Questions to D&D participants, particularly liberals: Do you feel that capitalism has completely failed and socialism is the better option in light of the Wall Street money grabs and housing bubble collapse? I personally feel that the these huge mishaps can be corrected and that some of the reactions I read coming from liberals here on this board tend to be knee jerk due to current circumstances. I mean times suck in a recession. That's what happens. Fix the abuse but don't abandon the system. I'm trying to understand the socialistic sentiment that disturbingly sounds like a Utopian form of communism, which I suppose is what Marx ultimately envisioned. But that was an obvious big-fail and prone to even more unchecked corruption as history has shown.
Not sure I agree with that statement. It's bad business to screw everyone over. In the end no one will do business with you. You're statement described 'Greed' which happens in any human social/economic system. It's human nature. It's naive to think it happens more in one than another.
Capitalism is an unachieved ideal, like Communism. States have controlled markets for pretty much all of recorded history. We may have "private ownership" of the means of production, but I'd contend that one doesn't truly own a means of production if that person doesn't have the freedom to choose how to run that means of production. In other words, a farmer can own the farm, but his ownership is in name only when the state tells him how much he can grow, and of what.
both systems will ultimately fail as a result of money moving disproportionately to the very wealthy. Because human greed has no limits, ultimately revolution happens and you get some form of redistribution. The form of gov't doesnt matter.
capitalism does some things incredibly well and it does some things HORRIBLY. socialism does some things well and some things HORRIBLY. we need a little from column A and a little from column B.
Socialists can't calculate As one of the most famous socialist economists of all time, Robert Heilbroner, admitted towards the end of his illustrious career, "Mises was right."
You take the sum total of everything the nation produces, you vote on and decide the level of social services that it takes to assuage your collective human compassion (old and dying in the streets, riots from the poor) how much to invest in collective infrastructure and internal security, how much to spend on defending against outside aggressors and subtract. You decide at what level you can tax individual incomes without undo burdens and you tax it. Everything left over you can free-for-all over with slick advertising.
If you really want to talk about, please define the terms so we're talking about the same thing. 'Socialism' especially is a slippery word. In the Marxist use, socialism is ownership by the people of the means of production so that the wealth generated by production is shared broadly instead of concentrated in the hands of a few. The way Americans seem to use the word is whenever the government provides a service to provide for a person's welfare individually but pays for it collectively (in other contexts, we call this insurance). What I think is ironic is that the US is more socialist now (or at least in 2008 before the crash) than ever before, but it's because of Wall St (and the internet) and not politicians. The recent proliferation of cheap brokerage accounts has allowed a much broader cross-section of Americans to buy stocks in companies and thereby own the means of production and the rights to the wealth those means create. I think new crowdsourcing venture capital efforts like Kickstarter is an interesting development in this regard too. It's a far cry from complete Marxist Socialism -- you still have private owners and wage workers and abnormal profits taken by successful company founders -- but it's more Marxist than Soviet Communism ever was. What we actually see politically from Democrats now are reforms toward a Welfare State like they have in Europe -- a capitalist economy with a government that proactively manages the welfare of all its citizens, and firmly regulates private enterprise to prevent it from putting its costs on others. That's not really Marxist -- in a society where the people owned the means of production, you can still go either way as to whether you handle health, education, housing, etc, collectively or individually. I'm not really a liberal outside of economics (except as compared to some here, perhaps), but I'm in favor of both of these developments. I would like to achieve broad ownership of companies through the capitalist mechanisms of investment and the stock market. And, I'd like to see our government expand its stewardship to competently manage the welfare of all its citizenry providing not just national defense and law and order, but also education, healthcare, infrastructure, disaster relief, job training, support for the poor, etc. They don't necessarily have to shoulder every job in its entirety, but it should be making sure these things are gettting done effectively. That's not really knee-jerk; I've always felt that way. I also don't think it's utopian or communist. It's not sharing your underwear and having sex with everyone and raising your children in a kibbutz. It's not the abolition of currency and national borders and the ultimate falling away of all state structures envisioned in True Communism. It's just capitalism with rules to protect people from individual trajedy and from exploitation.
Pure capitalism or pure socialism does not work. So far what works well is controlled capitalism with socialism elements mixed in. You want to have government regulations and social welfare safety nets, how many regulations and how many safety nets are the right number is the tricky part to get right. All the major economies today have these types of government.
This seems like the ideal description of where the American model should be. I wouldn't classify this as knee jerk either.
Capitalism, with government intervention to keep corporations in check is the ideal system. There are some exceptions where I would rather have the government nationalize than leave it up to profit-driven individuals; such as healthcare.
This kind of silly black and white "anything that's not pro "free" market is marxist" belies a real lack of sophistication.
Let's ask Adam Smith (wealth of nations) what he thinks of the current model: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199303--.htm <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mFEfmYH-PPE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
* Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people. Book I, Chapter IX, pg.117 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations.
If you mean socialism as in Scandavia, "Yes" it does a better job of producing a good life for the lower 90 odd percent. Their upper couple of percent do well, too, but not quite as well as our upper couple of a percent if all you are talking about is brute personal wealth. Of course many folks value safety, a clean environment, not being harassed by homeless folks and other more societal goods than a lot of our 1% and their wannabees. Can we turn it around? It is still possible, though with our 1% outright buying politicians backed up by a fair number of more ordinary folks who are fooled into supporting libertarian and othe market fundie ideologies.
