AIBU to not know the point of capitalism?

[TooBigForMyBoots]

OK, so I'm not an idiot. Did politics, economics, languages and other stuff. Got a degree and everything. I've studied ideologies/religions/philosophies and lived for 50 years. Paid close attention to the news/history along the way. Somehow though, I seem to have forgotten why Capitalism is a good thing. And the actual point of it.

Back in the day, I understood it as innovation and talent being exhalted by consumer demand for the goods/services in a competitive market. Hard work achieving rewards. Demand and supply (including supply of labour) balancing out.

But it seems it is just about very rich and super rich people getting richer while those who actually work, MC/WC whatever are expected to pay. Intelligence and hard work aren't important and won't necessarily get you ahead.

Being minted and connected to politicians certainly will. Is this Capitalism in 2022? Or AIBU and missing something?

It's interesting that so many people are not now completely uncritical of capitalism. In 2008 when I first started posting on MN people were apt to shout down any and every criticism of capitalism. So much has happened to shake people up. In just a few short years I'm now reading people calling for collective action, strikes and civil disobedience, predicting riots and protests and generally becoming far more critical. I'm reading, I haven't been commenting, but its certainly interesting times.

Trickle down I believe is a term coined by the left to try to discredit freedman and co' neoliberal nitwits and the Chicago school of economists. The capitalist can never buy back the surplus created in commodities and services, and the working class can never buy up the surplus. The inevitable outcome has been increased financification and trillions of dollars of surplus sitting alongside falling productivity, falling GDP, rising public and private debt and rising poverty and increasing inequality. Tis a mess for sure.

Fair point. I certainly don;t think all business owners are bnaddies. They have huge responsibilities and costs. I don;t think all capitalism is bad, either,. But I do think the bottleneck of wealth at the very top is a sign of how badly designed our current model of capitalism is. It needs to be restructured - giving more support to local, small and medium businesses and much more financial responsibility for staff and customer welfare to the the big conglomerates.

But they are the very people who have been squeezed out by the current model. When I was growing up, uni professors and GPs lived in big detached houses near their places of work, could afford private schools for their kids. Now they live in small terraces out of town and have far less disposable income. Financially the opposite of a carer is top management and they don't work harder than their lowest paid workers. The myth of hard work being financially rewarded is dead in the water.

For starters it's because resources are finite, so who actually receives them? There might be enough beef for everyone on the commune, but who gets the fillet mignon?

There is no definitive way of defining need in this case, so you'd have to come up with some other idea. It would either have to be something totally random and arbitrary, like a lottery system, which isn't technically any fairer than the lottery of birth. Or you'd need people to do something extra in order to deserve it, and there we have capitalism.

This is an oft quoted argument against capitalism, but it's wrong. Growth can just as easily come from renewables. There is no limit to how many potatoes can be grown to eternity, and how many Shakespearean plays can be written.

I don't think the alternative where the state controls all factors of production has ever worked out too well! Private ownership and enterprise is the right starting point. Central planning of production just doesn't work and leads to just as much concentration of wealth and power, if not more. Private ownership and enterprise just needs to be supplemented by public ownership (or very good regulation) of natural monopolies; public provision (or at least funding) of essential merit goods like health and education; and lots of redistributive taxation/benefits. And we've not always done enough of those.

Capitalism swamps us with too much choice about things we don't need. Minimise your buying and concentrate on relationships. That's the way to happiness. And by the way men don't cate if yo wear the latest skin cream. We're not that shallow ( and don't even notice to be honest) who needs 8 different toothpastes for fucks sake. If you have you health you have everything you need!

Capitalism doesn't have an objective "point", it's just a description of a group of economic and political systems.

It's a label to describe a range of the involvement of trade and industry is in private hands within an economic and political system so we can better discuss it though - like all labels - it has limits as most economies and political systems have a mix of community, state, and private ownership.

To have a point, you have to add an ideology on top of it, which typically focus on a particular type of capitalism that fits their ideals best rather than capitalism being the point of it.

You seem to have got yourself pretty confused about what capitalism is, really. Why do you think that those on very high incomes don’t “actually work”? Are you mixing up the effort of physical Labour with the added value that someone’s work brings?

The problem with communism is that it has never existed. Marx thought the proletariat were not educated enough to seize the means of production, so you would need a small coterie of intellectuals to act as caretakers and educators. Big problem. When the bolshevicks took power the first thing they did was get rid of the soviets (workers unions). So the bolshevicks fucked it from the start..That's why we've never had real communism. It's written there in Marx.

You seem to not really understand communism either. In what possible sense is it a utopia? Have you really no knowledge of how life is for the average person in a communist society?

That seems about right. I’ve never come across anyone advocating it as a way of distributing wealth, but I’ve heard a great many people raging against it.

If you read the philosophers on whom capitalism is based, it is still the best system we've devised. Hume, Locke, Mill and Smith. However, what you describe is the way that technology has skewed the goalposts, and you are also describing or implying that there is illegal activity that is keeping the richest richer. It's also the case that inflation will overvalue assets and devalue money, which tends to hurt the poorest and stoke the fortunes of the richest. Again, that isn't really a capitalism issue, it's a totally incorrect series of policy decisions by central banks who tried to manipulate the economy by printing money in order to keep voters happy and present illusory cushioning of the lack of economic output during Covid.

I don't know the answer, but in communist countries they have always had the same issues, but because they tend to control the media, nobody knows how much the ruling classes are siphoning off. I think we were all better off before we opened ourselves up to China becoming the manufacturing hub of the world. We're directly losing money as a result and handing over all our power to an autocratic regime.

Ps try buying insulin in the USA.. if you can't afford it you die. Good old capitalism!

I would have liked to see you trying to buy bread in the USSR.

Very broadly, I understand it as:

Capitalism = ‘keep most of what you earn’ This leads to rich getting richer and those unable to find lucrative work struggling to afford the basics.

Communism = ‘everyone shares’ ie those who can work do and those who can’t still benefit. In practice what happens is few people work hard (because why bother if you don’t get to keep the profits) -> less overall wealth is generated, and also those in government who decide ‘who gets what’ tend to become very corrupt very quickly and steal from the population they’re supposed to be helping. See Russia, North Korea, much of Eastern Europe etc etc

And then of course there is monarchy eg UAE where the rich have had everything for so long that they do govern and try to improve things a bit, but only if everyone does exactly what they’re told and no freedom of speech etc.

Momma told me Capitalism sucks but no one can think of a better option.

It’s worth pointing out that in the UK we do not live in a capitalist economy, we live in a mixed one. We have a national health service, benefits from the state, and a redistributive tax system.

The split between capitalist and socialist aspects comes down to who owns your labour or productivity, and how much of that productivity is down to your own efforts and decisions as opposed to the fact that you live in a civil society with the rule of law, property rights etc.

The driving philosophy of the capitalist parts tends to be the view that people respond best to incentives, and that a centralised, control economy doesn’t apportion roles and rewards in a way to encourage or maximise this.

The moral tenet that “he who will not work, nor shall he eat” is not a capitalist one, it’s been expressed in all sorts of society for millennia, and in my opinion is perfectly reasonable. If you choose not to do anything productive, then there is no moral problem if you are then cold and hungry. There is no moral imperative for others to work to provide for adults who choose not to.

I specifically chose the Kardashians as a response to the assertion that wealth accumulation is natural and moral. A mother selling a sex tape of her daughter and lies about how much companies are worth doesn't strike me as natural or moral.

I get that they're entertaining and respect them for doing so well, just as I do Katie Price.

What do you mean it doesn't work when you have open borders. Surely Open Borders are beneficial to Capitalism in that people can freely travel to sell their labour to the highest bidder.

Yes it does, that's why they bailed out the banks after they fucked the economy in 2008 as a result of de regulation

Working people had to bail out the banks.
Working people have only recently stopped paying for the reparations made to slave owners.

Working people seem to pay a lot to bail out the rich and powerful. Is that Capitalism?😵‍💫

It was nothing to do with deregulation (which was more to do with opening up what was an oligopoly to more competition.)

The banks failures were down to lenders in the US taking far too large a risk on property lending, and not taking proper account of the systemic risk caused by them all having the same exposures.

The point of it?

Enrich the 1% and whenever it collapses bail out the banks and just print more money.

No ideology works in practice due to human greed, whether it's capitalism or socialism.

What can work is a mix of both, with the right leadership and mix, but it requires checks and balances and a strong democracy. Once democracy is chipped away at (Brexit/Trump/Boris Johnson etc etc) the whole thing falls down.

Oh and the other point of capitalism. The insatiable need for endless resources and growth which is finally destroying the climate ergo the planet.