If not Capitalism... then What? And, How?

[sidd]

The patnaiks predict the demise of neoliberal capitalism at monthly review: Long read with some predictions:

" the world economy will now be afflicted by much higher levels of unemployment"

"the era of export-led growth is by and large over for third world economies. "

"the imminent engulfing of a whole range of third world economies in serious balance-of-payments difficulties. "

"the worldwide upsurge of fascism"

"neoliberal capitalism cannot ward off the challenge it is facing for long. It has no vision for reinventing itself."

https://monthlyreview.org/2019/07/01/neoliberal-capitalism-at-a-dead-end/

sidd

[Tom_Mazanec]

New Republic is (surprise!) upset about environmentalism and capitalism:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/leveraging-climate-hysteria-to-impose-hegemonic-marxism/

[blumenkraft]

Milton Friedman's Defense Of Greed Ruined A Whole Generation Of Economists ft. Richard Wolff

[TerryM]

Greed and coveting others assets have been recognized as human frailties (sins) since before the time of Gudea > 4,000 years ago. Government's place has been to protect the powerless from the powerful.


Our experiment of praising greed while electing governments that protect the powerful from the poor can't be seen as effective in any function other than preserving themselves from the wrath of the citizens.


Friedman was but one of the more verbose shills attempting to cloth these monstrous ideas with a thin veneer of respectability.


Beware of all Nobel Prize awarded economists, these prizes have no connection to the Nobel Foundation and are instead a PR front for ultra-right, neo-cons.
Terry

[blumenkraft]

Beware of all Nobel Prize awarded economists, these prizes have no connection to the Nobel Foundation and are instead a PR front for ultra-right, neo-cons.

Right! It's all marketing. The product is what 99% don't want so they have to hammer all these brains really hard to get the message through.

Now, who is more unethical, Friedman or the believers with their self-imposed immaturity?

[TerryM]

Beware of all Nobel Prize awarded economists, these prizes have no connection to the Nobel Foundation and are instead a PR front for ultra-right, neo-cons.

Right! It's all marketing. The product is what 99% don't want so they have to hammer all these brains really hard to get the message through.

Now, who is more unethical, Friedman or the believers with their self-imposed immaturity?

or


Who is more unethical, the con man or those who fall for the con.


Sorry, but your post serves as an exemplar of the moral ambiguity that the neo-cons are selling.


We put con men in jail, and try to assure that their victims receive compensation.


Not much ambiguity about where the guilt lies. No need to question the ethics.
Terry

[blumenkraft]

Sorry, but your post serves as an exemplar of the moral ambiguity that the neo-cons are selling.

That analogy is flawed.

Do you also think Kant was a neocon shill btw?

We put con men in jail, and try to assure that their victims receive compensation.

No, Terry. Those conman rule your country. None of them is in jail. And no victim receives compensation

On the other hand, everyone is free to escape the propaganda.

[TerryM]

<snipped?
No, Terry. Those conman rule your country. None of them is in jail. And no victim receives compensation.

In my country we shuffle up the cons - and victims actually do receive compensation from time to time.
I'm not American - They told me to love it or leave it, and I did.
Terry

[blumenkraft]

They told me to love it or leave it, and I did.

Good for you, Terry. I honestly admire that!

[blumenkraft]

Mark Blyth: Why Do People Continue To Believe Stupid Economic Ideas? - Full Talk (April 2017)

[be cause]

.. far too much money where it's not needed . No resources where desperately needed . b.c.

[Sigmetnow]

Human-centered capitalism, or Human Capitalism, is something that is geared toward maximizing our own well-being and fulfillment. Many corporations that I have worked for do not put much value on their workers. To them, we are replaceable. This is a common fact that many workers across America know and feel, but they also feel there is nothing we can do about it, because we all have bills to pay. Many would rather be a “corporate slave” than be homeless, especially if they have families to feed and care for.

The core message of Human Capitalism is that Humans Are More Important Than Money. The unit of a Human Capitalism economy is each person, not each dollar.

Elon Musk also believes that UBI is “obviously needed.”  In fact, Elon spoke and tweeted about this years ago.

Universal Basic Income, or UBI, is something like “$1,000 for everyone.” That’s not meant to provide all that a person needs to survive, just to help boost their quality of life and raise it up to a livable level for many people. It can be hard to find a rental for under $2,000 in many major cities, let alone provide for food and transport. However, $1,000/month would help many struggling workers who are working 2–3 part-time jobs just to get by. Note that they often have to work part-time jobs simply because many corporations don’t want to cover the costs of hiring full-time workers — they don’t want to insure their workers or provide certain employee benefits. ...

Andrew Yang Credits Elon Musk As A Major Inspiration
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/11/andrew-yang-credits-elon-musk-as-his-inspiration/

[DrTskoul]

Dont worry... future employers will use the existence of universal income as an excuse to pay less... the same way they use tips in the services industry to pay less...

[TerryM]

Dont worry... future employers will use the existence of universal income as an excuse to pay less... the same way they use tips in the services industry to pay less...

It's a not very subtle way to get the monkey off of Corporate America's back.


If we can get the Fed's to kick in a $Grand for each of our employees, their spouse & their kids they'd never complain about minimum wages again!
Pensions and retirement packages - who needs them.


We don't even need to pay the taxes on this manna - the Feds will just print the money as needed.
This isn't Socialism, this is Corporate Bailout writ large.
Terry

[blumenkraft]

Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang is an idiot. He doesn't understand the implications of his own plan and disregards all work done on the important topic of UBI. He is opening the ultra-right a door to destroy social security.

Good video on the topic:

[johnm33]

I prefer the idea of universal basic credit where everyone would be allowed a subsistence amount of interest free credit, which has to be repaid by a 2.5% tax on every transaction. Eventually enough of this interest free 'money' would exist to liberate society from the near 40% upstream interest charges on every transaction that supports the financial sector, and thus allow sophisticated societies to evolve which wouldn't price themselves out of work.

[nanning]

Alternative to capitalism:
We could stop with the abstract concept of ownership.
Stop with the destructive arbitrary system of fathers and family and private houses. Free the children!
Live in groups of no more than 50 people, in open shared settlements or nomadic. Cooperate, share, intimate contact, no hierarchy, no money, no violence, no weapons, trust, truth. Very low tech. Deep connections and shared expriences.

Oops .. sorry, I think I was having a utopia dream there. If only it were still possible. You probably won't like it. To me it is utopia.
I'll take the illnesses, dangers and child mortality gladly with it. It is living in reality.

[TerryM]

nanning

One man's Utopia may be another's Dystopia.
Perhaps old age is having an effect on my political thinking. My recent preferences tend to favor solutions that have evolved from earlier successful strategies.


I've lived in communes of about the size you envision that met most of your conditions.
We had an awful lot of fun (and "intimacy"), but they were ill-defined with a very fluid membership and no raison d'etre other than sex, drugs and rock & roll - though not necessarily in that order.


My more conservative solutions probably wouldn't work simply because they are conservative, but our communes didn't work either, probably because there was no real direction or leadership.
Terry

[SteveMDFP]

Really nice words. . .

The CEOs of nearly 200 companies just said shareholder value is no longer their main objective
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/19/the-ceos-of-nearly-two-hundred-companies-say-shareholder-value-is-no-longer-their-main-objective.html

"The Business Roundtable, a group of chief executive officers from major U.S. corporations, issued a statement Monday with a new definition of the “purpose of a corporation.”

The reimagined idea of a corporation drops the age-old notion that corporations function first and foremost to serve their shareholders and maximize profits. Rather, investing in employees, delivering value to customers, dealing ethically with suppliers and supporting outside communities are now at the forefront of American business goals, according to the statement. .."
_____________________________________

... but I'll believe it when we can see concrete changes.

[TerryM]

^^
I'll believe it when I can see the sun setting slowly in the East.
Terry

[budmantis]

Or the North! lol

[nanning]

For a start:

- stop with the system of profits.

[nanning]

Employment (being employed) is stupid and inhuman. People should just work together with only a small functional hierarchy. We are all humans with different talents and capabilities. Respect.

Cooperation, NOT corporation!

[Tom_Mazanec]

Can We Work Less and Save the Planet, Too?
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/death/work-less-climate-crisis-capitalism-20190902

Building a new world will require first reexamining—and dismantling—the cultural ethos of productivity that creeps into our lives every day.

California raises the caution flag on ‘green jobs’
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/04/california-green-jobs-1479996

Democratic candidates’ promises of a clean-energy boom range from modest to outlandish, but California’s experience suggests they won’t match reality.

[sidd]

Surprise, surprise: Wall Street financed senator opposes audit trails

"The system is called the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been stalling its creation for the entire 85 years the SEC has existed"

"Kennedy, and the six other Republican Senators who signed the letter, don’t want trades to be linked to the individual making the trade because this information could be hacked by Communists. "


https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/09/wall-streets-trading-secrets-this-u-s-senator-wants-to-keep-you-in-the-dark/

sidd

[TerryM]

Surprise, surprise: Wall Street financed senator opposes audit trails

"The system is called the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been stalling its creation for the entire 85 years the SEC has existed"

"Kennedy, and the six other Republican Senators who signed the letter, don’t want trades to be linked to the individual making the trade because this information could be hacked by Communists. "


https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/09/wall-streets-trading-secrets-this-u-s-senator-wants-to-keep-you-in-the-dark/

sidd

Dear God!


Fearing the Evil Commies sounds so 1950s.


Can't they come up with a new boogieman? Are we doomed to hear replays of the same propaganda that caused our grandmas to pee in their knickers?


Soon anarchists will be stealing the secrets of ancient alchemists and debasing our gold reserves!
Secret Zeppelin bases will be bombing our major cities and suffragettes will corrupt the morals of our youth!
Terry

[nanning]

First Dog On The Moon on capitalism and climate emergency:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/05/brenda-the-civil-disobedience-penguin-asks-what-will-you-give-up-to-save-the-planet

[TerryM]

Penguins understand, why don't politicians?
Terry

[Reginald]

Less about replacement of Capitalism than about those running the system:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/04/apartheid-had-always-been-the-plan/

Counterpunch: Apartheid Had Always Been the Plan, By Kenn Orphan

Excerpt: Therefore, any New Green Deal, if it does not address the military industrial complex and its relation to the protection of capital, or is not thoroughly vetted and written by the poor, the working class, environmental activists and indigenous peoples, will only serve to save capitalism, albeit for a short time and for the very few, from the maw of its own insatiable greed. It will be a Ponzi scheme of privatization designed by the corporate, neoliberal ghouls and marketing strategists who helped create the problems in the first place.

[sidd]

Hornborg argues capitalism prevents decarbonization:

"To get our globalised economy to respect natural limits, we must set limits to what can be exchanged."

"So far, any politician who seriously advocates degrowth is not likely to have a future in politics. "

"the very idea of technology is inextricably intertwined with capital accumulation, unequal exchange and the idea of all-purpose money ... Shifting the main energy technology is not just a matter of replacing infrastructure – it means transforming the economic world order. "

"Modern technology, then, is a product of the metabolism of world society, not simply the result of uncovering “facts” of nature."

"Technological progress and capital accumulation are two sides of the same coin."

"economic processes inevitably lead to entropy – that is, an increase in physical disorder and loss of productive potential. "

"To curb the relentless growth of value – at the expense of the biosphere and the global poor – we must create an economy that can restrain itself."

"Rather than see the very design of the money game as the real antagonist, our call to arms tends to be directed at the players who have had best luck with the dice."

"To attribute climate change to an abstract system called capitalism – but without challenging the idea of all-purpose money – is to deny our own agency. The “system” is perpetuated every time we buy our groceries, regardless of whether we are radical activists or climate change deniers. It is difficult to identify culprits if we are all players in the same game. In agreeing to the rules, we have limited our potential collective agency. We have become the tools and servants of our own creation – all-purpose money."

"Electric cars and many other “green” devices may seem reassuring but are often revealed to be insidious strategies for displacing work and environmental loads beyond our horizon"

"What I am suggesting is special money that can only be used to buy goods produced locally."

https://theconversation.com/a-globalised-solar-powered-future-is-wholly-unrealistic-and-our-economy-is-the-reason-why-118927

sidd

[sidd]

Otto et al. call for curbing carbon footprint of the super rich:

"a typical super-rich household of two people produces a carbon footprint of 129.3 tCO2 e per year."

"Calculating the emissions from 0.54% of the wealthiest of the global population, according to our estimates, results in cumulative emissions equal to 3.9 billion tCO2e per year. This is equivalent to 13.6% of total lifestyle-related carbon emissions. In comparison, the world’s poorest 50% are responsible for about 10% of lifestyle consumption emissions [7 ]."

"Policies that more aggressively force carbon-footprint reduction of the super-rich may be pursued as a part of a comprehensive portfolio of mitigation. Examples of policies that are currently being discussed include compulsory restrictions on household and individual emissions, and building code regulations [13] . Those specifically targeting the wealthiest could include obligatory installation of renewable energy facilities on houses and apartments above a certain size. Importantly, in contrast to the poorest in the community, the richest have the agency and power needed to change their lifestyles to meet policy requirements without compromising quality of life."

"Any form of policy targeted at the super-rich is bound to meet with strong resistance. The rich are over-represented in national governments and there are strong ties between the wealthy and the political elites"

doi: 10.1038/s41558-019-0402-3

Good luck.

sidd

[Tom_Mazanec]

Williamson: Climate change result of an 'amoral' economic system
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/462187-williamson-climate-change-an-immoral-consequence-of-an-amoral

Presidential candidate and author Marianne Williamson described climate change as one symptom of an “amoral” economic system at MSNBC’s climate forum at Georgetown University on Thursday.

Williamson blamed what she called a "virulent strain of capitalism that puts short-term shareholder profit before all else, before the safety and welfare of the workers, before the safety and welfare of the environment."

[sidd]

Support for Neve's ideas on limits to income and wealth:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19452829.2019.1633734#

open access. read all about it.

some discussion at

http://crookedtimber.org/2019/09/21/the-most-blasphemous-idea-in-contemporary-discourse/

Monbiot chimes in:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/19/life-earth-wealth-megarich-spending-power-environmental-damage

sidd

[sidd]

Potter at commondreams: insider reveals health insurance oligarch nightmares

“What keeps you up at night?”

“Disintermediation.”

"Our health insurance companies, in contrast, are not essential. They don’t treat anyone. They don’t prevent anyone from becoming sick. They don’t take you to the hospital or make sure you take your pills. They don’t fund or discover medical innovations. They’re simply middlemen we don’t need. And in the industry, we always dreaded the day American businesses and patients would wake up to that reality."

"That day has come."

"they’ve simultaneously tried to prevent change and prepared for the unraveling of the employer-based system."

"The industry wants to keep employers in the game as long as possible, though they’ve known for more than a decade that the employer-sponsored health insurance system is collapsing."

"waking up to realize the middleman is not necessary. It’s time for our policymakers to wake up, too."

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/09/24/why-private-health-insurance-industry-faces-existential-crisis

sidd

[nanning]

Alternative: Frugality, integrity, humanitarianty, equality, meaningful life, honesty, wisdom.
(25m)

[sidd]

Piketty doubles down: billionaires are harmful to economic growth

" Piketty called for a graduated wealth tax of 5% on those worth 2 million euros or more and up to 90% on those worth more than 2 billion euros."

"there won't be billionaires anymore."

"the notion that billionaires create jobs and boost growth is false."

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/12/billionaires-should-be-taxed-out-of-existence-says-thomas-piketty.html

I will have to read his latest.

sidd

[philopek]

"the notion that billionaires create jobs and ......

While I'm with on the rest, the quoted part is not correct while in fact the meaning IS correct but the sentence as such is not.

Why?

Because of course they do create jobs but:

- In relation to their wealth the number of jobs they create is negligible

- The quality of jobs is often questionable in terms of health, respect, life-quality etc. of the workers

- Their money in the hands of thousands would create significantly more jobs and boost growth
while i'm not a friend of growth. Growth is needed to delay the collapse of our ill fated monetary system for the umpteenth time.

We need a system that does not NEED growth to survive only to end in disaster and destruction, formerly it was economically and wars, no it's ecologically in addition to the already existing.

[sidd]

A more complete quote from the Piketty interview is:

"Piketty added that the notion that billionaires create jobs and boost growth is false."

"He said per capita income growth was 2.2% a year in the U.S. between 1950 and 1990. But when the number of billionaires exploded in the 1990s and 2000s — growing from about 100 in 1990 to around 600 today — per capita income growth fell to 1.1%."

sidd

[philopek]

A more complete quote from the Piketty interview is:

"Piketty added that the notion that billionaires create jobs and boost growth is false."

"He said per capita income growth was 2.2% a year in the U.S. between 1950 and 1990. But when the number of billionaires exploded in the 1990s and 2000s — growing from about 100 in 1990 to around 600 today — per capita income growth fell to 1.1%."

sidd

OK, this is more or less what i meant, all about terms like so often, i'm fine with this now.

[sidd]

Steinmetz-Jenkins interviews McCarraher: capitalism as religion:

"The laws of supply and demand and the commodification of goods ... strip away the mystery and sense of sacredness that were once a vital part of human life. "

"It wrings out of human life every drop of awe and magic and leaves in their place a hardened world ... "

"The new world that capitalism created, McCarraher argues, is characterized not by disenchantment but by a “migration of the holy” to the realm of production and consumption, profit and price, trade and economic tribulation. "

"Capitalism, in other words, is the new religion, a system full of enchanted superstitions and unfounded beliefs and beholden to its own clerisy of economists and managers, its own iconography of advertising and public relations, and its own political theology—a view of history and politics that is premised on the inevitability of the capitalist system spreading across the world. "

"The capitalist quest for profit not only relaxed medieval strictures against avarice and usury; it mandated that material reality had to be stripped of all spiritual significance."

"Marx saw that money had become a divinity, the creator and legitimator of moral reality in capitalist civilization. In Capital, commodity fetishism becomes the capitalist surrogate for Catholic sacramentality"

"modern history is as a story of capitalist enchantment and a theology of money, as it were."

"As a Christian, I reject the two assumptions found in conventional economics: scarcity (to the contrary, God has created a world of abundance) and rational, self-seeking, utility-maximizing humanism (a competitive conception of human nature that I believe traduces our creation in the image and likeness of God)."

"For Hayek, the market is a kind of Logos, whose decrees are created and registered in the numerical glossary of money. In Hayek’s view, we must bow and genuflect to its inscrutable wisdom"

"consumerism is not really about gratifying people’s needs and desires so much as it’s about increasing the volume of profit and production. Capitalism needs people to be dissatisfied. "

"I agree with David Graeber: We may well be approaching the end of the capitalist epoch, but we’re not at all sure that what’s coming after will be any better."

read the whole thing:

https://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-religion-eugene-mccarraher-interview/

sidd

[TerryM]

^^
Ramen!
The Cult of the FSM will substitute Beer for Fiat, Bars for Banks & Wenches for Tellers. The Pirates have shown us the way forward.
Terry

[Aporia_filia]

As an atheist who was brought up in strict Catholic religion. The disgraceful indoctrinating religious education (because is done when you are too young to defend yourself) teaches people to believe in things (that cannot be proven), not to reason about things. This preference gets struck in our brain emotions and will dominate our way of thinking. People, though, prefer believing than thinking.
Politicians use this all the time. It was so easy to substitute god for gold as in Moise's story coming down with the new laws and finding this scenario.
What a hard work is changing this behavior!

[bluice]

A major part of conventional economics is based on the idea of rational profit-maximizing Homo Economicus. Unfortunately the whole concept is pure fantasy. As any casino owner, car salesman or advertising agent knows, financial decisions both big and small are based on emotions, mood, group pressure and other things often completely devoid of rational economic calculation.

Even worse, we know for a fact that money increases happiness only up to a point and we know that human beings are prone to logical fallacies in their thinking. Yet societies act as if this is not true because accepting the facts would be intolerable. It would mean that the primary political goal of eternal GDP growth is not only impossible, but also pointless.

Capitalism as an ideology reminds of communism because they are both built on false assumptions. Economics as we nowadays know it will be remembered as we remember pre-Linnean biology or early 20th century psychology: mostly junk with some useful bits and pieces.

[johnm33]

Capitalism is the abandoment of societal ethics, and embracing whatever market structures the creators of money decide is good for them. Without ethics society moves inexorably towards the kind of heirarchical structure the 'social' insects have gamed, and the creators of money will be at the center. 
Here we have something close to a miracle an economist who understands banks [perhaps he harbours ambitions to drive a cab] and outlines the coming iteration of financial control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzE038REw2k&feature=youtu.be

[Sigmetnow]

A very brave Wall Street reporter

nylah burton (@yumcoconutmilk) 10/9/19, 5:51 PM
Y’all found my child

https://twitter.com/yumcoconutmilk/status/1182050923624845313
Brief video at the link.

[sidd]

From a lead in the comments section at crooked timber, I find a luminary of the Mises school laying bare the relationship of children and parents:

" the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die. The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed a child or to keep it alive."

http://crookedtimber.org/2019/10/09/the-third-lesson/#comment-764896

I find in the reference that we are reassured later:

"(Though, as we shall see below, in a libertarian society the existence of a free baby market will bring such "neglect" down to a minimum.) "

The luminary then explains the joys of a free market in children:

"In fact, we find a large unsatisfied demand by adults and couples for children, along with a large number of surplus and unwanted babies neglected or maltreated by their parents.  Allowing a free market in children would eliminate this imbalance, and would allow for an allocation of babies and children away from parents who dislike or do not care for their children, and toward foster parents who deeply desire such children. Everyone involved: the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents purchasing the children, would be better off in this sort of society."

I am not making this up.

Rothbard, in Chapter 14 of "The Ethics of Liberty"

https://mises.org/library/children-and-rights

I agree with Mr. Grodsk at crookedtimber with the choice of the passage in discussion of Swift's "Modest Proposal."

sidd

[sidd]

Glories of the free market: human flesh, bones, skin and profit

"by the time a coroner’s investigator was able to examine Jinde’s 70-pound body, the bones from her legs and arms were gone. Also missing were large patches of skin from her back."

"OneLegacy, a Southern California human tissue procurement company, had gained access to the body,"

"The case is one of dozens of death investigations across the country, including more than two dozen in Los Angeles and San Diego counties, that The Times found were complicated or upended when transplantable body parts were taken before a coroner’s autopsy was performed."

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-10-13/body-parts-harvesting-hinders-coroner-autopsies

sidd

[blumenkraft]

Get your brain unwashed by professor Wolf:

Are Capitalist Countries More Free?

[nanning]

(I couldn't post in the "Economic Inequality" thread)

   Almost all 10-year-olds in world's poorest countries struggle to read


https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/oct/18/up-to-90-of-10-year-olds-in-worlds-poorest-countries-struggle-to-read

 Quotes:
Nine out of 10 children in the world’s poorest countries are unable to read a basic book by the age of 10 – a situation mirrored in reverse in rich countries, where only 9% cannot do so by the same age.

Data compiled by the World Bank and the UN also shows that when low- and middle-income countries are taken together – a total of 135 states – more than half of all children cannot read a simple text at 10 years old.

In low- and middle-income countries it is 53%, while in the poorest nations it is 90%.

---------------

I disagree with the World Bank's "learning poverty" term. Let's remove the racism because they can learn like any other child.
It is education they don't have: "Education poverty".

If you haven't even been taught how to read...
You've been set up for a life in poverty in our capitalistic world. Just like your parents.

[blumenkraft]

And then there is this:

For the first time, workers are paying a higher tax rate than investors and owners

The proximate cause of the shift was Trump’s 2017 tax cut, which dramatically slashed taxes on corporate profits and estates