalism that provides the morality that lets us answer the first question?
I do not write this to say I do not support Capitalism. I think it is a logical extension of the natural order, and I think we come into trouble when we try to deny our own natures (this is the inherent failure of Socialism).
The workings of capitalism can come from morals (be it religion, philosophical, etcwhatnot) or the belief that by respecting property and the individual, we all benefit more greatly than otherwise (greed). It works better when you have both, but you can have it work off mostly just greed as long as your government isn’t too corrupt. That said – it’s still going to be better than other systems besides a benevolent monarchy even if it is moderately corrupt.
I like it. I’m not sure whether it’s a complete moral code, but it is true there are definite moral implications and prerequisites inherent to both.
You have in your hands, here, the key point I was trying to make: there is no unifying moral code, only moral requirements for creating and sustaining Capitalism and philosophical consequences of Capitalism.
I agree, though- if your moral underpinnings are sufficient to secure long-term and universalist lines of thought, Capitalism will survive and thrive. Greed checked by either enlightened self-interest or by a moral code (which I think more closely related than most would) becomes a strength for the whole, while lack of greed (ha!) or unchecked greed becomes a weakness for the whole.
That is too simplistic. If one is born in a country where the previous generations have worked and built up a public infrastructure, which you are a beneficiary of (via freeways, healthcare and access to higher education – which is free in many countries, etc etc), then the moral question is do you have the right to destroy that system as an act of anarchy and deprive future generations of the benefits you enjoyed? This is actually the heart of the baby-boomer issue, as they have destroyed social/ public works developed by their ancestors. The Frankfurt School did studies after WW2 on why, for example, did the British working class not join a communist revolution in England, wherein they found that the common social/ public infrastructure gives every social class a link to each other as one group. They then planned to destroy the NHS (which was the primary social institution) in order to create a class war, as that link between all people in the nation would be severed. Thatcher and her fully jewish cabinet, started the destruction of the NHS and stole hundreds of billions of Dollars worth of assets from the British people in the name of stopping socialism.
When you look into the Industrial Revolution and how it came about, it wasn’t a free market system at all, it was a planned scheme which involved governments and acedemia, most notably the French Academy of Scences and John bapsite Colbert.. http://www.schillerinstitute.org/books/Robert-Burns-book-2007.pdf
Government, economics, academia AND RELIGION have always been involved. I agree my definition is a bit oversimplified but I never said we have ever had a real capitalist system although what we had in the US from 1750-1930 was relatively close (and GDP grew > 4% annually). But to say the industrial revolution didn’t occur become of capitalism is itself a ridiculous simplification. Without private ownership, freedom to buy and sell from and with anyone people choose, and minimal taxes, you don’t have the industrial revolution actually occur. You just have ideas.
And while we have a lot of public things we collectively own today (such as roads), that hardly negates the overall economic workings – especially since they could be handled privately as well – frequently with better outcomes (but not always).
It’s no secret that countries that have tiltied capitalist have grown significantly in the last 3 centuries and ones that haven’t stagnate. Look how much China has grown since 1979 since it started allowing even 50% of capitalism vs how little it grew in the preceding 60 years.
It is not a ridiculous simplification in the slightest; had you known how the Industrial Revolution happened – i.e who thought it up and how they conspired against the aristocracy to bring it to fruition, then you wouldn’t make a statement like that. Without key people Leibniz and John Baptiste Colbert and the French Academy of Sciences, and Denis Papin, who the oligarchy targetted and had his inventions shut down for 50 years, there would be no Industrial Revolution, just as the industrial revolution which was starting in ancient Rome was completel shut down by the elite – they knew about pressurised water and were making early steam engines nearly 2000 years ago. It took 1500 years to get back on track. So it was never a given; it didn’t just spontaneously happen.
Dirigisme isn’t communism or state ownership of enterprisee. America was founded as a dirigist country, as Benjamin Frankin was following the ideas of the French Academy of Sciences. Chinas current planned economy/ duel economy is dirigsme, where the state creates the infrastructure for private enterprise to thrive/ develop, and business pays taxes which are spread back into the public treasury. It is the only system that has ever worked. Hitlers economic miracle was purely dirigiste. The Industrial Revolution in Britain was started in the same way.
If you look at China now, the head of the Communist party, look at their previous jobs, they’re all engineers and scientists. China isn’t a free market country, it is a planned economy, and only has free trade zones as an economic incentive for Western companies to give up their trade secrets.
The West has stagnated for 45 years of neo-liberalism, showing that caitalism is just a tool for the elite to asset strip countries of the publics utilities. Free Trade, that the British Empire created, if you consider that capitalism, was nothing but a means to force other countries to conform to Britains imperialism, yet Britain was the most protectionist country on Earth whilst forcing the world to swallow Free Trade. http://www.schillerinstitute.org/books/Robert-Burns-book-2007.pdf
Capitalism is just a word invented by socialists to gain power by demonising a natural econmy that exists any time a few humans gather. Even female monkeys sometimes swap male held bananas for sex.
Lenin took power by demonising the Tsar – the evil rich – whereas the rich are often (but not always) simply the most intelligent groups naturally selected to hold that wealth. In time families can decay (eg. Paris Hilton did not build a hotel chain) but this problem is also ruled out in a pure market economy because everyone must constantly compete. Granted the more established and wealthy have advantages but there are plenty of rags to riches stories and plenty of rich familes that went broke.
Problems arise from poor minded folk who want a free handout and demonise wealth. Rockefeller built huge resources still available today. The evil Soros was partly responsible for pulling down the USSR. Wealthy people love to give back except when they are demonized – then they just withdraw and or seek vengance.
If you think into it logically – the wealthist people are usially the smartest and most ambitious and also the most exposed to public opinion – thus best disposed to give back to the community in ways they see fit.
Bill Gates did not build a private army a nuclear bumker and invade and ensalve washington state. For good or bad he started a foundation thats helped against malaria etc. At least on face value i dont see the so called greed motive. Its a aocialist lie devised to pull down royal familes – that admitedly were often 5+ generations old and thus corrupted and rotten. However at their inception even kings fought for the good of the general public.
I’ve said it many times: crony capitalism is the opposite of capitalism, and not a subset thereof. I can prepare a Venn Diagram if you need.
Whatever they are, they are not the free exchange of goods and services. I say this because the last couple of people who tried using something else got hit with an Arab Spring. It’s all a complex system of disguising a basic level of extortion.
Actually, capitalism ‘enlightens’ people by subjecting them to a selective pressure, in that people who make stupid decisions lose money, and thus lose the power to make stupid decisions in the future. Because of this, people generally gain a long-term perspective, which is all that enlightened self-interest means. You don’t generally start wars to steal stuff because those wars are expensive and put you in a vulnerable position, for example.
Aside from that, i’d like to address your point on the US being observably ‘more socialist.’ the problem with trying to judge that is that the US doesn’t just tax the american economy. When the government inflates the currency, that acts as a tax on everyone who uses dollars, which is most of the planet. So you really can’t talk about the US as being a certain fraction of the economy, because its income comes from all over the planet.
You can believe whatever BS you want historically.
China is about as capitalist as the US at this point. When China had no elements of capitalism, their GDP grew pitifully. Since Capitalistic elements added, exponentially.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/GDP_per_capita_of_China_and_India.svg/750px-GDP_per_capita_of_China_and_India.svg.png
What we have today in the West isn’t capitalism, but corporatism, fascism and socialism mix (similar to China) but with a more open government than countries like China
The British colonialism was mercantilism – not capitalism.
90% of the US GDP is trade with itself and the US averaged 4% GDP growth since inception until 2000, creating the highest standard of living the world has ever seen. It has only stagnated due to globalism, corporatism, and ever increasing amount of GDP spent by the gov (fascism/socialism)
China is a dirigiste economy. If you don’t understand what that means, then you are obviously clueless to economics and history – which is evident in that you throw about the tokenist words “fascism”, “socialism”. China is a planned economy; not only is it a planned economy, but its central bank is state owned, and that is why the state can get into currency wars. That isn’t capitalism. Yes, it has capitalism inside it, but it isn’t a capitalist.
You are also incorrect to ass-ume America from 1945-1999 was capitalist. There would have been no post war boom were it not for the banking regualtions put in place by, horro of horrors, FDRs regime such as the Glass-Steagall Act and The Bretton Woods Agreement. Kissinger got the Bretton Woods destroyed in the 70s, and started Americas economic decline, and Clinton abolished Glass Steagall, to allow Goldman Sach to merge their speculative/ derivative BS with chartered banking functions. Are you saying the Bretton Woods period, which was the only real period of wages growth and producitivty growth since WW2, was capitalist? FDR wasn’t a capitalist – his University dissitation was on Alexander Hamilton, one of the main proponents of dirigisme – go and read his Report On Manufactures; i.e a planned economy.
You’ll have to Google who Hamilton is no doubt, then come back with some other bullshit argument.
Nice chart btw, kind of weird that you would add a chart which shows Chinas growth under a Dirigiste economy, whilst saying that is growth by capitalism. SMH. No doubt you think Putins post-2000 6x increase of the Russian Ruble is down to “capitalism”, when Putin openly endorces dirigiste policies.
Dirigisme is simply the state regulating industry for the benefit of the country, and occasionally, where necessary, having part or full ownership of strategic resorces and industries. It is also the state regulating banking and finance.
You don’t even understand why the West, specifically America, has stagnated since the phoney Oil Crisis in the 70s, which broke the Bretton Woods Agreement, and set of this floating exchange rate system we are now under; nor do you understand the effect of Clintons abolishion of the GS Act in 1999, which set off this derivatives monster which has now put at least $2.2 Quadrillion (BIS stats) in leveraged derivatives onto the banks books.
Next time you want to act like a smart ass, make sure its with someone equally dumb as yourself, or preferably dumber – if you can find someone.
You are still talking? Guess what mixed economies (which is what USA, Europe, and China all have today) are all variations of dirigste economy – more frequently called command economies.
Yes, China is more command economy than the US but not that much more. In terms of economics alone, US Federal government spends 20% of US GDP while it’s only 14% in China. Our central bank is effectively state owned (owned by the banks, regulated by the government, and most of the profit goes to the gov). You don’t think western nations have engaged in currency wars? WTF do you think QE was designed to do or ZIRP? Why do you think before the Euro you had European countries that were 3000:1 against the dollar? Please. Just. stop. talking.
What the fuck do those things have to do with Capitalism you stupid fuck? Fuck man, learn basic definitions before you make an ass out of yourself.
No – corporatism/fascism mixed into capitalism is almost as complex.
That’s what I meant. What we have now
As long as there is sound currency like Gold that excludes scams like fractional reserve banking or derivatives, low taxes,minimal state interference and private property then it is effectively “Capitalism” or as people used to call it sound and healthy trade.
But the market is shaped by the preferences of the people and that my friends is where morality and a culture of excellence comes in.
Both capitalism and socialism are materialisms.
Good point. Adam Smith said morality comes from elsewhere
Indeed. So do many other economists. Capitalism is nothing more and nothing less than a system for the allocation of limited resources needed for the satisfaction of the unlimited wants and needs of humans. Since we cannot satisfy every need, we need to economize. I recommend the works of Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek on this subject. Particularly “Liberalism in the Classical Tradition” and “Law, Legislation and Liberty.”
For a free pdf of “Liberalism..” check out the link below.
https://mises.org/files/liberalism-classical-traditionpdf-0
Modern capitalism is being based more on John Stuart Mill who if he lived in the middle ages he ‘d been a victim of exorcism due to his greed. He literally could see only money, same as Freud who could see sexual references everywhere… literally.
Materialism isn’t sufficient. A transcendence is needed.
I’m for extremely limited government and mostly libertarian, but its true that even the private sector or at least what is left of it has failed in a number of ways. Because of people, few organizations have groups of the best or brightest and many of these places are eventually destroyed by politics, political correctness, or just plain gross mismanagement.
Another issue it automation and reducing labor costs by going overseas. What I want to know is when everyone has been outsourced or reduced so everyone can save money, who will have any money from work to pay for overpriced vehicles, $250k plus cardboard shacks, or any necessities, or anything else for that matter?
This is the dumbest article on this site since, “X reasons why you should start smoking”. How the f*** is voluntary exchange a mistake? Make your own bread? That mindset fits perfectly within capitalism it’s just incredibly inefficient.
Great article, that gave me a much greater perspective on this subject matter. Someone that came to mind who embodies this quality over quantity philosophy was Douglas Tompkins, the founder of the North Face company. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of his political values, at the end of the day this company produces some of the finest quality outdoor products. For example, my parents bought me a North Face backpack 10 years ago when I was starting high school, and paid a bit more for a quality product ($90 dollars) at the time. Up to this day that backpack is still in great condition and will last 10 more years if not longer. Compare that to most cheaply made Chinese backpacks which break down in less than a year, and you see the difference in mass production over quality production.
Here is a great example of how the private sector and government sector failed to protect anything or provide any real justice.
Jon Corzine Gets $5 Million Fine and Lifetime Ban for Tanking MF Global
Former NJ gov faces a big fine, but agency wanted the big house
http://observer.com/2017/01/jon-corzine-gets-5-million-fine-and-lifetime-ban-for-tanking-mf-global/
The collapse of MF was managed(mismanaged) out of their London office. If you want to know how reckless the banking system is, do a search for hypothecation/re-hypothecation…
Your thumbnail image is hilarious btw
Without a shared moral code to govern men, either the state must control all or men will live in the absence of morality (which trends toward all manner of evils).
Socialism promotes the first – no morality, so the state must govern all things. Without morality, there is no charity, so the state must mandate “charity.” Without morality, there is no internalized moral code shared by the people, so laws must be extensive and rigorously enforced.
Capitalism allows the latter. Without morality, there is no check on parasitic actions such as mass-marketing that which is bad for the people but benefits me (e.g. lobbying to mandate health insurance, not by any means necessary for most people). Without morality, there is great room for cults because the people are inherently lost (this is why, for example, feminism has spread as it has).
The key difference is that Capitalism does not demand the all-powerful State that Socialism does. There is the possibility of a traditional morality that provides the direction and cultural control that Capitalism inherently lacks. And that has happened, but the morality that has taken control is itself dangerous to those that hold to it (and promotes a shift toward State-powered Socialism, as we have observed).
In the death of the old order, which always must come but can be accelerated, there is room for a capitalism + morality (“traditionalism”) society to be forged.
I don’t suffer from greed and selfishness. They serve me well, just like rest of my emotions.
“They serve me well, just like the rest of my emotions.”
Indeed, this is why I do so appreciate the stoic philosophy. We cannot master all aspects of fate, but we can master ourselves. In so doing, we gain more power over our fates than we ever would imagine.
My father taught me that emotions are like a ring in your nose: if you let someone snap their lead onto that ring, they’ll take you wherever they want to go. (It came with a visual – we were watching a five-year-old lead a massive bull around a livestock show).
In the same way, to more directly speak to your post, while a wild dog may slaughter your sheep, a trained dog protects the herd.
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Thoughts on Anarchy??
You have an unproven assumption that the state is moral.
More that, in the absence of agreed-to morality, the State will take the place of morality.
People will govern themselves, living every day in accordance with a shared moral code and holding one another accountable to that code, or they will be governed by an external force.
Or, I suppose, the third option where they try to live in accordance with a shared moral code but the State is run under and enforces something else.
The price of being unable to hold the State to account, I guess.
I dont think capitalism lacks moral values. Escobar gave away millions – no Govt. needed. People love to give when they are not being demonized. Even the word capitalism is largely an invented term for a free market economy that socialism requires to demonize wealth – an agenda it must install to allow talentless bureaucrats to make a career out of lauding over people like a mafia does.
The rules are easy :
1.) A very small government with very simple rules, and tiny fee / tax for its up keep.
2.) Anyone in government aside from basic administrative staff cannot make a life long career and must have aquired considerable wealth from real world endeavors.
3.) Insurance companies pay for police (to prevent crime they have to pay out on). Transport companies pay for roads they will have to use. Corporations pay for schools to train workers they need in the future. Etc. Etc. Even law courts could potentially be priavte since the best and fairest brand names will rise the fastest.
It is quite surprising with the internet and clear fast communication that we still knee so easily to the hand of the 20th century monolith Govts. who are nothing more than very heavily armed mafias.
Definitely agree that the government is essentially the richest mafia with the best toys.
But the real key, I think, is that Capitalism does not contain within it a strong moral code. While it is true that even the most evil seem to have some degree of innate morality (Al Capone reputedly gave heavily to charities for women and children, for example), this morality does not spring from Capitalism (and certainly does not spring from the government).
This is the key point I am hoping to make. We humans have a habit of binding ideas too tightly together in our minds if they are closely related. I simply want to separate the system of Capitalism from the moral ideas we tend to associate with it, because they are not necessarily linked in the way we wish to think. In this way, I hope that we can create a model of how our enemies think and find ways to transform them into allies.
Capitalism is a hollow term dreamed up by socialists – talentless money grubbing unproductive do-gooders like Clinton and Obama – who dehuamize and compartmentalize everything. Ultimately these people hate wealth because they are only able to generate it by theiving. They have no genuine creative talent or true vision. Socialists are all just thugs as we can see from the outrage by Clinton supporters. If Trump lost his supporters would have quietly gone away.
Capitalism attempts to demonize wealth whereas infact you can barely find these so called greedy robber barons. Wealthy people are usually guarded especially the upper middle class with only a modest networth but the richer they get the more generous they tend to be – especially to productive and skilled people they respect.
The whole idea of ‘evil wealth’ was dreamed up to tear down the monarchy and the landed gentry who supported them – and often yes they had degenerated after many generations often with inbred children who were feeble minded saps and psychopathic rulers. But that doesnt mean being rich is evil or that all rich people are greedy and selfish. In fact a rich person who earned it himself is often generous because he knows he can always earn more. Its the socialists and 4th generation trust funders that have no means to earn whobare selfish by design and necessity of their own internal poverty. Thus as we see in the USSR if you let these people run things they will impoverish everyone.
You are incorrect.
Capitalism is specifically the use of capital to buy unfair influence over government policy.
It’s how globalism happened.
It has nothing to do with a free or fair market, as the big money buys what it needs from politicians and bureaucrats, always at the expense of small businesses.
You’re damned straight! Perfect! This is how it was supposed to work.
This is the dumbest article on thsi site since, X reasons why you should start smoking.
Depends on what you smoke. lol
Article was promoting cigarettes.
You can smoke kratom. lol
kratom smokes ME.
Believe me, there have been dumber.
Well the one about children safety seats was amazingly stupid, too.
Tradtionalism means what for economics? Return to cottage industry where you have your own shop space on the ground floor and live above it on the upper floor? Sounds like pre-industrial era. This is what a lot of hippies transitioned to after the commune idea didn’t work out. What am I missing?
Sounds like this entire article doesn’t even know or understand what it’s promoting.
This talk of mass produced goods reminds me that this year I should look into making stuff to sell at local craft fairs. For that past few months I’ve made impressive ststuff out if rotten scrap lumber, and I need an excuse to get some clean new stuff.
If I understand the picture correctly, the end result of both will be, like, all young men will join the French Foreign Legion?
The ultimate end of all beta males, this.
Count me in!
So, with the Fiat currency system, is the West even a truly capitalist system anymore? Is the Fed printed money and banks making it out of nothing a flaw in the system or is Fiat currency a form of ‘product’ that differs from say, food stamps in a communist society?
What rubbish.
Capitalism is just the derogatory term the communists assigned to economic liberty.
I’ll always chose freedom. Feel free to be motivated by whatever you want – greed, responsibility, tradition, whatever.
Agreed. Capitalism is just a label given to the natural order of property ownership; my stuff is mine. Everything has to have a political label these days, so they come up with Capitalism.
Thanks but no thanks. I’m with the guy prior to me here.
I choose liberty, both personal and economic, above all else. Whatever the problems of the world are, they certainly do not justify reductions in liberty.
But the problem with the in between ideology that you are proposing is that it will eventually leads to socialism. Look at the United States and how much government dips its hands into our economy. This is one of those tricky topics that will take some time to find a proper solution. I agree with Taignobias’s idea in that we should have capitalism society but we need a moral culture that can hold back the nasty parts of human nature.
“Some feminists cast an essentially negative view of all heterosexual sex, where men are mostly rapists and women mostly victims, while other feminists claim to be “sex positive” and value sex as an empowering pleasure.”
Quick point here. Sex positive feminism is nothing of the sort. It invariably consists of feminists who identify as oriented a little bit more towards other women, that towards me. Like feminism proper it’s purpose is anti-heterosexual, even when there’s a lot of cock-gobbling going on
The only problem with capitalism(or economic freedom) is that it produces so much wealth that parasites are sure to follow.
Then they figure out the best way to steal is to browbeat the rest of us into ‘electing’ them for the good of humanity. A century later you got 18 trillion in gov debt, and 300 million debt slaves.
Pretty good deal for the anti-capitalists, I guess.
“Namely, they would try to reorganize social life from above: the Robert Owens, Saint-Simons and other Charles Fouriers laid the ground Marx and Engels built upon later.”
Arguably Marx did a demolition job on all the other ‘utopian’ socialists, Proudhon being the most formidable. Robert Owen and maybe Proudhon might be worth revisiting. Saint-Simon was a technocratic elitist who would be working for the NWO today. Fourier was a bit queer in the head.
Capitalism is Free Trade with a complete absence of Morality and only works when practiced by moral individuals who have come in with a moral code on their own but when immoral people come into it well we see such outrages as Slavery and even murder put into practice where greedy landlords with bumper harvests freely leave their workers to starve such as with the Irish Potato Famine. Socialism on the other hand is basically old Feudalism controlled economy combined with Humanism based on the notion people are by nature Good and government really is not that much necessary yet under its various forms some of the most horrific crimes against humanity have been perpetrated such as by the National Socialists in Germany under Hitler, such as the crimes of Stalin and Mao and at the same time devoid of morality has lead to the current moral decline in the western world.
I think the French had a pretty good system during the “trente glorieuses” and de Gaulle.
I used to love the 2 chevaux and 4-L when I was in France in the 80’s. Not that they were good cars, but that they were “the workers car”.
It is true that some of these national projects limited to France were by-passed, like the “minitel”.
But a nationalist government with its own money sounds pretty good. So it can finance public works, pay employees, and not be dependent on international bankers.
Wow! That’s truly fascinating! I would imagine pictures of men showing off their tits probably doesn’t make as much money as you would make though, right? Think I can make at least $20,000? Do you have an HR Dept that I can sue for pay gap discrimination?
Now THAT’s some capitalism there!!
“To avoid bouncing between Super-Market and Super-State, or worse, the fusion of both, we can break down the problem in a few variables”
Thoughtful essay, but as Anthony Sutton fan I’m inclined to think the ‘fusion of both’ is the reality, and that commie china isn’t contradictory at all. The real opposition is between the collectivist state, that can be commandeered by a technocratic or ‘managerial elite (James Burnham) whether it’s a capitalist super-state or a socialist super-state, and the small or minimal variety that might permit more natural and individualistic modes of production.
In the context of the revolt against globalism and the coalescence of humanity into an obscene orgiastic mating ball then reducing the size of the collectivist “state” / economic apparatus must be a priority
Gosh, almost (but not quite) two whole paragraphs criticizing, lightly, socialism, while the rest of the article makes smear after smear on free markets.
And of note: Nothing regarding human socio-economic systems works without an agreed upon set of morals and values in a society. Just an FYI.
If you want to return to Guilds from medieval times, have at it. I’m all for high quality, and the “somewhat free” market already serves that with sizable and growing segments of what are called “boutique” items (craft beers, hand stitched clothes, etc). I don’t need to revert back to 1390 to get quality.
I don’t think I wish to discuss anything further on this smear piece.
I prefer what Phil Valentine refers to as “Capitalism with a conscience.” Keep the corporations away from politicians (lobbyists, etc).
they would be if the government stopped interfering in industry
No conscience is needed, and in my opinion that is a good thing. All we really need is a state that is controlled and owned by someone. This person would not allow corruption, because this would damage the value of their property. Either that, or they would just formalize the corruption for the good of the country (because it’s his personal property). Aside from possibly necessary interventions, the best way to manage the country would just be to let it do its own thing, aka a free market.
This system is definitely a lot safer because the free market assumes that all parties have to agree to any transaction that benefits/harms them. Because of this, you generally get the best result for everyone, particularly because compensation is possible (i call this the pareto principle). The problem, then, is that it is extremely obvious that violence is a fact in human interactions, and is also necessary. If that is the case, then the only way forward is to allow a single entity to decide what is best, and this will generally approximate what is best for everyone.
We don’t have free markets today though. I think that message may have been muddied in the article
“Gosh, almost (but not quite) two whole paragraphs criticizing, lightly,
socialism, while the rest of the article makes smear after smear on free
markets.”
I would say that is the result of the audience at ROK; we don’t exactly have that many (if any) dyed-in-the-wool socialists.
“Yet, is unrestrained capitalism so much better in the long run? People motivated by greed will always want more. They will resort to underhanded practices, speculate ruthlessly, buy out their neighbours’ small companies, support the invasion of new countries in order to open up new commercial outlets. Mafias will crop up, and then oligopolies, and perhaps even monopolies. Global companies will reduce the majority into corporate slavery. Once libertarian bosses will buy up politicians in order to secure their economic rent.
Before you say that this is crony capitalism and “not a free market anymore”, like an erudite libertarian would do, let me answer that an unregulated market is inherently unstable and bound to destruction.”
This is where he lost me. That is cronyism at its finest. I suppose I’m an erudite libertarian.
The problem is that most americans can’t afford quality. That is to say, they don’t produce anything to begin with, so the government generally decides what gets made/imported. So while you can spend all the money you want, the government will generally subsidize things you don’t want, and since your pay is not the result of anything productive, you really can’t create an alternative yourself.
Tattoo this one across your chest, because it’s truth:
“A basic principle of modern state capitalism is that costs and risks are socialized to the extent possible, while profit is privatized.”
IOW: If it succeeds, it’s private capitalism’s success. If it fails, it’s socialized government’s responsibility.
http://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/53/49/2030769476-A-basic-principle-of-modern.jpg
That’s the terrible end-result of the co mingling of government and investment.
Sometimes this co-mingling works out pretty great, e.g. government paying for the expensive research needed to kickstart a new field that capitalists then use to make billions of dollars.
At other times, the comingling is a disaster, such as the Government Sachs banksters and federal cronies getting away with financial murder in 2009.
Goldman Suchs.
Story of the British railway system! Since it was privatised the profits were pocketed while the govt funded all the works and rolling stock acquisition.
This sounds to me like it is honoring the Biblical law that pertains to the Levites, or the tribe of priests. They were to eat the sacrifices brought in by the people because the priests main role was sustaining and building the kingdom of Yahweh (God). The New Covenant continues this law via pastors and Kingdom workers who are supported by the tenth (tithe) tax on one’s increase.
All of the laws man needs to govern a world, nation, society, town, family, and individual are found in the laws of the Bible. It is true limited government and the perfect law (Psalm 19).
Also in the Bible, constant reminder that man will always knash his teeth at God and His law, prefer a more complex, corrupt, and oppressive “law” (socialism or secularized capitalism for an economic law example), and insist on how great these corrupt substitutions for God’s perfect law are all the way to the ultimate destruction of a nation that was build on, and thrived for a period, on God’s law. Enjoy!
Great article I will share this with friends.
Anyone else notice the rise of planned corporate obsolescence. You know what I mean. You buy a car made by GM (or whomever) these days, and it breaks down more easily than a GM car built 40 years ago. Same for basically every other product. Can openers fall apart, lawn mowers, computers (and don’t get me started on batteries; they could make those last for a much longer period of time), pretty much every product has a shorter lifespan these days than it used to have.
Corporations would like you to believe that they don’t plan things out that way, but they do. How can you consistently make products worse, after initially making a great product. You can’t, unless it’s by design.
Case in point, there is a light bulb in a fire station in Livermore California, which has been burning for over 100 years. There is even a webcam you can utilize to look at it. Here’s an article about the bulb (link to the webcam is in the article) –
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2014/10/light-bulb-still-burning-after-100-plus-years-as-ge-brings-business-back-to-us/
I guess GE, and other companies, just can’t make light bulbs that will last 100 years any longer. I’m confident they really tried hard to do it, but they just couldn’t come up with anything other than bulbs that need to be replaced every few months or so. You can see the logic here – planned corporate obsolescence. It’s not just a minor tenet of the corporate world, it’s a way of life – not to mention a freaking epidemic.
Corporatism is the friend of nothing but itself.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson
Always remember that economics is a social science like psychology or sociology, and the “economy” is just a word that we use to describe people’s behavior. In a “planned economy” somebody else is planning your behavior for you.
Both would work under the condition that our German friends would call to be Judenfrei…
Oy gevalt! Annudah antisemitic comment!
Oy vey! I will call the ADL now so that we can make sure your mother receives death threats in the future, you son of a goy!
So you and Mossad sent that Predator UAV after me that I can see from my window launching the Hellfire rockets, and AAAAAAAA:::::::………………
Our distorted view on history completely warps our minds and prevents us from seeing better options than what are put in front of us via the Matrix.
For example, from 1,000 to 1,300 AD when the great cathedrals of Europe were being built, the average Medieval worker worked 22-hour work weeks and was able to raise and feed healthy families. People of that time lived longer and happier than those of the 16-18th centuries within Europe. It’s curious that, that coincided with the expulsion of the jews and their “economic policies” (usury, fractional reserve lending, etc) that empowers capitalism, spawns fascism and also allows for communism.
No jews equals no “-isms” of any kind, which generally leads to real freedoms and happiness.
Oy vey! People like you used gas chambers with wooden doors to kill six billion little children and turn them into lampshades and soap.
You must perish!
Yes, 6 Billion in WW1, then another 6 Billion in WW2. All via lice killing aerosol infused into unsealed stone buildings with wooden doors that opened inward and had 2 inch gaps under them. The Germans were such clever and efficient engineers. Remarkably the stones preserved no chemical traces of said gas. Remarkably no kosher lampshades or soap were ever found, despite being given to every German citizen as Christmas gifts from 1941-45. Remarkably very little unidentified human remains have ever been found — skulls and teeth never burn. Luckily, the Germans employed 400 Million Gypsy housewives in early 1945 to grind up all the skulls, long bones and teeth into nutritious powder, which was then fed to all the cows, pigs and goats of Western Europe. Ingenious criminals those Germans, and avant-garde farmers too!
Isn’t it curious that few seem interested in the ECONOMIC POLICIES deployed by the Nazis in the early-to-mid ’30s that took the country from incredible destitution to the best economy in the world (literally) in about 3 years time. By the Berlin Olympics in 1936, which were the most wondrous the world had ever seen, Germany had been completely transformed and her economy was becoming the leading example on the planet by virtually every traditional economic marker. In short, the Nazis realized that so-called capitalism and foreign-owned and controlled central banks were the problem, not the solution. Most may call it fascism, but seek out actual Germans who lived in that era and behold their wondrous and fantastical stories of success and happiness.
Look beyond the fanatical little man with the funny mustache and the swastika — and investigate the actual economic policies and practices of the Nazis. Find out who printed the money and how it was distributed. Understand how a nation can be kick started. It needn’t be considered taboo anymore.
No one can deny the Jews are a crafty bunch in general but ultimately if it’s not one group subverting and waging forms of war it’s another.
It’s like world of war monkeys really here on earth.
Taking paradise and letting untrained savages run rough shod over it (Amazon jungle and those dumbass cattle ranchers comes to mind.) Allowing the cancer rates to spike from cheap plastics and all the other crap humans consume and piss out like a drunken starfish on our once pristine planet.
The arming everyone to the teeth while taking as many resources and genetics as possible down into your secret underground bases sounds like a recipe for eventual meltdown and a winner takes all approach towards the end of humanities latest developing fuck ups.
Starts to make one wonder if we can fix any of this even with the Trumpinator.
>22 hr work week
>lived longer
>no tech/medicine
I’m going to need some serious sauce as to why this was all possible, with a population growing exponentially (everyone was raising a family, after all).
You are the problem with capitalism.
Life ain’t easy…for a girl named Dale.
I imagine it’s similar to a boy named Sue.
Yup, just like that.
There is no use talking about either system until monetarism is overcome, i.e the rule of money over the economy by a self-appointed oligarchical priesthood who then control business and politics. The parasites who create their own money for others to use, as a monopoly, by force, is the only problem humans really have. The Founding Fathers laid out a perfect system of dirigisme (created by Benjamin Franklin and associates) where Congress “shall have the power to coin money”, i.e a representative government issues money, not a private, oligarchal central banking cartel. It was never introduced fully, due to British agents in Congress. http://www.schillerinstitute.org/books/Robert-Burns-book-2007.pdf
Rather a mess of an article but I’d like to mention the Socialism/Traditionalism/Capitalism pic. If we take this simplistic view as a thing (yeah I know…) how about combining capitalism and traditionalism? Sometimes factories are not only necessary, but essential. That, and I’d rather have bread made by experts, thanks.
If we stick with the supposed “Traditionalism” angle I’d have to make my own bread even though I don’t what the hell I’m doing. So I’m spending my day making crap bread instead of doing something else. If everybody else does the same, nothing will get done. Everybody’s busy making stupid bread. Science, technology, medicine, none of that will happen anymore. We’ll all end up in caves wearing animal skins (only if we can make them ourselves of course).
😉 😉
Why all the antagonism towards capitalism and free markets anyway? Currently we barely have either one. The first thing the big corporations do is work with governments to put limits on both so they can maintain their control. Seems to me the answer to the problem is -actual- capitalism. Not getting rid of what’s left of it.
I think you misunderstand the point of the article, because even in the old Middle Ages, there were divisions of labor. You had blacksmiths, bakers, millers, weavers, cartwrights, carpenters etc. in fact, people were named after their profession, and thats how you see those surnames today.
Get out! 😉 😉
My point was that factories of themselves are actually a good thing, not a bad thing. The idea that we should regress back to pre-factory eras where everything is who knows how many times more expensive is just ridiculous.
That and we shouldn’t toss out capitalism because… today’s NOT capitalism isn’t working. 😀
You assume that everything before factory made was expensive. Is this necessarily correct? And would you rather buy something cheap but of lesser quality? 9 out of 10 times a more expensive product would have more features than a cheaper version of it.
Also, the “expensive stuff” thing is relative to the conditions of the times. In the Middle Age, being well off means that you were not suffering from hunger, and perhaps having a table, some chairs and some shelves as house furnitures. Today, even the poorest people in the West could get access to things many people in poorer countries will never be able to, such as TVs, phones and computers, and still they demand for cheaper prices. Frankly, what we suffer is not an economy where everything is expensive, but people are demanding too many material goods.
I assume no such thing. Reality is that factories do make whatever they are producing vastly cheaper to produce. Which… is why factories exist. 😀 Whether or not that thing is quality or not depends on the factory. 😉
Are people demanding too many material goods? Or is it that corporations are pushing that idea? Like say…. artificially making their product lifetimes short so people have to buy new. Not all industries do this but some are.
Going back to the middle ages, while I much prefer the style (and architecture) while forgoing the advancements made since …. is the kind of talk environmentalist weirdos dream of. No cars, no technology, no advances…. Joy, Peace, and Fellowship… in Landru. 😀 😀 (Star Trek if you don’t get the reference.)
Just in time, I’m reading “The WASP Question”
I personally preferred Genghis khans form of government
The communist hates capitalism with the Oedipus complex.
This article has a bad starting premise. Capitalism is the only alternative to Statism. That can be socialism, dictatorship, monarchy, pure democracy, or any other system you want to name whereby the individual is subordinate to the state.
If you want to argue that we need some blend of statism and Capitalism, feel free. But I can and will tell you that you’re wrong. I’m not subordinate to anything. And if you want to tell me I am, we are going to have a problem.
Why is Statism bad? If the States always does what you want, is it necessarily bad? I think Fascism is a great thing, because its authoritarian approach allows it to crush its political enemies ruthlessly. If we have a fashy kind of a state around the Left would have never had a chance.
The libertarians are actually correct: state intervention to support a megacorp’s economic rent seeking is no longer a free market. There is nothing “free” about a market when megacorps or socialists are attempting to control it for their own benefit.
Further, Socialism and Capitalism were never opposites. The Soviet state was essentially a unipolar capitalist government with socialism for everyone except the government. The Politbureau was the monopoly within the borders of the U.S.S.R., but competed against other nation states.
The invisible hand is a law of “nature” in that our evolutionary process caused the greedy and selfish to survive and the egalitarian to die. Animals that hunt for themselves and do not share are more likely to survive the winter than those that do not (outside of species such as ants that have a fanatical communal mindset and lack free will).
What separates us from other animals is our development of religion. Around the same time the modern human came into existence, religion appeared. Religion was the greatest weapon to counteract those evolutionary “beat your neighbor over the head and take his stuff to survive the winter” that served us well as an evolving species.
However, those animalistic impulses would not serve modern humans well, hence the Ten Commandments. These shared morals are the best temperance against evolutionary tendencies that can lead to sociopathic behavior.
And when we destroy those shared morals (religion), we get a society full of ultra-consumerist SJW’s who are, quite possibly, in evolutionary terms, closer to apes than us civilized Victorian Era British Tories.
yes yes yes!
Has anyone here read the book ‘The Money Syndrome’ from Helmut Creutz?
https://www.amazon.com/Money-Syndrome-Helmet-Creutz/dp/1844268578
I consider purchasing it, it has good reviews on the german amazon page.
Creutz debates for a free market without usury so he basically wants to rob the jews of their existence without naming the jews. Clever goy 🙂
Fun fact: He served for the Drittes Reich in World War II.
If you want to know about III Reich economics go to Gottfried Feder, Walter Darre (has a couple of texts abou it, his main focus was race), Fritz Reinhardt, Hans Kehrl (this one is post WWII), C. Knupffer, Fritz Nonnenbruch, Wilhem Utermann, etc.
If you live in Germany be careful; you know better than me the hatecrime laws. Don’t use Google for search nor Chrome as browser; they are used for profiling. Use a good VPN and Tor browser. Do not download the files to your computer, read online and use a site as archive, like Mediafire.
This argument is very confused and at odds with reality. You use Monsanto as an example of what would occur under a free market when Monsanto is actually what has occurred under the currently existing system of mercantilism that you propose as a solution!
All of the problems of capitalism you mention are happening under the current system of heavily regulated and taxed markets, not under unfettered capitalism.
Tell me why amazon wouldn’t have a chance on a less regulated market.
Why?
Amazon would do much better, as they could abolish child labour laws and have child labourers, not to mention there being no anti-trust laws, and they could price gouge all they want.
Exactly. Without regulation the western world would be even more fucked up than it is now.
That is the most fundamentally wrong statement of modern society. All regulation does is provide a veneer of safety that makes the system look less fucked than it is. In reality, it makes the corruption more subtle and more deeply ingrained. If something were obviously wrong, someone else could take over and correct it. Without that obvious failure, taking over this system and making it work profitably would involve such a fundamental restructuring that would be far too expensive.
Mercantilism is protectionism, we live in the least protectionist era in history.
Meaning that we live in a protectionist era.
all economic or political philosophy is doomed to fail eventually because inevitably people tend to take advantage and the corrupt get into power…capitalism and socialism both look good on paper,but both fail eventually because people dont want to be honest and do their part to make it work out for the good of the human race.
Capitalism is Marx’s term. You are speaking within the Marxist paradigm. That said, can you give me an example of when capitalism “failed”?
one is failing right now… im not saying capitalism CANT work. but im saying in real life,it always leads to the rich taking advantage of the poor. the rich become richer,and the poor remain poor. capitalism appears to turn into corporatism,or crony capitalism.
Compare the poor of 200 years ago in the West to today. A rising tide raises all ships.
Maybe don’t write an article on capitalism when you clearly don’t understand it. Thanks.
Triggered cuckservative incoming
Criticizing an author that doesn’t fully understand the topic of his own article makes you a cuck? Huh.
The lie is that socialism and capitalism are actually separate. All societies need a government and some kind of private sector. That’s not the question. The question is what parts of society should be private and which should be public. Leftists think that only individual beliefs, desires, and the pursuit thereof should be up to individual choice; everything else (i.e. politics, economics, the stuff that matters) should be determined by People Who Know Better Than You. That the idiocy of this isn’t patently obvious is due to the influence of elites on policy and mass media who want to destroy social structures they can’t easily subvert and monetize, like the traditional family.
You can have an authoritarian king whose power over law and state is absolute; but as long as said king respects the right of his subjects to have families, people will have a measure of freedom in their lives.
“Leftists think that only individual beliefs, desires, and the pursuit thereof should be up to individual choice”
—————-
Pardon me but what planet do you come from?
Yet, is unrestrained capitalism so much better in the long run?
People motivated by greed will always want more.
Greed isn’t simply a insatiable desire for material goods. It can manifest as a need for power. Those who rail against the ‘greed” of capitalism( it isn’t really an “ism’) are often greedy for control of other peoples lives – like socialist.
They will resort to underhanded practices, speculate ruthlessly, buy out their neighbours’ small companies, support the invasion of new countries in order to open up new commercial outlets. Mafias will crop up, and then oligopolies, and perhaps even monopolies. Global companies will reduce the majority into corporate slavery. Once libertarian bosses will buy up politicians in order to secure their economic rent.
If regulation prevents any of this there wouldn’t be so much of it. The BP oil spill, sup prime loans, the 5 companies that control 90% of media…
Before you say that this is crony capitalism and “not a free market
anymore”, like an erudite libertarian would do, let me answer that an unregulated market is inherently unstable and bound to destruction. Sucha market opens the path for hyper-powerful bankers and corporate monsters like Monsanto.People are greedy, self-interested, and some will always go to such lengths—unless societies are regulated by higher principles.
The best compromise is regulation at the state and/or local level. This will limit or eliminate the power individuals have over the federal government to crush competition, it will prevent monopolies from forming and give people greater control of industry and put a check in those underhand practices you mentioned.
“If regulation prevents any of this there wouldn’t be so much of it. The BP oil spill, sup prime loans, the 5 companies that control 90% of media…” Well one problem is that you using America as an example, probably the worst developed country when it comes towards safety, work standards, and financial regulation. Norway doesn’t have any of these problems for example.
“The best compromise is regulation at the state and/or local level.” But why? What arbitrarily makes them better? What do you arbitrary decide is local/province sized versus sovereign country sized? Luxembourg has 500 thousand people, Austria has 8 million, Germany has 80 million, and the USA has 300 million. All of those are countries, and the us has multiple states larger than the first two. Also, by having local non-uniform legal codes and regulations, it makes interstate commerce much harder.
Fine, forget local regs.. State regulation is the the best compromise between free market and socialism because it doesn’t give the Fed power while keeping regulating. power closer to home. (In the US)
State isn’t any better either. The fact is, Houston and New York have more in common than New York has with New York and Houston has with Texas. States are completely arbitrary boundaries, they aren’t based off demographics. All shifting power to the states does is eliminate as much popular oversight.
It’s really simple
Communism comes from the fucking jews – it pervades everything from economics to politics to culture
Get rid of the kikes and the west will sort itself out
Socialism is welfare for the lower classes. Capitalism is welfare for the upper classes.
The main problem with Capitalism is ownership over natural resources especially land. The right wing likes to decry money for the poor without work. But what is the government granting land, water and mining rights? A wealthy person can just buy land rent it out to the working class and wait for population pressures to drive the price up and sell. No work or risk needed to get richer.
If you believe in squatters rights for land, all of the Americas should be returned to the native tribes. Wealth should only be allowed to be obtained from work or business, not speculation on earth’s limited resources.
“Capitalism is welfare for the upper classes.”
That’s an interesting take. The old chestnut that super wealthy people are just harder working than poor people falls flat when you look at how their money is doing all the work for them.
Cue how Wall Street was bailed out by the Fed.
Joe public always ends up picking up the tab.
And what happens if the government allowed the super wealthy to fail as they should. Capitalism?
I’m not against the wealthy taking a risk with their money if it involves hiring people to work for them. But taking advantage of the fact that the earth has limited resources should be illegal.
Look at the housing crisis, Landlords get wealthy not by building more housing but by the fact that land is in short supply.and little of it is zoned residential. it is speculation not job creation. When the government grants a land deed, it is welfare for that person.
The government should tax wasteful land usage not the incomes of working people.
Yeah I’m not a big fan of exploitable speculative, usury economies.
That is a false take…
Socialism is the means of production in the hands of the public.
True, but if you return property to the squatter, you fundamentally destroy property rights, and initiate a massive tragedy of the commons. The best thing from any point forward is to simply allow whoever holds property to hold it in perpetuity, and anyone with a contesting claim can simply buy them out. But, since people will always steal what they can in the long run, the only realistic option is to understand that the property owner is responsible for protecting his property, whether this is by securing it himself, or by paying tribute to a powerful state.
You have no fucking clue what capitalism is… Man, there are a lot of leftist douche bags on this site.
we don’t live in a capitalistic society. When it comes to schools, healthcare, and most businesses – they are regulated down to the dimensions and height of the handrails on the wall. heck, they shut down lemonaide stands of kids without the appropriate paperwork. This is all done in the name of “safety”.
I’ve heard of kid’s lemonade stands being ambushed by local cabals of your typical property owner browbeating and harassing thugs. The petty local elites/tyrants who pursue zero tolerance for code violations for tax paying non insiders while protected vice gets waived and illegals get flagged by. What a cancer and they’re all an extended cabal if you think about it. The lesbian enforcers and the hook nose bastards in the city/county office buildings, the whole schmeer. Who would prey on a kid’s lemonade stand honestly? Likely a CHILDLESS LESBIAN with short hair and some aggressive hook nose pig local prosecutor pulling her strings that’s who.
I’m sure a lot of the short haired bitch cops we see around also do their share of women’s advocacy, kiddie snatching for bounty and women’s shelter gestappo work. And they parrot the same old line, proclaiming “we’re a society of laah (law)”. Horseshit. How many times have you heard that one? We’re no longer a society of law, shit, we’ve become a people menaced by aggressive agents who selectively enforce law and who really believe we’re a society ruled by police. That’s right. And there are a number of extremely stupid lower tier cops out there who actually believe our culture is ultimately ruled not by law but by cops. Their superiors know the agenda of enforcing plantation state compliance but these bone headed cops wouldn’t know what an ulterior agenda was if it bit them. Just look at some of these mongo foot cops in action. They’re like robots, especially the female one. Persistance and KNOWING their basic programme turns them away. ‘X’ number of persistent suggestive repetative commands and their logic switches in their 1/2 lb dog brain goes ‘click’ and they simply go away! Marvel at this:
Man! If only the mother of the lemonade stand girls knew how to ‘click off’ and ‘shew away’ the menacing code enforcer lesbian looking cop, they’d still be in business and on their way to the waterpark. The mother didn’t even contest the rediculous tort fines levied on her family. If not paid, more lesbians in boots from the c(choke)ps . . . I’d hate to imagine a lesbian clusterfuck but it happens every day to sheeple. We’re being overrun by predators. Fight back. Everyone needs to learn how the goons think and work. They’re like mindless drones but they’re not the operators. That could be another important facet of psychological game to probe.
“We don’t know how the lemonade was prepared or what they put in it.”
————
Shut up, cunt!
Meanwhile there has to be an impeachment process for the SJWs in uniform and their bureaucrat LEO managers. Citizen patriarchs need tools now that can swiftly remove constables, prosecutors and deputies who enforce their identity politics on a tax base community that has transformed and grown to opose them politically and ideologically. Imagine the short hair cop being a childless, patriarchy/family hating lesbian in sheep’s clothing or uniform. Belief systems are shifting rapidly towards the patriarchal/nationalist end of the scale in communities but many sjws have been installed and remain in authority posts. Say for example if you have a jurisdiction that has undergone a rapid change in political sentiment. Newcomers are attracted to move into an extremely patriarchal community and their banner flags now hang on every house on every street, but the old guard still remains seated in the municipal government establishment. They still try to enforce their quotas of protective orders against men and they strive to keep their detectives busy drumming up business whether it be selective vice enforcement, dilligently procuring for free circumstantial evidence against any homeowner men to pass to their divorce rape associates, or just plain being ass hats with zero tolerance for lemonade stands, 1/2″ too tall grass, prayer vigils, gun club culture or anything else patriarchal that’s bursting at the seems to begin the RISE.
An old sjw in uniform or one that’s seated in an unelected LEO office still continues their menacing presence in the community. People pay good money to purchase property and move to an area where like thinking and ideologically compatible neighbors are growing in number. The sjws in local governments want to remain as culture police and magistrates with a desk ticket pad that can instantly bar a man from his house/family and send him running with a suitcase. That’s why citizens need to exercise more tools to quickly remove individuals and rings that do not reflect the hegemony of the community.
The shitlib administrators have their cult marxist enforcers and minions behaving more like imperial colonists in a tax base territory where their ideologies and sjw proselytizing is rejected and opposed more each day. If the short hair dykes with badges and their hook nose magistrate accomplices go around with whisper talk to the community mothers saying “Just sign these papers. We can help you sweetie. And your family’s estate goes into the county drawer and we’ll secure an anuity of child support blood money. Just sign”. THIRTY ANGRY SIGNATURES established should be enough to remove the malicious culprits and unswear them from their posts. And bearded patriarchs will fill their vacancies provided the positions aren’t excess pork barrel.
The point being it must become commonplace and simple for a solidifying trad patriarchal community to once again regain the reigns over their official governance. Otherwise we remain squatters all that much longer, no matter how nice your house and how much property tax you pay.
“Their superiors know the agenda of enforcing plantation state compliance but these bone headed cops wouldn’t know what an ulterior agenda was if it bit them.”
————————
Must respectfully disagree here.
That dyke was deliberately being a malicious cunt.
Laws intended to regulate real businesses are not intended for harrassing children with lemonade stands.
The girls parents should sue the police department for wrongful prosecution.
For better or ill, meanderings such as these were likely what led the Germans down the path of National Socialism.
I remember the ROK incubus/succubus article referenced by Davis MJ Aurini. Priceless excerpt:
“The Harridans are correct that the commodification of sex cheapens the coital act; that consumerism creates a “race to the bottom,” where cheap and addictive pablum out-competes quality. We see this in the Standard American Diet: scientists perform chemical analyses on healthy and wholesome fruit, they determine which 3 of the 30,000 chemicals present are necessary to stimulate the taste buds, and then they refine it, simulate it, and inject it into snack cakes made out of gluten and corn syrup: cherry-flavored cancer, sold in grocery stores nation wide.”
I couldn’t disagree more with this premise. Capitalism, as defined by Adam Smith, has only had two places on the planet where it’s been tried, both successfully. The first, is here, in the United States, after the Revolution with the introduction of the Constitution. (I know I’ll hear some shit about the slave owning South, but that’s a POLITICAL situation that dealt with the economic realities of American Mercantilism.)
The second was in Hong Kong after WWII and before Mainland China reclaimed the province. Both were an unqualified success when compared to OTHER systems.
We haven’t had a Free Market Capitalist system since at least the Wilson Administration and possibly the first Roosevelt Presidency.
Now, in a world where almost all information is known, instantly, making the STATE almost USELESS, the STATE has begun to crack at its overbearing seams, and once again, the Free Market has a real possibility of reemerging, but ONLY if the US Constitution reestablishes the United States to its core political levels of governmental power. A Trump Administration might be the one to actually reverse the awful, fascist, course we’ve been on, and return us to a modicum of the Free Market. Right now, we’ve got so many taxes and regulations that the task will be monumental.
However, UNTIL we FINALLY HAVE free market capitalism, I, for one, will never be convinced that some other, as yet untested “idea” will work as well as the two times free market capitalism has been successfully implemented.
“the awful fascist state”
the word you are looking for is communist. fascist is great.
Nope, we have a fascist state, currently. While there are a LOT of communist slime on the Left, we’re NOT communist, yet. The proof is that I can type this and post it without too much fear of reprisal.
Exactly, sadly there are many, or most, who think they have actually experienced “capitalism”. Not so.
I see two problems with traditionalism. One, it does not respect freedom of association. Two, it inhibits productive accomplishment.
We should take the good from both sides and leave the bad.
Capitalism only works because of competition. Competition is what lowers prices, leads to innovation, creates jobs, and allows people starting at the bottom to reach the top.
In an unrestrained free market, large businesses will grow larger and fewer. They will diversify their product and merge with each other until you have massive corporations competing against small businesses. Just like an over saturated government under socialism, these large businesses will tend to become ever more corrupt and will crush anyone they come up against. This is where negative effects of unrestrained free market begin to occur.
Would anyone call it good economics when Walmart comes to a small town and drives everyone out of business?
It is not good economics for the same reason that it is not good football to watch the New England Patriots play my high school team.
We need to realize that the government does have a role to play here. Regulations, subsidies, and taxes which are geared toward promoting economic competition would go a long way in creating an economy that is entirely driven by the private sector yet is still held to a moral account for which direction they choose to take. Subsidies and tax breaks to small businesses would go a long way to keeping them competitive with the big players.
On a side note, the government should not be actually running anything in regards to the economy. When the government expands to include jobs that the private sector should be doing, you get the DMV.
“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” – G.K. Chesterton
To be accurate in your assertions you would first have to subtract ALL government interference that makes your assumed “free market” seem unfair to the little guy. You portray a very skewed perspective that leaves out many factors that would otherwise undermine your narrative.
Your broad sweeping generalizations don’t serve your argument well. I.E. “Would anyone call it good economics when Walmart comes to a small town and drives everyone out of business?” Everyone, really? Like the general contractors, the trash service, or the gardening service. etc, etc, etc?
I also don’t agree with the assumption I think you expect me to make. I’ve done the research and lived the scenario of which you speak.
Is it bad economics for 10,000 people in an entire county, a “small town”, to save significantly on their shopping bills when a small handful, at most, of mom and pop businesses go under because they refused to adapt to competition? The same mom and pop businesses that actually pay less than Walmart and ask their employees to wait till next Tuesday to cash their paychecks because they won’t clear and don’t give benefits or paid vacations.
Like I said, there are many factors you leave out that make all the difference.
You are right in that there are many factors that I don’t have two hours to list.
Its not so much refusing to adapt as it is being unable to compete. I am using Walmart as a prime example because their product base is so diversified that they are naturally in competition with most business in a surrounding area. They have a frankly immoral habit of moving into towns, opening up several stores or neighborhood markets, and dropping their prices to such a degree that nobody else can compete. Eventually their competition has to either close down or move away. After this is achieved, they close all but one of the stores they opened and raise their prices.
The point of all of this is that if left unchecked, an unrestrained free market will eventually free itself from all competition which is bad for pretty much all layers of the economy.
You agree that competition is the reason why the free market works right? So my question is what happens when large corporations outgrow competition. At that point they are just killing businesses, eliminating jobs, and eventually WILL raise their prices when they have nobody left to compete with.
Where would the farming industry be without government subsidies? Where would small businesses be without strategic tax breaks? What would your average town look like without any environmental regulations? What would big businesses do without laws that force them to be transparent with their stockholders?
The government clearly influences all these aspects of the economy with the goal of creating competition and retaining a moral standard of business. Now the Obama administration was not interested in either competition or morality in the marketplace so I wouldn’t use them as an example, but that is a criticism of them, not of the argument that the government has a part to play in guiding the economy.
Even Trump gets this and you could call him the biggest capitalist to ever enter the oval office. Why is he influencing companies to stay here and not leave the country? The answer is that the American worker cannot compete with somebody in China who has no standard of living and can do the job for being paid next to nothing.
You will notice that nowhere did I say that the government should be actually in charge of anything (other than itself and national and public security services). The roads suck because government builds them. The schools suck because government runs them.
Socialism is a moral evil unlike capitalism. That being said, unchecked crony capitalism and socialism are two sides of the same coin in that they lead to the few dominating the rest of society. This is what the article was trying to get at I think and it is also the position of distributism.
I agree with you on many of your positions but I have experience exactly the details you outline and have not seen any of those issues happen with Walmart and I am extremely observant to these factors. Instead, Walmart has improved many aspects of my town including many better paying jobs and significant savings on daily needs. Seriously, I would be the first to agree with you if it were true, but it certainly isn’t. Walmart has been very good for my town in many ways, since it opened almost 2 years ago. Not a single comparable store, in product lines, has closed that I am aware of. The lowest paid position starts at $12 per hour, much better than any of the mom and pop retail stores. I am seeing more and more people quitting other chains stores, grocery and hardware, to go work at Walmart.
I do think business have room to adapt to compete with Walmart. Another town an hour away had Walmart move in about 15 years ago and their main street tourism improved after a handful of businesses modified their product lines to a more local tourism specific product that Walmart does not sell. Sales improved on main street and have stayed good. Walmart has not hurt it, likely helped it by bringing more people into the area.
Discussing government is a HUGE can of worms. That’s where the hours of listing things would happen. Difficult to factor all the adverse influence and how to change it. The one factor to fix there is personal accountability for gov personnel. Never going to happen though.
The problem with traditional “scientific” views of human society is the abstraction of their assumptions. Humans are not fungible commodities or tools. Each of us has, to some extent, at least, a genetic predisposition to a certain sort of lifestyle, owing to his heritage, and the environment that shaped it. Just as women typically desire oppression, while men desire relatively more personal liberty, one man may be naturally more inclined than another to submit to a master. Moreover, the abstract assumptions underlying rose-tinted views of human behavior typically disregard sociopaths (persons naturally lacking empathy or remorse), who, though few in number, frequently enjoy disproportionately great power and influence. In short, social theories (such as libertarianism) fatally disregard human nature.
Having never experienced actual capitalism in day to day life, synonymous with “free market”, it is nearly impossible to compare it to anything. Sadly, many think what we have now is “capitalism” and they are very incorrect in their assumption. Government interference is far too devastating to the principles of free market.
As long as gun toting henchmen for the political class, willing to kill for their political class masters, are tolerated, aka cops, we will NEVER experience actual capitalism. Cops are the means for 100% of political corruption. Without them the machinations of the political class parasites would be irrelevant.
Very good article. Highly recommend readers look into an Austrian economist called Othmar Spann (he was a teacher of Hayek). His economic vision was truly counter-revolutionary, proposing that economics was a tool to serve the nation, not the other way around.