Capitalism Fails

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Originally Posted by Magn

For everyone, this translates into excessive materialism. The idea that you can have anything you want if you just work hard enough as an individual without any upper limit. The reality is that nobody should own a mansion or a private jet and that even the western middle class lifestyle a greater portion of the population live under is unsustainable for the entire planet. It needs tweaking which won't happen if we keep our entitled mentality (ie, "Nevermind that most of the planet cannot have this even if they work, I work and I deserve this!").

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I agree greed needs to be checked but not by government... It should be check by our own family and community. Our own community are teaching people now they can have what ever they want for very little if any work. And government all over the world are doing it as well. From personal experience i watched my parents who didnt graduate in the usa bust their butts working multiple jobs each while raising 3 kids go from a trailer to both my parents now having multiple homes and living in their means. We were always told growing up you can not rely on government or any other person to give you what you need and want. You are the only person that can make that happen. My parents were greedy but not all greed is bad. It's what drives competition and growth.... Now to the scarcity issue mentioned above. As an item becomes more scares the price of the item rises. Which fuels for money into trying to innovate that industry. We now have more money to try and find more oil fields in better places to try and research alternate energy sources. If gas stays at 99cents always because of a government regulation then it would slow the growth of other industry and new technology. Look at china now beginning to grow faster than anyone with one of the lowest poverty rates and they have begun switching to capitalism after they realized communism doesnt work.

it's not capitalism that fails. There is no free-market capitalism at all.
It is a failure of big government and central-planning.

There is no capitalism when the price of money - interest rate - is set by one powerful entity known as the Federal Reserve.

Just started reading this thread...only got to page 3 so far, way too much I would like to reply to. So will do so after I had chance to read the whole thread.
But for starters:
There are many reasons why capitalism fails in America...can't speak about else where...cause never experienced anywhere else.
Capitalism fails for many reason, but mainly because no one has ever truly experienced it. It is one of those mythical concepts that works well on paper, much like Communism looks great on paper. But in actual practice it falls short of it's ideals.
Well, there is one way that it outshines all others....that is those who actually provide an end service do way better than either the customer or the employee.

For an example of this, look at the Gold Rush at the turn of the 20th century in California. Though many people did find a lot of gold, it was only the sellers of supplies that truely was able to rake in the profit.

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Originally Posted by insane

Just started reading this thread...only got to page 3 so far, way too much I would like to reply to. So will do so after I had chance to read the whole thread.
But for starters:
There are many reasons why capitalism fails in America...can't speak about else where...cause never experienced anywhere else.
Capitalism fails for many reason, but mainly because no one has ever truly experienced it. It is one of those mythical concepts that works well on paper, much like Communism looks great on paper. But in actual practice it falls short of it's ideals.
Well, there is one way that it outshines all others....that is those who actually provide an end service do way better than either the customer or the employee.

For an example of this, look at the Gold Rush at the turn of the 20th century in California. Though many people did find a lot of gold, it was only the sellers of supplies that truely was able to rake in the profit.

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like i said, there hasn't been any capitalism. What you have is crony capitalism. Because you have a central bank that can set interest rates at will.

Many people say the Government is to blame, yet I say it is big business. Who is most at fault for a bribe? Is it the person who offers, or is it the person who accepts? While the person who accepts does take part of the blame, I would say the person who offers the bribe is most at fault.

Bribes are not always called bribes. In America, and in politics, we call bribes political contributions.

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Originally Posted by Bishop

A higher minimum wage is not a solution to anything, its a complete fallacy. You'd just push up inflation.

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Australia currently faces this problem. Besides broken promises, but then again I wouldn't be able to say looking for an honest man in parliament is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Why is capitalism failing? It is acting as expected. Your problem is that you would prefer to live somewhere more socialist imo.

In a capitalist world in which you fully did away with socialism there would be no public schools, people would be less educated and they would earn less- although Americans area already shockingly uneducated . 15% of americans drop out of highschool. Those who have wealth would have far better education (they do now, but at least the poor receive some chance due to the social support structure).

Anywho America is the most powerful/wealthy country in the world. By all means capitalism is a wild success. It creates opportunities for exceptional people to excel. It does not do a great job carrying the average.

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Originally Posted by American Badass

Everything has its flaws but spreading the money across the working class is surely better that letting the rich keep it. Higher worker pay / less hours means more money down below and more people employed if these big companies want to stay open for more than 20 hours a week.

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why is it better?

The wealthy are more likely to donate it to charities to help the poor etc. The working class is just going to get a fancier car or a nicer house or eat out more?

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Originally Posted by goodz

people would be less educated and they would earn less

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Neither of these are necessarily true. Socialism doesn't lead to higher wages, and that being said having universal higher wages isn't necessarily better. Things just cost more and you're back to where you started most of the time. Even under pure capitalism, the struggle between workers and capitalists has the same effects. Workers want the highest wages they can get, capitalists want to pay the lowest wages they can. Ignoring collusion among capitalists to keep wages artificially low, things would balance out pretty much the same as they do now.

As far as education, yea there would be no public education system, but there would still be schools, they would just be privately owned. Even if, for some strange reason, there were no education system at all, it seems like capitalists would have to make some sort of education available to workers and we still end up, more or less, where we are now. The people that want to be educated get educated, and the people that could care less just happily do their factory job.


Other than those, I agree. Capitalism isn't the "nicest" system, but it's the most practical and most productive economic system there's ever been. Hard to argue with results.

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Originally Posted by Palem

Neither of these are necessarily true. Socialism doesn't lead to higher wages, and that being said having universal higher wages isn't necessarily better. Things just cost more and you're back to where you started most of the time. Even under pure capitalism, the struggle between workers and capitalists has the same effects. Workers want the highest wages they can get, capitalists want to pay the lowest wages they can. Ignoring collusion among capitalists to keep wages artificially low, things would balance out pretty much the same as they do now.

As far as education, yea there would be no public education system, but there would still be schools, they would just be privately owned. Even if, for some strange reason, there were no education system at all, it seems like capitalists would have to make some sort of education available to workers and we still end up, more or less, where we are now. The people that want to be educated get educated, and the people that could care less just happily do their factory job.


Other than those, I agree. Capitalism isn't the "nicest" system, but it's the most practical and most productive economic system there's ever been. Hard to argue with results.

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My point was the public education system and social structure in america leaves some room for the lowly to escape. If you removed any social net you would probably have a huge percentage of the population with ~no formal education. The ability for the top 1-2% of students to stand out regardless of social status keeps some form of the american dream alive I think...

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Originally Posted by Palem

As far as education, yea there would be no public education system, but there would still be schools, they would just be privately owned. Even if, for some strange reason, there were no education system at all, it seems like capitalists would have to make some sort of education available to workers and we still end up, more or less, where we are now. The people that want to be educated get educated, and the people that could care less just happily do their factory job.

Other than those, I agree. Capitalism isn't the "nicest" system, but it's the most practical and most productive economic system there's ever been. Hard to argue with results.

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Because letting big business indoctrinate their workers into whatever worldview that suits them is such a good idea. It's been shown pretty convincingly throughout history that where education is lacking corruption, despotism and tyranny is overrepresented.
So a decline of education ultimately means the decline of democracy.
Also it's pretty naive to say that those who want to be educated will get themselves educated because you assume that they can get access to accurate and truthful education. If every source of education you can find insists that 2+2=5 and that El Presidente is god's gift to mankind then in the end you'll likely be led to believe that this is the truth.

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Originally Posted by JinXy

like i said, there hasn't been any capitalism. What you have is crony capitalism. Because you have a central bank that can set interest rates at will.

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Well there has to be somebody who makes rules and regulations because otherwise it's just plain old Anarchy.
Also capitalism is bound to fail just like communism because it assumes that customers have absolute knowledge and will always choose the supplier with the best price and/or terms.
This is obviously false and will never happen without strict regulation and oversight because the most profitable business model is where one or a few actors corner the market in a way that lets them choose whatever price they feel like for whatever level of service they feel like providing(and since service == expenditures that level will be whatever lowest level they can get away with).

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Originally Posted by Elldallan

Because letting big business indoctrinate their workers into whatever worldview that suits them is such a good idea. It's been shown pretty convincingly throughout history that where education is lacking corruption, despotism and tyranny is overrepresented.
So a decline of education ultimately means the decline of democracy.
Also it's pretty naive to say that those who want to be educated will get themselves educated because you assume that they can get access to accurate and truthful education. If every source of education you can find insists that 2+2=5 and that El Presidente is god's gift to mankind then in the end you'll likely be led to believe that this is the truth.

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You understand that the government (that actually DOES regulate our education system) has much more reason to provide a biased education than a big business would right? Do you think Americans are receiving completely biased and incorrect educations just because the gov't has the ability to do so?

Business would have to provide a good service, or you'll just go to someone else's schools. If you were trying to teach a bunch of bull**** that wasn't true, you would have a massive attack from your competition showing how full of **** you were and causing you to lose business/money. No businesses want to lose money, so they'll have to compete and actually deliver the best education system they could produce.

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Originally Posted by Palem

You understand that the government (that actually DOES regulate our education system) has much more reason to provide a biased education than a big business would right? Do you think Americans are receiving completely biased and incorrect educations just because the gov't has the ability to do so?

Business would have to provide a good service, or you'll just go to someone else's schools. If you were trying to teach a bunch of bull**** that wasn't true, you would have a massive attack from your competition showing how full of **** you were and causing you to lose business/money. No businesses want to lose money, so they'll have to compete and actually deliver the best education system they could produce.

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Well I didn't mean America specifically, and yes the government has a reason to control the masses, hence why an open and transparent government is important.

And well, if you're buying education off the market that might be true but if you're getting it as a work benefit there's every chance that they can be discrete and shady about it, they obviously have no reason to teach you that 2+2=5 but they have plenty of reasons to indoctrinate you in ways that may be hard to notice from inside the system and they obviously have a huge reason to misinform you about workers rights, even the rather weak ones the United States has.

sweet jesus.