The Repubs won’t Douthat

Even if a more progressive tax program cost the Democrats some votes at the top of the income distribution, they could more than offset that by attracting middle and working class voters away from the Republicans, or simply by motivating them to vote.

Are you convinced this is factually true, though? I mean, I would like it to be true but it seems not so easy to motivate a disintegrating working class to vote for their own economic interest.

Half of the “discretionary” budget is not the same as half of the total budget.

I think that we still have residual work to do on the idea that taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society. We are coming off a long time when taxes have been effectively demonized and the efficiency of government has been propagandized against. It’s also true that raising real money for things like education and social welfare will require a broader base than 1%. There is precedent; upper-middle class voters routinely approve tax levies for schools.

Even if a more progressive tax program cost the Democrats some votes at the top of the income distribution, they could more than offset that by attracting middle and working class voters away from the Republicans, or simply by motivating them to vote.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c4eab53ef019b03b4f220970d-800wi

The Dems are better than the Republicans on virtually every issue, but since the Republicans are full-on despicable, that’s not saying much. Dems are despicable-lite, and in recent years, provide no more than a speed bump in the way of the right-wing, Social Darwinist, Ayn Rand brigades.

(One could accurately say that the Dems’ campaign slogan should be, “We’re not as bad as the Republicans!!”)

The Dems won’t go on the offensive. They play endless defense, as if they carry the New Deal on the top of their horse-drawn carriages and are being chased by Republican marauders. Little by little, they toss parts of the New Deal to the barbarian horde chasing them, hoping it will stop them, distract them, at least slow them down for a moment or two. But it doesn’t. Rearguard doesn’t work, and the people know this.

Obama has governed to placate that horde as well, patterning all but a handful of programs after conventional conservative positions, governing clearly from the center-right. This has done nothing but force the Republicans even further right, because they must always remain on his flank.

One of the real low-points in this abject march to the right was his suggestion that we raise the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. As if splitting the difference between near poverty and a bit less near poverty is a good idea — politically or ethically. For once, I’d love to see the Dems just go for it. Make the Big Ask. The Big Demand. The Republicans do. They constantly ask for their version of the moon and often end up close to it — to their extreme desires and desire for extremes.

The Dems are so careful and “practical,” they’ve lost their massive edge with young people, when they were sitting there for the taking after the election of 2009. Push for free college, for example, and you win an entire generation of young people to your party. Push for Medicare for all and you win half the electorate for more than a generation.

The Dems are too “practical” to do any of that, which is why they don’t hold the House, may lose the Senate this year, and have lost far too many state governments.

Go big or go home. You haven’t for a long, long time, which is why I voted for Jill Stein.

It’s easy to confuse people on the costs of the war machine. Easy to hide where the money goes. I’ve seen estimates of one trillion a year, and estimates a bit more than half that much. The higher one takes into account things like the security state, which is more and more in the hands of the military, an obvious danger. We may think we’re immune to coups, but we would be wrong. We almost had a military coup during FDR’s tenure. Admittedly, it seemed a bit of a Keystone Cops affair, but it still almost happened.

And defense spending is just about the least productive on the planet. Roughly 1% of the population actually utilizes military hardware, for instance. Any logical and rational investment would have to include the vast majority of the nation in its utility, which is why a Green Tech Complex, rather than a Military-Industrial one, is the optimum. Create the former by radically shrinking the latter, etc. Throw in higher taxes for the rich, add several higher tax brackets, plus a financial transactions tax, and we can also go for free college and trade school to boot.

For once, just once, let’s do what is in the best interest of the public, not the private sector.

In Douthat’s telling, the base is dominated by socially liberal high-income earners who are absolutely resistant to any increase the taxes they pay.

The base in NYC made some extremely peculiar choices in the Democratic mayoral primary and the general election, then.

the benefits of living in a better society

Consistently radically undervalued on all sides. “Friends will get you through life without money better than money will get you through life without friends.”

John Q: “Still, I can’t see how he can go on pretending much longer.”

It’s easy – he tells comforting lies (to himself and others) and is well-paid for an easy job.

“And this is the fruit of the successful effort of the Republican party to make raising taxes taboo by claiming that government spending is intrinsically wasteful.”

The fact that government spending is not intrinsically wasteful does not imply that government spending can never be wasteful, and even harmful. Again, it seems silly to advocate for tax hikes without first defining priorities for the spending. It’s not logical and I’d be surprised if you managed to convince anybody.

@Marc 17

I think a better idea is to bring the tax brackets in line with reality. The 400K threshold is far lower than it was, adjusted for inflation, back in the 30s thru the 70s.

We have people making billions now. Keeping the top bracket at 250K or 400K is absurd in that light.

. . . .

I’d suggest the following (give or take):

500K — 40%
1 mil — 50%
10 mil- 60%
25 mil 70%
50 mil – 80%
100 mi – 90%
1 billion — 99%

Add a Robin Hood tax of .5% on all financial trades above 10K
Increasing to 1% on all trades above 250K.

Raise Capital Gains taxes to 40% on all net gains above 250K
Raise CG taxes to 50% on all net gains above 1 mil
Raise CG taxes to 75% on all net gains above 100 mil.

Are catholics really Republicans? Whats the religious leaning of Democrats then. It cant be secular alone, the US is to religious to win any election like that and catholics are the kind of marginal minority that should be part of the big Democrats everyone beyond anglo-saxon mainstream camp no?

Here’s the Wiki article on the history Estate Tax in US, roughly starting in progressive era

You can scroll down to “arguments in favor.” No mention of how it is to be spent.

Gov’ts “tax and spend” in that order. First we decide how big the commons should be, based on national wealth, income, and distribution and then after taxation, we decide how to spread government around.

@20 plume

When you count the phaseout of deductions, state taxes and the medicare surtax – nearly all income above about 500K is being taxed at 50% or more.

Yes, I understand that there are loopholes and other such tax structures that make the paid rate much lower, but this should be solved by simplfying the tax code – rather than the blunt instrument of rates. Rates alone simply drive more complex strategizing and rarely deliver the full benefit.

I expect with the combination of tax simplification and a relatively small bump in actual rates you wouldn’t really need the tax progressivity that the balance of your table implies.

@20: I’d note that the old tax code looked a lot like what you’re advocating, with the very high tax rates associated with very high marginal incomes. However, I’m questioning something much more basic: the idea that only the wealthy should be asked to pay more. There are certainly grounds for a progressive increase. But people making less also have a stake in the services that government can provide, and they can also contribute.

I vote for school levies and for candidates who advocate more public spending. I’d like to see a more robust safety net; affordable access to community colleges and state universities; much more R&D for things like renewable energy. These things are not free, and they are not gifts to be extracted as tribute from the wealthy. We can all pay for them – more if we make more, but these are things that we do collectively. I view it as a real problem if we make paying for public services a taboo thing.

Another advantage of taxing the rich more:

Encourages investment in production, instead of bubbles/speculation.

Tax ownership at much higher levels, including capital gains, and you encourage reinvestment in workers and production overall. Our massive, deep reduction in taxation at the top coincides with a declining middle class, lower rank and file wages, heavy job losses, more bubbles bursting, etc. etc. And the economy overall performed much better when tax rates were much higher at the top.

Trickle down — which both parties embrace — has been an abject failure, based on a godawful lie.

I recall back in 2003, in the wake of the last recession, New York state was facing a major budget shortfall. The legislature, including the Republican-controlled state Senate, passed a substantial and highly progressive income tax hike, over the governor’s veto. There were also significant sales tax increases at both the state and county level.

In that context, it was widely predicted that voters would be unwilling to approve the substantial additional property taxes for their school districts. I distinctly recall some early headlines — clearly written before the results came in — about voters rejecting school budgets in protest against tax increases. But in fact? 94 percent of school budgets were approved that year, close to a record.

@27

” Overall effective Federal tax rates on the top 0.01 percent of earners have declined from about 70% in 1960 to about 35% in 2005, while effective rates for the middle class (the middle three quintiles) have remained constant over the same period.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#History_of_top_rates

Put another way, the tax cuts have all gone to the wealthy.

Super-rich don’t pay taxes, but I don’t think this is US-specific. It’s just that super-rich don’t pay taxes. Or maybe in Russia they do, after the Khodorkovsky’s precedent, I don’t know. But that would be an exception.

That Luntz article is striking reading. The fact that Luntz is unable to understand the message the polls are telling him is a remarkable statement on how far out from reality the Republicans have become.

@28

People in the lower quintiles already do contribute. Everyone who works pays payroll taxes, to fund Social Security and Medicare. These taxes are regressive in nature, and the one for SS especially so since there is a cap on how much income is taxed.

Conservatives like to claim that their tax-cutting benefited the middle class and the poor, but the reality is that the lion’s share of the tax cuts went to the wealthy. Middle-class effective tax rates today are not lower than they have been historically, while those at the top of the income quintile are enjoying huge reductions in effective tax rates.

Douthat is not a policy guy, not really a thinker at all. He’s a feeler: his affiliation with the GOP is dressed up white nationalism (notice the way he uses the term “working class), and he feels his way towards interpreting any given cultural or political detail in those terms. Accordingly, he can never switch sides, given the pretty clear divide between the two parties on ‘the race question.’

14: I’m kind of embarrassed now, because I thought that was about weed…reading my dad’s complete collection of The Fabulous Furry Franklin Brothers lied to me, apparently. Not about Thai stick, though, I was always like ‘Thai stick what the hell? Maybe it’s weed satay?!’ but then I finally went to Thailand when I was 24. Ooooooh. It was like that. Right.
re: tax rates, my grandfather, like many elderly people, was able to decide when to die. Not that it was entirely under his control, but he was at home under hospice care for many months, with round-the-clock caretakers and family members, and his extraordinarily faithful dog Dexter, who would not only sit at his feet while he sat in his leather recliner and watched the Yankees, but follow him to the bathroom 12 feet away, wait outside the door, and come back. (My grandfather, a life-long New Yorker, was morally permitted to be a Yankees fan. He was born in the Southampton Hospital. No backsies. One did have to root for the Yankees while watching games with him which was painful.) In any case, we were happy he was alive for one more Thanksgiving, and he might very well have died before Christmas, but hung on into the New Year and after his birthday in February for the year that the estate tax zeroed out for poor-policy-making reasons on the Bush administration’s part. Yes. On purpose. To do everyone a solid, or tell the government to fuck off or something. One occasionally hears rhetoric about euthanasia or the like from overheated estate tax opponents, but damn, this was like… I have what is commonly known as a ‘metric fuckton’ of cousins and did not get a free million dollars or anything, to be clear, but there was a strange effect when what money I did get went under the fat 0% line on the tax form. What even? The Bushies did it for bogus deficit accounting reasons but then it was really for real for a whole goddamn year. Some people must have made mad bank. Mad! The Obama remedy was not super-remedial, I think, effecting only estates over 3 mil? My tax attorney here teases me for being her least complaining (if also least on-the-ball) client. (The US taxes income earned abroad, like no other country in the world does.) I always tell her it’s because I support strong social services but she just laughs at me. I take it her daily, continuous interactions with the IRS don’t give her confidence that that’s how things are working out.

js. 47,

Yes, the Scandinavian countries have higher taxes all around, much better services, such as free college, universal health care, etc. etc. They have higher social mobility than America as well, and less inequality. Longer, healthier lives, too. And they consistently see themselves as “happy,” whereas Americans typically score down on that metric.

It’s a bit easier to rationalize a less progressive tax system, if the society is less unequal. Right now in America, we have inequality at all time highs, corporate profits at all time highs, the concentration of wealth at the top at all time highs, while the percentage of GDP going toward rank and file wages (instead of profit) is at an all time low.

It’s not the time for a less progressive tax system. It’s the time for much more radical progressivity.

And, again, in America, our economic performance has always been better when taxes were high at the top. We seem to fall into recessions and depressions when rates are dropped. It encourages bubbles and speculation for one thing, and when money is hoarded at the top, demand falls overall. The rich are the least efficient generators of economic activity — the poor, working poor, working class being the most, etc.

@47 “Taking nothing away from the way in which the current tax regime benefits the ultra-rich at the expense of pretty much everyone else (and much much more so those below the upper middle class), there is something quite good about an overall high tax regime (which thereby would also levy high-ish taxes on the middle classes) undergirded by a very robust social service-providing state. Obviously, this right now seems rather pipe dreamish in the US. ”

I think I know exactly what that ‘something’ is. It’s quite good for your feudal overlords, for the top 1%, who already accumulated $17 trillion worth of wealth, and keep going.

In the old days one working person could feed the family. Then it had to be two. And now two is not quite enough. That’s troublesome. If I am a billionaire, redistributing from better to do serfs to the staving ones sounds like the perfect solution. I’m certainly for it. Therefore, it’s not “pipe dreamish” at all; sounds like this is one solution that makes everybody happy.

Belle @46

Some people must have made mad bank. Mad!
Yes, and Yankees you say? George Steinbrenner died in that year of zero estate tax: 2010.

White nationalism, by various names, has been a mainstream and respectable option since our nation’s founding.

Bartlett is now well to the left of Obama

Do you have any concrete examples of that? “Well to the left of policies that could make it through the Senate” might be more likely, given his acknowledgement of the administration’s difficulties with their stimulus package, but some illustrations would still be helpful.

I’m looking at this table: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MarginalTaxRates.html

And I know that the medicare/state income taxes for the US are not on there which bring a lot of filers above 50% marginal rates. Those are not out of line with western europe at all (or swedes, norway, etc). Am I missing something? Are there additional income taxes similar to medicare/state/local in the US that should be included? And note, I am talking about marginal tax rates. I don’t want to hear about overall average rates.

@Marc

Because the problem is income & wealth inequality driven in a large part by a multiple decade program of cutting taxes, largely for the benefit of high income people. If you want to reverse that, raising taxes on those with moderate incomes doesn’t make much sense.

And, again, in America, our economic performance has always been better when taxes were high at the top. We seem to fall into recessions and depressions when rates are dropped.

There’s no disagreement here. The question is whether at the same time it makes sense to try and normalize the idea that higher tax rates for the middle classes as well (again, much higher effective rates for the rich being treated as a given) are not necessarily bad, assuming that the state is delivering much more robust social services that these very classes (and also to those poorer).

This was done, so I read, to force money out of mattresses / bank accounts and passive investments

Wearing my non-marxist hat:

Inflation also ran from 9.4% in July 1946 to to 8.9% in August 1948, with numbers over 15% much of the time. The Fed also ran double-digit inflation in 1942.

Read article today about the Fed following the Taylor rule but couldn’t achieve -3.0 rates, and the author was just terrified of inflation hitting 5%, so he concluded there was nothing to be done.

I think as far back as Smith versus Bentham, that capitalist saving and speculation has always been considered the problem. I believe Keynes and especially Kalecki emphasized it.

As a Kaleckian, I cringe at “underconsumption” or “deficient aggregate demand”

Workers consume their wages. If there is inadequate commodity consumption, that really means wages and wage share are too low.

Government pays for itself if it has to, see MMT or Chartalism.

Aggregate demand is worker consumption + fixed capital investment + and capitalist consumption. Since the first two essentially pay for themselves over the medium term, a shortfall in aggregate demand is entirely due to capitalist savings, i.e., finance and fictitious capital.

Wearing my social democratic hat, one main economic purpose of government is to force capital to “use it or lose it.” Instead of rewarding savings, I would tax them until they completely disappeared.

My Marxist half says, with mountains of evidence, that it won’t and likely can’t happen.

@bob mcmanus 66.

Put that Marxist hat back on for a moment, por favor.

We’re in a trap. A demand trap. And an ecological trap. Created by capitalism in the first place. It’s a bit like a drug pusher who gets everyone hooked but then can’t keep up the supply of drugs anymore.

As in, prior to capitalism, people were fine with much less, doing their own self-provisioning, growing their own food, supplementing that with hunting, fishing, small commodity production in the home, etc. The nascent capitalist movement realized this wasn’t going to do at all. Not only did they have to stop people from self-sufficiency and independence, so they would go to work in the factories; they had to convince them that they needed X new product and Y and Z (luxuries and comforts), so they’d go into the factories to pay for things they didn’t even realize they “needed” before. Cough cough.

The Perelman book talks about how the Irish weren’t too amenable to that for a long time, holding out against all those things they were being told they needed, and holding out from working for others in the face of endless accusations of indolence, etc. etc.

So the British did their best to prevent or destroy small farms, or letting of small plots, hunting and fishing by anyone but the rich, as they created more scarcity by exporting necessary food and other produce from Ireland to England.

Today, we lack “demand” because wages are too low for the rank and file. But we never should have allowed that trap in the first place. We can’t downsize and cut back on consumption now (in the aggregate), or the economy will collapse again and throw workers out into the streets. But we need to cut back on consumption and downsize because we can’t afford what we have right now and we can’t afford it ecologically.

Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.

If we make it out of this mess, I suspect future historians will look back and say, “The catastrophe of capitalism was one of the biggest missteps in our evolution from hunter gatherers to our current steady-state communalism. We lost several centuries in the quest for equality, justice and synergy with the planet, and lost a host of species we can never get back. It’s amazing that it took so long for the populace to wake up to the disaster under their noses.”

I think it is more likely that the ecological crisis was NOT caused by capitalism, although some capitalist techniques have accelerated it, and it appears to me that reducing inequality, by some amelioration of the capitalist logic, is a necessary part of the current solution to the ecological crisis. But it is easy to imagine a socialist system causing the same crisis.

That is because the real causes are population growth; pride, greed, & fear; ignorance of complex-systems dynamics; and perhaps the inability of most people to reason synthetically, which is very difficult to do properly, and is fraught with mistakes and embarrassments.

Widespread acceptance of the reality of the ecological crisis and the need to do something about it is very new. It is hard to find many examples of widespread, mainstream environmental thinking before the 1970’s, and that was just 40 years ago. Before then, there were conservation efforts for national parks and anti-litter campaigns. Then came the clean air and water acts, toxics inventories, etc.

Now we are moving quickly into awareness of our disastrous effects upon some basic biogeochemical cycles (carbon of course, but also nitrogen). The problem here is that the solutions are not easy, due to petro-based technological paths since the late 19th century, such as automotive vehicles and nitrogen fertilizers which have been hugely productive as long as we could ignore the downside.

Again, it is ignorance, and they would have been pursued under socialism.

Meanwhile part of the solution may come from private individual initiatives to develop other technologies, spurred on by personal and social ecological awareness, and enabled by government seed money. So capitalism is likely to be part of the solution.

Lee A. Arnold 70,

Yes, it’s capitalism. Obviously. First off, no capitalism, no Industrial Revolution. At least not when it happened — if ever. Before capitalism, the economic system was tied to the land, land-based, primarily agricultural. Primitive accumulation, which was necessary for the transition to and expansion of capitalism, kicked people off their land and transformed us into industrial economies, centered in cities and away from agro. And where agro pollutes, capitalism exacerbated that as well, by initially destroying small farms and the letting of farms to small farmers. This led to factory farming, as well as migration to the cities.

Beyond that, capitalism is the first economic system in history to require a massive expansion in manufactured goods, global exports, ever increasing consumption, and ever increasing use of natural resources for production. It is the first to change completely over from “use value” to “exchange value.” Things were no longer made to order, on a small scale, for local populations. They were made, instead, to fill shelves across the globe and show a surfeit, a cornucopia of choices to consumers. Which led to massive waste.

No prior system created even a fraction of a fraction as much waste or pollution.

The logic of capitalism itself, its internal logic, its mechanics, leads to more. More. And more. There is never enough. More consumption, production, consumption, production, waste, pollution, waste and more waste. Previous systems were based upon “enough.” Make what you need, make it last, make only what you need and do that yourself as much as possible.

Honestly, I can’t see how anyone could possibly NOT get this about capitalism and its effects. To me, it’s just so blatantly obvious, it shouldn’t need repeating.

Yes, the “closing of the commons” (Adam Smith’s “primitive accumulation”) had (and still has) ecological effects. Yes, the clearance of the remaining rainforests in Sumatra, happening right this minute, is for the basest of economic reasons.

But wait: the extinction of the megafauna on all continents 12,000 years ago, by hunting/disease/climate change, did NOT cause the ecological crisis, by driving the humans into agriculture for food? Or, the resulting Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago did not start the ecological crisis, by clearing wildlands and promoting human population growth? Or, Western Christianity did not start the ecological crisis, by separating God from the creation, and putting the rewards for sinners not in this world, but in the next? (So you can do what you want, to this world?) Or, the Scientific Revolution, from Bacon through the remainder of the 17th and 18th centuries, did not start the ecological crisis, by institutionalizing the manipulation of nature, and directly setting up the necessary mindset for the Industrial Revolution?

“Honestly, I can’t see how anyone could possibly NOT get” that capitalism did NOT create the ecological crisis.

Capitalism is a symptom of the ecological crisis; it is a description of part of the ecological crisis, not its cause. The primary ur-text on this is still Lynn White Jr., “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” (1967).
http://www.uvm.edu/~gflomenh/ENV-NGO-PA395/articles/Lynn-White.pdf
And there has been a lot more written since then.

To think ecologically you have to think synthetically as well as systematically. “Capitalism” doesn’t begin to cover the problem.

It is important to get this right, because, in order to move the entire economic system to the Kaleckian position on the economy (which really isn’t that large a move), it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to vote for the lesser of two evils; then, not to stop there, but to push that stupid lesser evil in the correct direction. It is all we’ve got, right now.

For example, it is absolutely vital to vote for Democrats to keep the healthcare reform in place. Why? Because its logic will transform it rather quickly into a non-profit system. And why is that important? Not only to get everyone eventually covered, and to reduce the costs of healthcare: It will also change the public preference on other things, and defeat a pernicious belief that private capitalism must be pure and free. In other words, it also shows to more people a little bit more of what is going on, and changes their ideas and expectations about how to deal with the future, in other ways. And that is very important for dealing with the ecological crisis.

The question is not, whether we can change, but whether we will change FAST enough. As usual with humans, fear may be a primary motivator. People do not seem to know that many of the world’s basic food crops are at the limit of their productivity with regard to hot days. If greater heatwaves start to reduce crop productivity, then people are going to fear the loss of the food supply. If there are sudden heat spikes, there may be a violent panic. This could come a lot sooner than most people (even apparently many climatologists) realize. Like in 10 or 20 years?

Sorry, #75 was in response to Mr Arnold and #74.

Marc 77,

You sound like an authoritarian. Similar to Medoc. “We can’t possibly allow any other parties but the two corporatized money parties inflicting their damage on the American populace!!!”

Sorry, people who think like you “can’t be taken seriously.”

In short, 2000 was an anomaly. You can’t base all future election strategy on what occurred then, and I showed why.

Gore entered the race in the wake of Clinton scandals, and Clinton’s turn to the right, especially on economic matters. Trade. Glass-Steagull, etc. Gore himself was seen as boring, and in the debates, “prissy.” As mentioned, he was clearly the smarter man and had better policy ideas. But too many voters disliked what they saw, which had NOTHING to do with Nader.

Also, and this is key: Without the Supreme Court and Bush family malfeasance, Nader’s run wouldn’t have been even a slight issue. As in, Gore still would have won without Republican political collusion, voter suppression, purging of the voter roles, etc. etc.

And, Gore wimped out in the end. He didn’t push for total recounts. He let it go. He shouldn’t have. The election was clearly stolen.

Again, you can’t project that into the future and use it as a model for Third Party runs. That was then, this is now.

bt 79,

I understand what you’re saying, and I appreciate your not adding “you’re a fool if you vote Third Party” or “You’re not to be taken seriously,” as Medoc and Marc did in their respective posts.

That’s no way to persuade others to one’s cause.

That said, I know full well that the Democrats are the better of the two parties. I think that’s abundantly clear. It’s just that the two parties are rotten, and make for rotten choices. So it’s really all about picking the one less rotten, and we should be able to do much better than that — even well shy of what we really need:

An entirely new economic system and real democracy, including the economy.

Plus, as long as people feel the necessity of voting Dem, because the GOP is so much worse, the Dems will continue to take “the base” completely for granted — as Obama has so far. Contrast that with the GOP which seems to be all about their base. Their base scares them into doing its bidding, for the most part. The Dem leadership isn’t afraid of their base in the slightest. They realize that base feels trapped, with nowhere else to go.

So the Dems in power can have it both ways:

1. Sell out to corporate interests, take their money, pay them back.
2. Throw enough crumbs to their various under-served constituencies so that they realize they have no other place to go.

#2 won’t upset those corporate interests in #1.

We can’t change this dynamic by doing the same thing each election. And notice that the Dems have moved further and further rightward over the last thirty to forty years, while “the base” has employed LOTE.

It’s not working.

I should add — This does not mean that we have to reduce the human numbers for ecological stability. We really do not know that sort of thing. And it could well mean that finance capitalism needs to be reformed to move toward equality for reasons of ecological stability, as well as obviously for social justice. — Just thought I’d add those, because someone always takes the wrong inference.

What on earth is a:

a wild-eyed socialist,

or is this just the imagination of a eyes-wired-shut Keynsian capitalist?

Collin Street #83: “Could you sketch for me the sort of physical and cultural constraints that might make a capitalist polity stably refrain from both agriculture and the use of fossil fuels? I don’t see a path to the situation you describe [from any starting point I can imagine], and I don’t see a path keeping things there once they are.”

I was just trying to pose a history of the world that did NOT happen: agriculture developed but did NOT lead to much population growth; a clean energy source was found BEFORE fossil fuels were used; — and so then, capitalism would be fine, ecologically: it is not necessarily the main ecological culprit.

In that alternative timeline, I think capitalism could still be blamed for creating political power and inequality.

I don’t think that liberals have to cater to every whim of radicals. A lot of this dialog presumes that liberals are supposed to cheerfully accept accusations from radicals that we’re corrupt sellouts and beg them to support liberal candidates. I disagree; the goals of everyone on the left are not the same, and there is room for legitimate disagreement.

The left coalition is the best place in our current politics for radicals and liberals to advocate for their policies, and despite our disagreements the hard right is very much both a huge threat and fundamentally opposed to both of our interests . Under these circumstances the “both parties are equally corrupt” line is both one that I strongly disagree with and one that I view as deeply destructive. So I’m going to contest it whenever I see it – because I pay attention to what actually happens in this political system and it’s because the stakes are so high. If radicals want to make inroads they need to elect mayors, win primaries, and convince a mass audience that their ideas are worth supporting (this was the reactionary republican route on the other side of the ledger.)

What about Josh Barro? He’s still fighting the good fight, I think.

Plume #89: “It’s safe to say that no environmentalist, unlike he or she works for Exxon, is going to say that capitalism has been a net positive, in any way, shape or form.”

Garret Hardin: “Sustainable development can be defended because an adult can continue to develop his or her intelligence without any growth in body weight.”

Paul Ehrlich: “A sensible strategy generally combines a mix of free-market and regulatory controls.”

Herman Daly: “In terms of specific economic theory, the paradigm policy for solving the allocation, distribution, and scale problems seems to me to be the tradable permits plan.”

(I don’t happen to agree about tradable permits, because I think they are too easily scammed by vested interests, but Herman Daly’s book Beyond Growth is without question a good book.)

John Muir was in favor of industrial development, as long as much of nature was saved alongside. (I don’t have a quotation from Muir.)

I think the problem is your idea of “endless growth”. There are different kinds of growth in that phrase: growth of population, growth of resource use, growth of paper finance. Let’s take them one at a time:

Global population growth appears to be leveling off by 2050–it may be too many people, but it isn’t “endless”.

Growth of resource use (including energy) can be slowed down and even reversed. Technological innovation might do the same things we want, with much less throughput.

Growth of paper finance is the problem. It has led to the 6-year economic crisis, and of course it is also enabling much ecological devastation. But it is NOT the definition of capitalism.

I take capitalism to mean some system of private initiative rewarded by profit, transacted through price markets. If you create something that uses less energy and less materials, it is usually profitable. If you raise organic crops and people prefer the better taste, it can be profitable. Capitalism should not have to cause more resource throughput.

Thus, destruction is not “guaranteed under capitalism”.

There are also small-scale resource-management forms, as described by Elinor Ostrom. She called them “common-pool resource institutions.” They can work for some site-specific environmental conditions, fisheries, forests, etc. But they cannot work for everything. There are global issues that can only be addressed at the global level.

So, we need: 1. individual profit motive to help reward innovation, 2. intermediate-sized common-pool resource institutions, and 3. global agreements.

That is why we should keep capitalism — and that is the meaning of the quote from Garret Hardin above. A “mixed economic system” is the ONLY way to go.

Plume #93: “Capitalism requires that we consumers purchase more and more goods, and more and different kinds of goods.”

No, you are NOT required to purchase more and more goods, nor are you required to purchase different kinds of goods. And some of the new goods you purchase could do things with LESS energy or less material resources than the old goods. There is no scientific law about this.

There is of course the law of entropy, but that actually says something a little different: It only limits an energy efficiency for a specific constitution of a concrete process. The law of entropy does not rule out the possibility of bettering efficiencies, by using new combinations of materials. Examples are legion: Of course there are many technologies that illustrate this, many social living arrangements that do this, and many, many examples from biological evolution.

Plume: “Your quotes don’t support the contention that capitalism is actually better for resource use.”

Actually, the Ehrlich and Daly quotes say “sensible” and “paradigm”, by which I think Daly means in ALL of economic theory, since I believe he has studied socialism.

But the real question to you is the following:

BETTER THAN WHAT, EXACTLY?

(Sorry, I don’t do italics)

Because you haven’t laid out the system YOU want. So how can you say what is better? What is capitalism not better than? So next, why don’t you describe the system that will replace it. Describe it by the nuts and bolts, not by well-meaning platitudes.

Thus, in describing the new system, which you are now called upon to do, to prove that capitalism is “worse”, please do NOT give us another definition, such as “I don’t know, but the system must use less resources”, and do not say “Go read somebody else”, and do not give us fanciful metaphors about sharing-with-others, and do not describe a new system of paper credits that can’t be understood by anyone anyway (people already do not understand how money works), and do not bother trying to describe a new psychology that will inhere in our hearts and minds, once we are freed from the shackles of the capitalist oppressor.

In other words, tell us exactly what happens in this new system: when you go out the door to work, or how did you find the job, and how much you are paid, and what happens when you want to purchase something, and what is the process for you to adjust when a technological invention makes your job obsolete, and whether the inventor gets paid more than others, if he wants to be.

Tell us how all of this will work, without a bureaucracy or someone else checking up on you. Tell us how an ecological resource is maintained with any less bureaucracy under this new system, than the capitalist system.

Because the fact that many “environmentalists” say capitalism is inherently evil is called “argument from authority”. Most conservatives say universal healthcare will destroy the nation. I don’t believe either one, without proof.

There isn’t even much authority there. The authorities on ecological damage are ecologists (not environmentalists) and, now, climatologists. Go ask any of them about capitalism, and they are likely to say, “Not my subject matter, and I don’t really know.”

Growth of paper finance is the problem. It has led to the 6-year economic crisis, and of course it is also enabling much ecological devastation. But it is NOT the definition of capitalism.

It kind of is, you know. Capitalism isn’t just anything with markets, or it’d be called marketism or something. Capitalism requires capital, and capital isn’t just any sort of obligation, it’s anonymised, infinitely transferrable infinitely accumulatable. And you can’t have that without a finance market.

[the nature of “capital” — the way it abstracts over the limitations of the underlying obligations it’s created from — is sitting right at the core of the problem, and the modern finance market’s only possible precisely because capitalism transforms conventional quid-pro-quo exchanges into something different.]

As Collin Street noted;

Capitalism isn’t just anything with markets, or it’d be called marketism or something. Capitalism requires capital, and capital isn’t just any sort of obligation, it’s anonymised, infinitely transferrable infinitely accumulatable. And you can’t have that without a finance market.

This is exactly right. If capitalism accumulated more without markets then this is precisely what it would do.

Getting rid of capitalism (properly understood) may make markets far more efficient and relevant to society in general.

OH I forgot it inserts it in the column. Sorry! Crooked Timber never used to do that.

Lee, I repeatedly talked about capitalism in comparison with all previous economic systems. I didn’t compare with future hypotheticals.

As for my own:

It’s a bit like Parecon, though different in many respects.

First, no money. No profit. No private ownership of the means of production. All means of production owned by the people, literally. Not by some stand-in political front, or junta, or any kind of representation. I mean, literally owned by the people, together. By law, under the Constitution. And called the commons. The only thing outside the commons is one’s home.

Parties are in fact illegal in this society. The Constitution sets this up. Sets up permanent prices and wages. We have a steady-state economy. Sets up total equality under the law. Sets up environmental guidelines that say food must be organically grown and sustainably produced, with a strong emphasis on very small and very local. Guidelines are implemented to prevent things from going beyond a certain size, ever.

Animals must be treated humanely. Energy, cleanup, transport all must be green, sustainable and renewable to the degree humanly, technologically possible. We start out with guidelines to prevent pollution. We don’t, as is our current situation, let “the markets” decide and then worry about the environmental catastrophes later. The society decides to keep its environment healthy. We don’t let private business owners go against our best interests. They no longer exist.

We have three or four tiers/levels for vocations. The names are unimportant and can be altered, but it would be something like apprentice, senior apprentice, teacher, senior teacher. The tiers are there to provide just enough incentive to keep learning, to expand one’s skills, while preventing all but minimal levels of hierarchy. From top to bottom, pay for work done is no greater than 4-1.

Pay is in the form of electronic digits. Debit cards. Every person has their own account. Every town their own. Every region. And the nation itself. We use the debit cards to pay for items produced for the common good (and account for them), with the production owned by all. No profits, no money is exchanged.

No taxes, no debt, no borrowing, ever. If a town needs a new hospital, a new school, they submit the request and it’s voted on. Direct, participatory democracy. The funding comes from unlimited digits, so there is never a scarcity of that, never a need to go into debt, never a worry about that funding. The only limitation is labor. If we have the people to build it, we build it, as long as it fits within Constitutional guidelines and wins democratic support.

National goals. Regional goals. Township goals. All work together, synergistically. Locales manage what is in their local jurisdiction. They are stewards for their community and what rests in that community. But ownership is societal as well. The community and the society at large own all production.

We produce what we need for each individual community, and hopefully a little more. We trade surplus when needed. But the vast majority of goods and services are locally produced and consumed. We set things up that way. Things from the outside, from other regions, are luxuries and bonuses, for the most part. We vote, as a community, to bring X, Y or Z in from other regions.

Civil servants are chosen by lottery and do a two-year or four-year stint. People can choose public service as a career, too. But the direction for their work comes from direct, participatory, democratic vote — at the local, regional and national levels. The same tier system applies to public service careers. One can move from the first to the fourth level, if one chooses. No one is forced out of their tier. But they have the choice to apply for “promotion.”

Retirement age is 60.

All schooling and training for trades and the arts is free. All public transport is free. All health care is free. Since the funding is unlimited, as mentioned above, there is never a lack of coverage for this. Simply by being a citizen, one can expect lifetime learning, health care, transport and full access to all cultural venues — which also are free. None of that is subject to “ability to pay.”

The basics are all covered. Everything we need to live a decent life is guaranteed. Working covers the extras, allows one to save for vacations outside this society, and extras for the home, etc. .

For starters . . .

Will add more tomorrow, if this thread is still open.

Chris Warren: “You can expand any economy, slave, fuedal, socialist simply by moving resources to a more highly valued employment.”

The question is, what your preferred decisionmaking apparatus to move that employment?

Plume, There is no profit, but there are wages. Why are there wages?

Chris, Sorry, I don’t understand. What is your question?

Whoops.

Lee 108,

There are wages to compensate for work done in the system I describe, and those wages also help in accounting, prediction, resource allocation.

The system of capitalism, OTOH, injects something that has never been necessary for a fully functioning economy:

Profit. Profit is, in fact, a form of theft and totally unnecessary. It is derived primarily from the underpayment of wages. The more money ownership desires, the more grotesque the underpayment. Ownership takes the revenues generated by workers, due to their labor, and then redistributes just a portion back to the people who actually generated that revenue. He or she keeps the lion’s share, without having done but a tiny sliver of the work.

Notice how extraneous is profit. The workers don’t base their efforts on the amount of money the boss makes above and beyond his or her own salary. They could and would work just as hard if there were no boss, no owner, and no difference between their pay and anyone else’s. Actually, they’d likely work harder.

The vast majority of people don’t work for profit at all. They work for wages. What difference is it to them if their paychecks come from a non-profit, a co-opt or an Apple?

Anyone who says profit is necessary to our economy is either ignorant of the facts or shilling for ownership.

Mattski 109,

You have an account. You fill your account with hours worked. You go into a store, select an item, and your card is debited electronically X amount for item purchased.

You work again. Get more digits on the card. And so on.

Again, most things don’t require any kind of debiting. As mentioned, school, health care, public transport, arts and culture venues all are free.

And, no, to your last question. My system being the opposite of a dictatorship. It’s full on, direct, participatory democracy. The people own the means of production. Literally. Not via representation by political parties, juntas, dictators. But they actually, really own all means of production and all funding in common.

One person, one vote, all with equal weight. No money to corrupt things. No political parties to be corrupted. No extra power based upon capital controlled. No capital, period.

Everyone is equal under the law. In this system, unlike our current system, money doesn’t make you more powerful than your neighbor, and the few can not possibly rule the many. There is no ruling class, period. Nor any classes at all.

Plume #114: “There are wages to compensate for work done in the system I describe, and those wages also help in accounting, prediction, resource allocation.”

Why is the spread in wages 4 to 1? Why not 3 to 1, or 5 to 1?

Lee,

It could be less or more. I think 4-1 is good, a sort of sweet spot. But it doesn’t have to be that. As long as there is a limit. An upper end. Orwell thought 10-1 fair. I think that’s too much hierarchy and inequality. This leads to pathologies within societies, unfair differences in quality of life, longevity, etc. etc. The bigger the gap, the worse the pathologies.

In our current system, the rich actually live longer and have healthier lives in the aggregate. Resources are allocated in order to do that. Most of the gains in longevity have gone to the upper socio-economic strata, for instance. And the top 20% richest people in the world consume 85% of its resources.

In my system, that kind of atrocity could never happen.

Plume #120 “As long as there is a limit. An upper end.”

Okay well suppose everybody at the upper-end wage #4 is washing clothes on rocks, just like everybody stuck at wages #1-3, and one of the #4 guys invents the clothes washing machine. And everybody else likes it. You are saying that he isn’t allowed to push the wage rate up to a new #5?

Lee 122,

Correct. You have to get out of the mindset that doing something good for society must entail a material award for just you and you alone. This is an interconnected world. You are a part of a community.

In this new system, the reward is a better overall society, where we all share in the innovations that come from it. Remember, that guy who invents such and such was educated in our system, for free. He or she received health care and training and public transportation and has access to cultural venues for free. He or she didn’t grow up in a vacuum. Why should it suddenly become just their reward alone?

Even in our capitalist system, workers, when asked, say they want to be appreciated and respected more than anything else. They don’t rate big material rewards at the top. The system I describe would emphasize this “natural” aspect much more, and create a climate of community, camaraderie, solidarity and cooperation. Those would be the things people aspire to. Not the personal accumulation of vast wealth. Since it wouldn’t be possible anyway, why would this be an issue? Why would you think people would really care about that?

Of course, if someone really did want to make their fortune, there is no restriction on emigration. They are free to leave and make their fortune elsewhere. No questions asked.

In short, just as in our American system, no one invents anything ex nihilo. They stood on someone else’s shoulders, many someones, who stood on many someones before them. Vertically and horizontally integrated shoulders.

Part of the mentality created by capitalist propaganda is that “the boss” should be entitled to the vast majority of material rewards, even though his or her workforce did the vast majority of the work. So, that inventor, even if he or she was taught in public schools, uses public libraries, uses tools created by the public sector, got to school and libraries and work on public infrastructure . . . well, they should get the vast majority of the reward for what they did anyway.

Me me me me. What’s in it for me!! Look at what I did, all on my own, without anyone’s help, ever!!

Lee A. Arnold

An inventor needs to receive a wage provided the inventions are socially useful.

This is cash.

There will be a period of natural profits until other entrants compete this down to zero.

This is not capitalism. A capitalist restricts entry and hires labour at wage rates which are lower than appropriate given the final consumption selling prices. In fact a capitalist will only invest if they expect the final selling prices are at this level. This then creates a economic crisis in the long run. It also means that other socially needed inventions are not pursued and the amount of actual invented products produced is less than optimum.

It seems to me appropriation of the surplus-value is always exploitative, whether it’s spent on capitalist’s own consumption or on capital accumulation: expansion of capitalist’s own power.

Now imagine a coop. Everyone is compensated according to his/her contribution: no surplus-value, and therefore no profit. But this doesn’t preclude the coop members to agree to set aside a portion of their compensation to finance an expansion or modernization or whatever else a hypothetical capitalist would’ve done with his profit, in this situation. See: same positive effects, but without exploitation. I’m sure it’s not that simple, but this is the idea.

@Ed Herdman 129
The problem is that Marx basically assumes that the markets are always at perfect equilibrium (this is IMHO implicit in both the LTV theory and the equalization of the rate of profit theory).*

As far as I can understand, for Marx profits arise by “underpaying workers” because “capitalists” have an oligopoly on the means of mass production, and this permanes even in conditions of market equilibrium (where market equilibrium means equilibrium among branches or companies, e.g. between housing and agriculture, or between Apple and Samsung).

*basically assumes in his equations: he didn’t believe that the market is permanently in equilibrium, but he tried to prove that disequilibrium is not the source of profits.

Plume @ 124

You have to get out of the mindset that doing something good for society must entail a material award for just you and you alone.

In order for your system to work people need a new mindset. So, you are requiring a change in human nature. This is something you aren’t likely to get by issuing a demand for it. Human nature does in fact change, but I don’t see in you any insight into this process.

@ 127 So, if someone comes up with a washing machine that washes an extra shirt or two a few minutes faster? Sorry. No dice. It’s got to be something really important, really necessary and really innovative — as decided by the populace and in accord with the Constitution. Democratically.

So, Plume, speaking on behalf of everyone, says “no dice.” Sounds like a dictatorship to me.

Plume #104: “Guidelines are implemented… The society decides… while preventing all but… they submit the request and it’s voted on…”
#116: “It’s full on, direct, participatory democracy.”
#120: “It could be less or more. I think 4-1 is good, a sort of sweet spot. But it doesn’t have to be that.” #127: “We will be extremely picky and only allow things that are necessary and for the common good… It’s got to be something really important, really necessary and really innovative — as decided by the populace…”
________

This is a long ballot to vote on, and there will be another long ballot next week, and the week after, and every week. Or maybe every day. It looks to me that your utopia crashes into another version of what is sometimes called “the knowledge problem”.

I think your basic error is here, #127: “There won’t be that huge number of inventions on the docket, because we won’t need them and we won’t encourage them.”

No, I don’t think you can actually KNOW that. Future innovations are not finitely pre-statable — in other words, you cannot predict them. (Just like biological evolution.) Further, you cannot predict the social value or usefulness or consequences of these innovations, until they are up and running. And there are lots of them, in fact it looks like we are in an acceleration of really good ones, in addition to all the junk.

Consequently, your “guidelines” must be so general, as to admit a thousand new questions and exceptions weekly, or even daily.

And people have to vote on them: Does this one fit into the guidelines, does that one fit into the guidelines?

So, in your utopia, everybody has to vote on so much stuff that they may never leave the voting booth. But, they would never even make it into the voting booth, because they would have to spend all of their time in the library or on the internet, reading and studying the issues, to make good choices on the ballot, if they ever made it over to the voting webpage. But before that, they cannot possibly study that much stuff, because scientific knowledge has long outgrown the capacity of single brains.

So it looks like Mattski at #109 is correct, you will need a dictator.

Mattski 133,

There is no entrepreneurship. It doesn’t exist. That exists in a capitalist-style society, and this isn’t that. You’re trying to critique this through the prism of capitalism, when that’s not applicable.

It’s like condemning certain chess moves based upon the rules of the game “Risk”.

And, sorry, there is nothing “democratic” in capitalism. Prices aren’t set by supply and demand. That’s a fairy tale. Prices are set in order to maximize profits for ownership while still encouraging maximum sales. They’re set by a extremely tiny minority of the population, whether the rest of the population likes it or not. Wages, too. Set by above, by the few, for the many below.

As for rules. I was asked what I would do. My alternative. Strange that when I provide it, I’m accused of being a dictator.

There has to be a start, somewhere, before that full on democracy can take place. There will be a constitution, voted on by all citizens. In my hypothetical, we would put the construction of the constitution up for discussion via the Internet, and hopefully millions of us would hash it out, craft a consensus and then millions would vote on it. A majority of that polity would decide. All further decisions are democratically derived as well, at the local, regional and national levels, with that constitution as guide.

Democracy, in this alternative, includes the economy. In our current system, it doesn’t. My hypothetical is infinitely better from a democratic point of view. It’s not close.

Interesting ideas, Plume. I had some questions about details:

I don’t see how the 4 pay grades survive long in a democracy, as those being paid less will likely vote to change the scale in their favor. No tax, borrowing, or debt, ever seems problematic in a democracy, too. Even if you inscribe it in the constitution, how is it enforced? If a community and/or higher level of civil organization wishes to deviate and implement such, how would they be prevented? By force? Expulsion? Imprisonment?

There also seems to be ample room for the Tyranny of the Majority to come into play. What if a community votes, in the majority, to ban homosexuals from their area? And back it to say that if one doesn’t like it, they’re free to go form their own community over there? Or similar votes against religious belief, ethnicity, sexual orientation, philosophies, etc?

If this cannot be done because of the constitution, who is enforcing it? How are appeals against its authority, or challenges to it, or desires to change its content, processed? For that matter, what structure of military and/or law enforcement is to be set up? And, if they are the only citizens to possess armaments, what checks and balances are to be implemented to prevent their abusing their status – even if it’s only to lean on other citizens and get them to spend their electronic money on that which the armed person so desires?

How are the religious beliefs of citizens to be addressed? Are churches allowed? What happens when any particular church/church sect anathemizes certain tenets of your society? What if local schools see their teachers primarily composed of enthusiastic Young Earth Creationists who wish to order their society in accord with the expected End of Days?

The world is filled with legal and illegal drugs. I’d be curious to hear what the status of such is to be in this polity, and, for that matter, how such as the medical profession are to be regulated. What happens if a doctor is unqualified and kills his patients through incompetence and/or neglect? Are there lawyers in this society? And how are damages to be addressed? Wrongs to be corrected?

Plume. And libertarians will tell you there has never been true capitalism. Some things are politically impossible. Cest la vie

Ronan 142,

We definitely have actually existing capitalism. If you’re speaking of right-wing libertarians, they believe in a fairy tale capitalism, a fairy tale promulgated by Adam Smith, Steuart, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, Hume, Locke, etc. etc. The classical political economists and their allies.

There is a difference between saying that unicorns don’t exist, and that a certain perfectly purebred breed of horses doesn’t exist — yet.

Sorry, second and third paragraphs (145) refer to the alternative system, not present day America.

Tyrone 147,

First off, thank you for your questions, your very adult feedback, etc. Have posited this in other venues, and was met with some truly infantile and angry responses that baffled me. Why on earth should anyone get angry over alternative ideas? As if they’re some sort of threat to them? They aren’t. Capitalism has such a stranglehold over the world, I would think anger would be directed there, not toward something that doesn’t exist.

. . . .

There is a conundrum with any attempt at democracy, even our limited kind. If we open things up to majority vote, we could vote in someone or some party that would eliminate democracy itself. Some form of religious autocracy/theocracy could be voted in and then turn around and eliminate all further voting, for example.

So that constitution comes into play and sets up a framework for the greatest degree of “freedom” possible while at the same time preserving the egalitarian, democratic structure. There will be a lot of room to maneuver, just as long as one stays within the general framework and doesn’t try to destroy it. As in, you can go here, there, anywhere you want, just as long as you don’t pull down the walls themselves.

So, again, we would have laws to prevent the concentration of power in any form beyond the single voter’s. But all the voters together get to prevent any one voter or a group of those voters from bringing down the house. The concentration and consolidation of power is prevented by a constant rotation of representatives and civil servants. Chosen by lottery, without elections, no one can buy their way in, and everyone will know their time is limited. What they do can be undone by new rotations and current fellow reps, so it’s a waste of time to even try. As in, one can’t “build” a political power base. They won’t be there long enough for that, or to enjoy its fruits. And the constitution already sets up too many barriers for that.

The power to “enforce” this hopefully would seldom be needed. But if it is, again, the people rotate through those jobs, knowing they will be on the other end of the deal soon enough. There will be an underlying, perhaps subconscious realization of the golden rule in place. Unlike our system, you can’t be a permanent member of any “enforcement” mechanism. You take your turn and then go back home. A “Peace Corp” conception, in a way.

And, again, anyone can leave if they don’t like the set up. No questions asked. No repercussions. This society is a voluntary one. But if you decide to live here, you agree to the rules.

“system”?

And yes after the revolution the assholes who know how to rule will take over, for better or worse, and push the inspirational and idealistic aside. In with the new boss.

You don’t get to rule. You just get to decide when it is bad enough to blow it all up.

If you want to rule, well, you’re doing it wrong and in the wrong place. Try one of the parties. And understand you will become an asshole.

Whoops. Didn’t see bob @ 152.

Easy Cowboy.

bob, this almost feels like we’re on level ground together!

Re:

1) Someone has to do it.
2) Don’t think this is true. We’re all responsible. That’s why ‘human nature’ gets brought up by folks like me.
3) I would phrase it this way: Attempting to dissuade the general public from following people like yourself into a world of mayhem. (Broken windows & guillotines for starters.)
4) bob… you’re a character.

Mao Cheng Ji

Now imagine a coop. Everyone is compensated according to his/her contribution: no surplus-value, and therefore no profit. But this doesn’t preclude the coop members to agree to set aside a portion of their compensation to finance an expansion or modernization or whatever else a hypothetical capitalist would’ve done with his profit, in this situation. See: same positive effects, but without exploitation. I’m sure it’s not that simple, but this is the idea.

In the abscence of corruption, cooperatives can make normal profits without leading to unemployment or cutting wages or hours worked.

Setting aside a portion of their compensation is “saving” and provided that investment is in equilibrium with this then, there will be no ratcheting imbalances such as under capitalism – CPI, debt, CAD, wages.

Mattski 149,

You think you’re “free” to choose, when you walk into a store? Really? You’re such an easy mark. I bet store owners just love you to death. What a rube.

You don’t have any say in what those choices are. None. Those choices are made for you by the wealthy. And most of those preselected “choices” you get to pick from? The same thing. They’re all the same thing. Produced under the same exploitation. Priced the same. With the same wages paid and the same ripoffs built in. You get to choose different packages and colors. Wow!! Freedom!!! But the goods themselves are essentially all the same.

And, sorry, but you’ve never demonstrated that I supposedly make “rash, imprudent generalizations.” But I did shred your ridiculous attempt to portray leftists as somehow automatically impractical, while you liberals are supposedly “sensible” and would make for great deck hands, getting that old boat a shore. As in, your little thought experiment was absolutely ludicrous.

Tell me, what have liberals done in the last forty years, but offer a lame speed bump in the face the right-wing onslaught? What exactly have you done that was so “practical” and useful, other than continuously offering up one more piece of the New Deal in exchange for what you thought might be a temporary truce in the battle to destroy it? Tell me what addition you’ve made to that corpus in the last forty years. You can’t. It doesn’t exist. Your heyday was four decades ago, and even then, without the pressure from your left, liberals wouldn’t have gotten much if anything passed.

Talk about “track records.” Yours is abysmal, oh practical and pragmatic one.

And, again, my system would be the opposite of “authoritarian,” whereas you support the essence of it with your love of capitalism. No economic system in history has spread or exported hierarchy and imperialism with so much “efficiency.” And, yes, it’s quite “practical and pragmatic” in the way it does this, in the way it creates apartheid, especially of the economic kind.

In short, Mattski, get over yourself. You’re not all that.

Random Lurker @ 132:

Thanks, I think that helps clear up a source of wonderment I had.

Would anyone show a Marxist response to this, instead of riffing on Nietzsche? “And when you look into the asshole, the asshole becomes you.” I think that’s the quote.

Apologies to Chris Warren, I jumped the gun.

It’s too easy to get distracted by revolutionary accounts of economics:
“Electronic digits are earned solely through work sanctioned by the polity, and those digits can only come from one source, owned in common. It would be next to impossible to form a black market because of that. You don’t get access to those digits without a legit job.”
GEE SIR YOUR CIGARETTES ARE ENTICING BUT I DISDAIN BARTER

“Profit is (essentially) another word for the surplus-value.”
BECAUSE IT’S CONVENIENT FOR MY ARGUMENT

“Maybe dn could give us an official religio-historical reason why [patently offtopic baity nonsense of no import to the thread]”
Come on, Roy!

Ed Herman 164,

Why would you need to resort to barter when wages are more than high enough, and prices more than low enough, for you to afford what you need?

Unlike in our current system, in my proposed alternative, wages and prices are set to benefit all citizens. Unlike capitalism, which sets wages and prices to benefit ownership, in my alternative they’re set to enable comfortable living, health and safety for the populace. They’re actually configured to do this. Society’s welfare is the goal. Not that of the business class, which does not exist in this alternative.

I think some of you are still viewing this through the prism of capitalism, and basing criticism from there. The same rules don’t apply. Incentives are totally different.

Use-value is paramount. Exchange-value is gone. Decisions are no longer made to enrich a tiny few. They’re made to radically improve quality of life for all citizens.

It’s as if you purposely leave all of that out of your critique. As if you think this alternative retains all the ugliness of capitalism without alteration.

It’s another world, not a tweaking of our current one.

bob 167,

This is one of the reasons why it’s absurd to blame Marx, who died in 1883, for what Lenin and Stalin did, etc. Marx never created a blueprint for revolution. He was, indeed, far more interested in dissecting existing relations of production and seeing how they work and fit together.

He helped established the most rigorous analytical program ever when it comes to examining how capitalism works, what makes it tick, its internal contradictions and effects.

All the other schools fall short of its rigor, though I’d say the Keynesian school comes in second place.

Neoclassical analysis is laughable, primarily due to its basic role as cheerleader. I can always tell someone’s gullibility when they put down Marxian critique while holding up that of virtual officially sanctioned shills.

Mattski strikes me as someone blindly gullible, and I almost feel sorry for him. Not sure yet about his shilliness. But I’m leaning toward that view.

Chris 169,

Well said. I generally use it in the capitalist sense when discussing capitalism. As the remainder after costs are deducted. As in, what is leftover after ownership, workforce and overhead have been covered. Revenues minus all overhead.

Apple made 41 billion in profits in 2012, and now has an additional cash pile of 162 billion, for instance.

Last comment for the evening:

My starting point is here. Our current system produced the following:

A median salary (in America) for individuals of roughly 27K. The richest 400 Americans averaging more than 300 million a year, and now controlling more wealth than the bottom 60% of the country combined.

The top 1% taking in roughly 20-25% of all income, while holding roughly 42% of all wealth.

One family, the Waltons, heirs to the Walmart fortune, holding more wealth than the bottom 40% combined.

The richest 20% in the world now consumes 85% of all resources. It’s estimated that if everyone lived like the average American, we’d need four entire earths to meet demand for natural resources.

Wages for rank and file (in America) falling or, at best, staying even for the last forty years.

__________

My alternative system starts with the premise that the above is unacceptable. It includes social justice, equal rights, human rights, equality under the law, full democracy, including the economy, free education for life, free health care for life, free public transport and access to cultural arts venues for life. It returns control to communities and the individual, all of whom have equal say and equal power in society. Included in those guarantees are the following: clean, safe water and food supplies, organic only farming practices, sustainable energy, agro, transport and cleanup.

No one who wants to work is denied the chance. There is no unemployment, unless one decides not to work.

To me, the guarantee of a massive increase in quality of life for the masses is worth the sacrifice of eliminating (for the few) the ability to get rich — especially in light of the fact that 1% or less of the population ever will. And we can’t have both.

We can’t have a thriving democracy, with a high standard of living for everyone, and have capitalism. We can’t have true democracy, including the economy, and have capitalism. We can’t have an egalitarian society, based upon 100% equality under the law and have capitalism at the same time. We can’t radically reduce, if not eliminate, hierarchies and inequality and have capitalism.

So, it’s a choice between two things:

1. A hierarchical society, based upon economic apartheid, with massive inequality, recurring recessions, depressions and bailouts, with massive waste and pollution built in . . . .

or

2. A radically democratic society, one based upon egalitarian principles, where everyone has equal say and power, and everyone is guaranteed work, safe food and water, lifetime education, health care and access to the fruits of society — without worrying about ability to pay.

Do you want a society set up to benefit the 1%? Or a society set up to benefit 100% of the population, with the acknowledged loss of privileges for the upper classes, which will no longer exist?

Oh, and if the revolutionary subject sounds like a solipsist, that’s because we bourgeois individuals can’t understand the revolutionary subject, which is a collective subject, until we are burning shit down and taking their stuff along with her.

Most “solidarity” is bourgeois liberal identification of one sort of another, the narcissistic objectification of oneself, a wearing of a uniform and looking in the mirror.

“I’m so pretty”

You’re never going to have a radical democratic society, Plume, even if such was desirable, which it isn’t. You can have democracy at the level of small units (worker’s cooperatives, local governments, etc.) but ultimately governments are always going to be run by one form of elite or another. The choice is between a society run by economic elites (capitalism) and one run by ideological elites (socialism, though you could have non-socialist variants on the same pattern).

= = =
Nothing? You mean walking into a store and having a choice about what to spend my money on is not democratic? Having a choice about which news outlets to get my news from is undemocratic? Having a choice about which art, which music, which culture to patronize is undemocratic? = = =

There’s certainly a lot of truth there; _Red Plenty_ and all that. In fairness however Having worked for several fairly powerful consumer products firms I can report that you really have a lot less ‘choice’ than you think you do, and you can be manipulated a lot more easily than you think (me too for that matter and I’ve seen the sausagemaking). Breakfast cereal was mentioned upthread and that’s a good example: nothing has really changed since the FTC’s failed collusion case of the early 1970s. There are 2.5 firms that hold 95% of the cereal market and that dictate to grocery stores what you will see on the shelf, how, and when; and that used to flat-out own long stretches of the TV wasteland. You can try sending a market signal by purchasing one of those organic boutique cereals that have popped up since 2000, but if one of the big 2 didn’t actually create it (read the really fine print) they will buy out the maker within a year or two.

And that’s just a simple example. Things get really ugly in consumer electronics, durables, and home construction supplies. You as consumer are just that – the consumer. You do as you are told 85% of the time and that’s sufficient to maintain a corprocracy in which you have essentially no voice or choice.

Cranky

Chris Warren #157: “Once the standard conditions of free markets are truly met – all capitalist profit is competed away”

Exactly right. But then, if you as a worker save your money and lend it to, or invest it, in a business start-up to get a return on that money and/or some of the profit until such time as it is competed away, — then, at that very moment, you are by definition a capitalist. (And it is not necessarily environmentally damaging.) Your definition of “capitalism” appears to be “monopoly capitalism”. “Monopoly” is, in the standard econ textbooks, one of the main market failures that prevent free markets.

CWOnce the standard conditions of free markets are truly met – all capitalist profit is competed away . . . You only get a sustainable economy and full employment when capitalist profits are eliminated . . . They are normal profits. They represent real value and fall to the actual producers of this value and in proportion to their contribution.

Shall I tell you what the theoretical standard condition for perfect competition in free markets is? It is no strategic behavior. Everyone behaves even more stupidly than is actually possible. This is the assumption from which you are projecting the shape of utopia.

How can the net effect be a rise when it only obtains the same premium?

its a means of gaining insight into the mess we’re in

A faulty means would be my point.

the notion that profits would end up competed away and the notion that firms must arise on the basis of limiting competition follow from that model

There’s an unexamined leap from “no strategic behavior” to “competition”, which makes no sense, but has become very convenient to the construction of neoliberal propaganda. I suppose it is the ol’ “invisible hand” notion that competitive strategic behavior can be self-defeating in ways that protect and promote a general or public interest; it is in these murky waters that “market failure” and self-regulating “markets” (aka self-regulating industry) swim, alongside such tired cliches as the bugaboo of “monopoly capitalism” (like competitive capitalism is such a perfect peach).

A moment’s reflection will observe, that as soon as strategic action is applied extensively and reflexively, it collapses upon itself: it becomes incalculably complex, since the anticipated behaviors of others must be held constant in any “strategic” calculation.

Which is why society’s functional social cooperation is accomplished through institutions, which resolve that complexity into the games people play. Constraints and enforced rules simplify the strategic interaction, and control of processes dampens variation into calculable risk. There’s no end of history of course, and institutions grow, age and are eroded and break down, like any physical mechanism. Capitalism is prone to crisis. Shocking!

Bruce Wilder 186,

Capitalism is prone to crisis. Shocking!

Yes, more prone than any previous economic system. Which is yet another reason to dump it.

Here’s one of the all-time best explanations for why, from David Harvey. Animation by RSA:

I think I like 185 a lot, to the degree I understand it, but I’m either reading it differently than Wilder, or reading it wrong. Almost like poetry it is.

The repression of strategic behavior is neither a basis for utopian thinking, nor its critique. Rather its a means of gaining insight into the mess we’re in.

I’m trying. I suppose tactical moves remain possible?

When there’s no future, how can there be sin?
We’re the flowers in the dustbin
We’re the poison in your human machine
We’re the future, your future

Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing on some of the roots of contemporary China’s “Industrious Revolution”

Absolutely essential reading.

First, while the Leninist principle of the vanguard party was
retained, the insurrectional thrust of Leninist theory was abandoned.
In the deeply fragmented statal structure of warlord-GMD China
there was no “Winter Palace” to be stormed or, rather, there were to
many such palaces for any insurrectionary strategy to have any chance
of success. The insurrectional aspects of Leninist theory were thus
replaced by what Mao later theorized as the “mass line” – the idea
that the vanguard party ought to be not just the teacher but also the
pupil of the masses. “This from-the-masses-to-the-masses concept”
– notes Fairbank – “was indeed a sort of democracy suited
to Chinese tradition, where the upper-class official had governed
best when he had the true interests of the local people at heart and so
governed on their behalf.

Second, in seeking a social base the CCP gave priority to the
peasantry rather than to the urban proletariat-Marx’s and Lenin’s
revolutionary class. As the 1927 GMD’s massacre of Communist-led
workers in Shanghai had demonstrated, the coastal regions where the
bulk of the urban proletariat was concentrated were far too treacher­
ous a ground from which to challenge foreign domination and the
GMD’s hegemony over the Chinese bourgeoisie. Driven ever farther
from the seats of capitalist expansion by the Western trained and
equipped GMD armies, the CCP and the Red Army had no choice but
to thrust their roots among the peasantry of poor and remote areas.
The result was, in Mark Selden’s characterization, “a two-way
socialization process,” whereby the party-army molded the subaltern
strata of Chinese rural society into a powerful revolutionary force,
and was in turn shaped by the aspirations and values of these strata

Your conception of democracy boils down to this: To buy or not to buy.

I never implied any such thing. And I do despair of having a rational conversation with you.

If capitalism were “democratic,” we’d all have a say in where the products on our shelves come from; how much they cost…

Well, we do have a say. It may not satisfy you, but it is a vote. Sorry if the world isn’t perfect.

We would decide, democratically, what was produced, how it was produced, where it was produced, along with prices and wages

You show very little awareness that your desires are in conflict with each other. You want the best, most nutritious, most earth-friendly products, for the lowest price AND you want the workers who produced these awesome products to be paid handsomely. Why, it’s like you want magic!

No one with a clue as to the actual meaning of “democracy” would even think of suggesting capitalism is even compatible with it.

So, people buying and selling freely, in a marketplace, is something people would never voluntarily want to do. And so on….

Mattski,

So, people buying and selling freely, in a marketplace, is something people would never voluntarily want to do. And so on….

Yes, people may voluntarily want to do that. Sure. But that’s not “democracy” and has nothing to do with “democracy.” You sound very confused about the meaning of the word. Perhaps you might want to, oh, say, look it up? Or, failing that, go into any university, find Poli Sci professors and talk to them? They should be able to end your confusion.

You show very little awareness that your desires are in conflict with each other. You want the best, most nutritious, most earth-friendly products, for the lowest price AND you want the workers who produced these awesome products to be paid handsomely. Why, it’s like you want magic!

No. There is no conflict in my system along the lines you suggest. There is in capitalism, of course. Which is my point. But in the system I describe, unlike capitalism, wages aren’t derived from revenues. They come from an unlimited pool of electronic digits, owned in common. It doesn’t matter how much X store sells or makes on X products. No one cares in this system, because it’s not about making money or profit. There is no link between the successful sale of products and payment for labor done. No link. It’s 100% severed. You work, you get paid, and paid according to those preset wages I talked about earlier.

The goal isn’t to make more and more sales each quarter. The goal is to fill societal needs and nothing more. The goal with capitalism is to sell whatever you can, regardless of need or benefit to society, so ownership makes a lot of money.

Workers in capitalism are overhead, which is why they’re the first to go when a business falters. And because business owners want to make money for themselves, rather than fill societal needs, they don’t think twice about shipping jobs overseas or automating them out of existence.

See the difference?

In my system, societal need is king. Labor is what is valued. And use-value, not exchange-value is king.

So, yes, we can produce the finest, safest, healthiest products and services and keep wages high for everyone. There is no conflict.

Addendum,

And for those who might say, well, unlimited electronic digits is absurd . . . think for a moment about our current system with its 1000 trillion in derivatives. What could be more absurd than that, given the total GNP of the world being in the 60 trillion dollar range?

The capitalist system employs a kind of fictional, highly arbitrary conception of money as well, though people do become rich in the process of trading those fictions. There aren’t any real assets backing up that 1000 trillion, of course. And I’m not talking about gold, which is itself a representation of value. I’m talking about hard assets with actual use-value.

If some Star Trek alien being had the power to call in all of our notes on derivatives and their cousins, the whole thing would collapse.

In my system, we put the fiction to the best possible use for every single person in society, rather than just the top 1% or .001%, as with capitalism. And, unlike our current system, my alternative actually does back up the currency with labor value. Its distribution is tied to that.

Labor trumps capital in reality even in capitalism. In my alternative system, there is no capital. Labor stands alone, triumphant.

Bruce 199,

Ho ho ho, ha ha ha. You so funny.

Now, please tell me, as I asked before, and you ran from, what would you do to make a better system? Given that you and Mattski are masters of the practical and the pragmatic, that should be pretty easy.

And for bonus points: Maybe you can answer what Mattski runs from as well:

What have “liberals” done for the last forty years that’s so wonderful, other than play (the most ineffective) human speed-bump before the onslaught of the right?

Oh, practical, pragmatic one . . .

When I pointed to unfortunate aspects of the experience of the French Revolution, you asked me for my program for 1789. I did not take that request seriously. I don’t take anything you’ve written seriously. How could I? You don’t propose much of anything, but good intentions, bolstered by manic self-regard.

I shouldn’t speak for mattski, with whom I often disagree, but I think we might both take the position that a realistic proposal for a wholly better system isn’t easy, and that’s the point. If you think it’s easy, you are missing something — missing rather a lot, in fact.

I agree with you that liberalism has not been effective in opposing the rise of the plutocracy. As neoliberalism, it has facilitated the dismantling the New Deal. There’s profound intellectual failure there, and, of course, corruption. Basic institutions — economic and political — institutions that framed stability and progress for 40 years or more, are failing just as surely as an old bridge, whose maintenance has been neglected and whose structural integrity remains unexamined. But, you don’t know anything about institutions or bridges. So, what good are your complaints and high-mindedness?

Bruce Wilder 202,

You asked me what I would do, but refuse to do the same when asked in return. And, no, I didn’t ask you for just 1789. I asked for then and now, since you made such an issue of the lack of practicality and pragmatics among revolutionaries.

And don’t flatter yourself. I don’t take you seriously, either. To me, you’re a pompous little prig on a bulletin board, who doesn’t have the courage of his own convictions, to the point of not even wanting to risk them in print. You’d rather take lame and unfounded pot shots at others instead.

Also, yes, I know a lot about institutions and bridges. I’m in my 50s, well educated, grew up just outside of DC and am well acquainted with a host of them.

In short, Bruce Wilder, get over yourself.

Instead of a lottery system, you could give it some serious disadvantage, to discourage the careerists, opportunists, and power-hungry from applying. Like, paying the politicians the minimum wage and auditing their finances for possible conflicts of interests every year for the rest of their lives.

I haven’t thought it through, obviously (might be difficult to cover all the ground), but you get the idea. To make sure a public servant has no other incentive but the privilege to serve the public.

Maybe it has already been suggested; I haven’t read most of this thread. And a similar rule would do a lot of good for the medical profession, I think.

A lottery is a decent idea too. I think it was Lenin who said that any cooking lady can manage the state.

In short, it would be from the public, for the public. Instead of from the 1% or the .001%, for the same. Etc.

Plume

Yes, people may voluntarily want to [buy and sell things in a marketplace]. Sure. But that’s not “democracy” and has nothing to do with “democracy.” You sound very confused about the meaning of the word.

Except I wasn’t attempting to define democracy. (You twit!) It was YOU who made the claim that market economics (capitalism) was incompatible with democracy. And just so you can go full No-True-Scotsman once again, your claim is soundly refuted by history.

No. There is no conflict in my system along the lines you suggest. … But in the system I describe, unlike capitalism, wages aren’t derived from revenues. … There is no link between the successful sale of products and payment for labor done. No link.

Then why have money at all? Did anyone ever say to you, “if wishes were horses?”

Here is a game anyone can play. Find the problem with this statement (helpful emphasis added):

The capitalist system employs a kind of fictional, highly arbitrary conception of money as well, though people do become rich in the process of trading those fictions. There aren’t any real assets backing up that 1000 trillion, of course.

So, Plume, when you say things like, “get over yourself,” I am quite confident that the Greek god of Irony gets a prodigious boner. And that, indeed, is what I am saying.

Mattski 210,

Nothing? You mean walking into a store and having a choice about what to spend my money on is not democratic? Having a choice about which news outlets to get my news from is undemocratic? Having a choice about which art, which music, which culture to patronize is undemocratic?

and

Where I live I have choices not just within stores but between stores. I can and do avail myself of locally produced breakfast cereal, eggs, milk, beer, coffee, chocolate, corn chips, vegetables, liquor and etc to speak only of food & drink. These local producers are privately owned and they play in the “capitalist” marketplace.

That’s you responding to my comment about capitalism not be democratic in the slightest. It’s difficult having rational discussion with someone who forgets his own posts.

Re: A lottery system would open things up to everyone, and help infuse a sense of civic duty in the populace. It would extend democracy to all comers, not just the ruling class

I’d prefer a lottery to what we have now, but I’d really prefer rule by a vanguard party to either. Most people are neither qualified nor deserving or having a role in running the country. Their civic duty should be to obey what the vanguard tells them.

Plume,

Your ‘family’ model presupposes the existence of parents. I.e. in this analogy, an authoritative state, that holds power based on an inherent right to rule, not based on the arbitrary whims of the kids. We don’t let children elect their parents, and we shouldn’t.

I like your family model, as I believe in rule by a vanguard party, but don’t you see that it completely undermines all your nattering nonsense about radical democracy?

It is one big family, though. Just not in the sense of parents above, children below.

Society as one family, working toward the same goal, for that one family.

If you don’t have people above and below (in the political sense), you can’t have a functioning society. I do not want society to be run by the Honey Boo Boo fan club.

Chris Warren #209: “Now if there is an innovation (manure becomes available) the productivity of corn producers goes up. Some pot-makers will switch to corn-production.”

No, if the productivity of corn goes up, pot makers will stay in pots. If the productivity of corn goes up, then more corn is produced by existing farmers, now there is a surplus of corn but demand for corn didn’t change, so the price of corn goes down. Pot-makers will not be switching to corn production; corn farmers will be switch to pot production.

Mattski 223,

Speaking of torturing the English language. You did in this comment, as well as move the goalposts. To another field.

This is you at #149

[First, you quote me as saying:]

[Me:]”And, sorry, there is nothing “democratic” in capitalism.”

Nothing? You mean walking into a store and having a choice about what to spend my money on is not democratic? Having a choice about which news outlets to get my news from is undemocratic? Having a choice about which art, which music, which culture to patronize is undemocratic?

Notice here I’m not talking about democracy and markets existing side by side. I am clearly talking about the fact that capitalism itself is not “democratic.” Itself. Again, no talk about parallel existence or compatibility at this point. I said what is obvious and self-evident: Democracy is not an internal feature, element, or part of the capitalist system. It is completely external to that system, from the individual business right on out to the totality of the markets.

(Capitalism is, in fact, in obvious and self-evident conflict with democracy. They are at odds, obviously. Though, again, for #149, for our discussion up to that point, I had not yet added that.)

Your claim above is that capitalism itself is democratic, as exemplified apparently by the act of shopping and consumer choice. You then go on to torture the language further by throwing in a negative construction, which was not at issue. Suggesting that I said that shopping and consumer choice were “undemocratic” acts. No. They have nothing to do with democracy at all. It’s not that they are “undemocratic” or “anti-democratic.” They don’t involve democracy in any way, shape or form.

Again, you confused the terms, made a silly claim, and I called you on it. You then threw in all kinds of irrelevant nonsense, including Venn diagrams, in hopes that you could dazzle us with bullshit.

Stop digging.

Mattski 225,

This might be obvious to you and a very tiny minority. It is not obvious to me and, I’d wager, the vast majority of people. The act of ‘voting’ with your dollars seems democratic to me. Perhaps you don’t see this.

This is what I referred to before. This points to your total confusion about what democracy actually means. And, again, you aren’t talking about democracy and capitalism coexisting. You’re actually saying that capitalism itself IS “democratic.”

As mentioned before: shopping and consumer choice have nothing to do with democracy. You’re not “voting” when you buy something. You’re exchanging currency for goods and services, and none of that entitles you to any say in what the business does, sells, pays, etc. etc.

Your dollars don’t buy you an actual vote in what products hit the shelves. That’s chosen — preselected — for you. Your dollars don’t give you any say in working conditions, wages, prices, sourcing, fair trade practices, adherence to treaties, ingredients, processing mechanics, etc. They don’t give you a say in how much pollution is produced or where it’s dumped. They don’t give you a say in how much waste is produced or where it’s dumped.

Did the consumers in West Virginia buy democratic control over the chemicals that poisoned their water systems? Did consumers in West Virginia buy a say in preventing these all too frequent environmental disasters? No.

In capitalism, the economy is never democratic. It can’t be and still be capitalism. We may put minimal democratic checks and balances on it from the outside, but the economic system itself has zero “democratic” aspects to it.

From the individual business on out, it’s a steep hierarchy, with bosses, with a fraction of the population calling the shots. The few ordering around the vast majority. Does that sound like “democracy” to you? Really? And you do as you are told as a worker in a business or you get fired. That business doesn’t put up its decisions for a vote. Nor do the markets in the aggregate. The wealthiest few call the shots.

We have a plutocracy, Mattski. Capitalism inevitably leads to that, and severe economic apartheid, without serious, rigorous checks and balances coming from outside the system.

And, on that note, G’night, all.

Lee A. Arnold

No, if the productivity of corn goes up, pot makers will stay in pots. If the productivity of corn goes up, then more corn is produced by existing farmers, now there is a surplus of corn but demand for corn didn’t change, so the price of corn goes down. Pot-makers will not be switching to corn production; corn farmers will be switch to pot production.

This is just so wrong, that there is no point in trying to explain.

Units of corn per hour, units of pots per hour.

Good morning, Plume.

You’re exchanging currency for goods and services, and none of that entitles you to any say in what the business does, sells, pays, etc. etc.

This is patently false. You don’t see it because for you it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. Lots and lots of businesses make earnest attempts to follow demand. Because it’s good business practice to do so. If my ‘certified organic’ granola starts outselling my non-certified product then–just imagine!–I may start increasing production of the certified stuff. This happens with blueberries and strawberries too…

Similar problem for you: What is democracy anyway? As Lee Arnold suggested, there is a mathematical problem of logistics in having nations (as opposed to very small groups of people) attempt to make decisions collectively. It becomes an absurdity.

Not only that, but have you considered the possibility that democracy itself is undemocratic? Seriously. What happens when people agree to elect a leader, and to give that leader power to make decisions which affect everyone else’s life? Is this some far-fetched paradox thought up by some ghoulish imagination? No, it’s actually reality. It’s the way democracy must work, because decisions don’t get made when everyone is free to continuously object.

So, yes, your head is in the clouds and that is why this debate isn’t terribly utilitarian.

SoU 229,

Well said. Democracy is a space. It’s a place where we all share “ownership” in a sense. We all have a say in the direction of the nation. We all have a voice.

Capitalism, without checks and balances from the outside, is completely devoid of democracy. Because it is all about private ownership and private power. Private property. Top down decision making. Autocratic. Authoritarian. Created out of the destruction of the commons, using primitive accumulation methods, helped dramatically by the slave trade, indentured servitude, child labor, the forced expulsion of “peasants” from their lands, etc.

Businesses, unless they’re co-ops, unless workers run them, don’t put up their decisions to a vote. Workers don’t have a say in the matter. Ownership at the top decides. Workers implement those decisions for ownership. There is no equality of voice or power. Power resides with the few over the many, from the top down. Obviously. That’s not “democracy.”

This isn’t even debatable. Except to apologists with their heads in the clouds like Mattski. Except for the enablers of economic apartheid, those wide-eyed idealists who believe in the capitalist fairy tale first pushed by political economists like Adam Smith.

The essence of democracy is collective decision making. It’s complex, so there is more to it than that, of course. But that’s perhaps the key element.

Collective decision making.

In capitalism, you have collectives (workplaces) and the process of collectivization (workplaces and consumers), but the collective doesn’t make the decision. It implements the decisions made by those at the very top of the organization, the owners.

The few over the many.

That’s not democracy.

There is a left and a right collectivism. Essentially, the left-wing version has the collective decide for the collective, on behalf of the collective. The right’s version is basically the capitalist model. The collective has no say and implements the dictates of the bosses at the top. The collective does the bidding of ownership and acts for and on behalf of ownership.

The left’s version is the essence of democracy. The right’s its antithesis.

Hector 239,

Mattski clearly was referring to capitalism. As is shown by our back and forth. He also talked about markets. But he specifically referred to capitalism and my comments using that exact word. If you do a “find” search in your browser, the word “capitalism” will pop up constantly throughout the debate.

And, yes, I know you can have markets outside of capitalism. You can also have them without democracy being in the picture, even remotely, as I showed in the thought experiment above. My point being that capitalism itself, standing on its own two feet, is not “democratic” in the slightest. It has nothing to do with democracy and actually is in conflict with democratic precepts.

Obviously. Again, as demonstrated above.

Mattski 234,

Wanted to return to this, because I found this a striking response to the following:

Me: You’re exchanging currency for goods and services, and none of that entitles you to any say in what the business does, sells, pays, etc. etc.

And your response:

This is patently false. You don’t see it because for you it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. Lots and lots of businesses make earnest attempts to follow demand. Because it’s good business practice to do so. If my ‘certified organic’ granola starts outselling my non-certified product then–just imagine!–I may start increasing production of the certified stuff. This happens with blueberries and strawberries too…

So, your dollar may eventually lead to a shift in production. Possibly. But have you, as a human being, been directly contacted by said company and asked to contribute directly, face to face? Do you get an equal say in what happens at that company, including the things mentioned? Are you a part of the decision-making process? You, as a human being, not your dollar. No. Did you also speak with, debate, hash out, come to some agreement about your wants and goals and dreams with other consumers? Did you meet with them in the public square and decide, collectively, where to go from there? No.

At the very best, your dollar is anonymous, faceless. The company doesn’t know who you are. You’re not even a number. They know your dollars, not you.

And what do your dollars “win” for you? Through an incredibly indirect and labyrinthine process, fully anonymous in its relationship to you, Mattski, the person, you might eventually “win” the awesome, earth-shattering chance to see more of Product X on the shelves. And what a great boon to all of humanity that means!!

Think of the epic goodness involved if your dollars push the makers of Old Spice to change from their usual green packaging to silver!!! You did that!!! Rather, your dollars did that!! And the world as we know it will never, ever be the same!!

Hector 243,

But are markets really democratic? In all previous economic systems, but especially with capitalism, they are controlled by elites, who operate, as mentioned, as autocrats — to one degree or another. They have their own little fiefdoms. They are the bosses. They don’t allow collective decisions — unless we’re talking about co-ops, etc. etc.

So, how is it possible for “the markets” to be democratic, when they are the sum total of all of those autocrats and their power and their decisions, large and small?

And, in all previous incarnations, including capitalism, the richest of those autocrats typically call the shots. We have a few “boss of bosses” controlling the show, aided by their puppets in governments across the globe, aided by trade orgs and banking orgs and so on.

I think when people say that “the markets” are democratic, they really mean theoretically; if we didn’t have the normal concentration of power at the top, they could be. But when in history have we escaped from that concentration of power at the top?

I love the idea of worker co-ops. Mondragon is a great example.

http://www.mondragon-corporation.com/eng/

Another excellent source for ways to do this is Richard Wolff.

http://rdwolff.com/

Also, Gar Alperovitz.

http://www.garalperovitz.com/

Hector_St_Clare

I don’t think this is really what you intended to say???

but getting rid of capitalism is not going to get rid of the expropriation of surplus value.

You are just piling confusion on top of confusion.

Getting rid of capitalism will abolish surplus value because it will abolish ‘wage-labour’.

There will still be co-operative labour and surplus product.

There is a difference between surplus-value and surplus product.

All explained earlier at #169?

Chris #247: “shift along the demand curve.”

In your example (#209) the total amount of money spent by consumers on corn does not increase. The total amount of money spent by the consumers on corn is defined as the “demand”. The demand does not increase. At a lower price, they buy more quantity, but the demand (total amount of money) is the same. More quantity at a lower price is not an increase in demand. The market demand for corn does not increase, because that would be a shift of the demand curve.

This is a “shift ALONG the demand curve”, as you wrote. That is because in your #209 example the supply is increasing. The supply curve is shifting, along a static demand curve.

There is a difference between STATIC and SHIFTING supply and demand curves. Supply or demand does not increase or decrease, unless the entire curve shifts.

Higher productivity SHIFTS the entire supply curve, to the right. The price falls, as the shifting supply curve pushes the price/quantity crossing-point (i.e., the equilibrium point) DOWN the STATIC demand curve, to a higher quantity purchased. The demand curve does not shift. By definition, the demand stays the same (because it is the total amount of money spent by the consumer), The quantity at the same demand increases, because the price is lower.

So, slightly more corn is immediately purchased at the lower price. However, this new, higher quantity of corn purchased is entirely provided by the existing corn farmers whose productivity was just increased. It is their supply curve; it merely shifted to higher quantities supplied, at any price.

So there is no call for people to quit making pots and get into corn production. That is the meaning of the diagram: there is a new price and quantity, if the supply curve shifts (due to new productivity) but demand stays the same (i.e. the demand curve doesn’t shift).

Demand is NOT said to increase, here. We don’t usually say that “demand has increased” unless the whole demand curve shifts. The demand curve would shift for very, very different reasons — major reasons include: change in the population size, change in consumer spending ability, or change in their tastes for corn or corn-products.

Once again, you wrote in #209 that “Some pot-makers will switch to corn-production.” No, that is wrong. A rightward shift of the whole supply curve (due e.g. to greater productivity) will not cause pot-makers to switch into corn production, because the price is heading down the static demand curve, toward zero. There will be less and less money in increasing the supply of corn.

It will be smarter for pot-makers to stay in pot-making.

But have you, as a human being, been directly contacted by said company and asked to contribute directly, face to face? Do you get an equal say in what happens at that company, including the things mentioned?

Invite EVERY member of the public in for a little face-to-face EVERY time your business needs a decision. Plume, I think you would make an EXTREMELY efficient manager!! Sounds like clockwork!

Hector makes an interesting distinction between “the market” and “capitalism.” Well, here is my perspective. The real world is made up of shades of gray. Words and classifications sometimes help us think, but not always. Ideas become hindrances when we make idols of them.

Even to draw a bright line between capitalism and socialism is not easy when we get right down to brass tacks. Because a market economy depends for its stability on the apparatus of the state. Private business needs the protection of law and its enforcement. This is why it is said, “there is no such thing as a ‘free market.'”

And what we have right now in America–despite the ascendancy of the Right–is a combination of capitalism (market economics) and socialism (the safety net, the welfare state.) Sure, the safety net is under attack by various douche-bags and monied interests. Well, we’re going to fight back against that assault. I just doubt that head-in-the-clouds utopianism is going to play much of a part in that fight because average people will find it more ridiculous than inspiring…

The real world is a matter of degrees.

Mattski #252: “Invite EVERY member of the public in for a little face-to-face EVERY time your business needs a decision.”

This is another version of the “knowledge problem” which I pointed out in comment #136.

Lee A. Arnold 254,

Mattski’s response to what I wrote is absurd. Read it (what I wrote) in context. It’s obvious I wasn’t suggesting that a business owner should ask all of his or her customers in for a brainstorming session, or to ask them how to run his or her business. I’m saying they don’t do this, and they don’t take input from those customers face to face, and those customers have no say in the matter, which is one of the many reasons why capitalism can’t be called “democratic.”

This was after Mattski claimed that his ability to shop is proof that capitalism is “democratic.”

I listed a host of other reasons why it’s not in this thread.

Chris Warren #257: “The ratio of pots to corn will shift to a new equilibrium so that the utility gained by an hour pot-making equals the utility gained by an hour producing corn.”

Exactly. Because the utility is defined as “consumer satisfaction”. Utility of a good tapers off with more individual consumption of it, which is why the demand curve slopes downward.

Lee A. Arnold 259,

You seem to be looking at this from the point of view of our current system, instead of as a radical and total break from that system. That means we won’t be transferring the aggressive, fast-paced, hyped-up desires for endlessly new products and product upgrades.

This will be an escape from all of that and a complete severance from that environment.

Have you ever spent time on a commune? Or with people running a local food co-op? If you have, you will have noticed that the desires for ever increasing varieties of consumer goods and their constant upgrades aren’t a part of life there. It’s not an issue in need of constant voting, and no one has to keep up with endless petitions for new consumer goods. People are basically satisfied with what they have. If it’s healthy, sustainably produced, fair trade, green and there’s enough for everyone’s needs, they’re satisfied.

The whole idea behind the system I suggest is just that. That we are currently consuming and polluting our way ever closer to the destruction of the planet for good — at least for human life — and that if we don’t radically downsize, the earth is going to make the decision for us.

So, my idea is that we trade in the endless hustle and bustle of that endless growth in “new and improved!!!” consumer culture for a steady-state, clean, green, healthy and safe egalitarian society. And we include social justice, full on democracy and all the rest of the things I’ve been talking about.

In short, there won’t be much to vote on in the way you suggest, ever. People will grow much of their own food, share food with others, make their own clothes, if possible, and share this skill with others. Arts and crafts and artisanship will be taught and spread like wildfire. Life will be communal, not competitive. The atmosphere, unlike the atmosphere created by capitalists here, will promote satisfaction with “enough.” Ours currently promotes the idea that there is never enough.”

We won’t have privately held businesses, corporations, media bombarding us daily with endless messages to buy buy buy!!! There will be NO consumer culture in this new system. Right now, we have that wall to wall, without escape. In my system, we will have peace and harmony, wall to wall, at least to the degree possible.

And, again, if people prefer the capitalist/consumerist model, they are free to leave and go back to that. It sounds like you do. Which makes me wonder why you try to critique my hypothetical based upon the idea that it just wouldn’t work as a capitalist system.

Umm. Well, that’s half the point. It’s not meant to. It’s meant to be something absolutely, 110% different.

You can’t critique a chess match using rules for the game of Risk.

Lee A. Arnold 261,

But you are assuming that the rate of possibly good innovations will be similar to our present rate. It won’t be. We won’t be a greed-centered me me me culture. There is no profit. There is no capitalism.

Again, you’re not taking into account the total break with consumer, corporate, corporatized media culture. You’re not taking into account the formal ways to channel the good innovations we do want to include, which will actually exceed the capitalist system in number and organization.

Our entire educational, trade, artisan and crafts system will be geared toward the public good, instead of corporate research for corporate profits. Or, toward churning out obedient little capitalist worker bots. As a communal society, we’ll all be involved daily, on the front lines, instead of having to wait until some Bill Gates comes along.

And, again, there is a paradigm shift. Complete. Total. We severed ourselves from the idea of competitive battle and the lust for the accumulation of personal wealth and “stuff.”

We have other goals and dreams. Peace, equality, egalitarianism, health, longevity, knowledge for the sake of knowledge, etc.

It’s another world.

No, Lee 263,

It doesn’t depend upon any such thing. No “new man” or “new woman” is required. Just the same old human beings we’ve always been, which is to say, extremely adaptive to changes in our environment.

We react to systems. When a new system comes online, totally replacing the previous one, we react to it. We change. We adapt.

Ever wonder why businesses and corporations spend so many billions of dollars on advertisements? Do they do it because they just like to make commercials? How do you think the total absence of wall to wall attempts to grab your dollars would impact people? Or the absence of those dollars?

How do you think universal healthcare for life, free education for life, free public transportation for life, green, safe, sustainable, organic food and the like would impact the populace?

This isn’t a reshuffling of the deckchairs on the Titanic. This is a whole new mode of transportation, heading in the other direction. Your critique assumes it’s the same.

all of that is neither to defend nor criticize Plume’s plan for the new social order, only to note that your arguments against it are really, really bad, in so far as they spend so much time stepping on each others’ toes and have such an obvious status quo bias.

SoU #265 — You will note that I never claimed that capitalism solves the knowledge problem. The problem of individual cognitive limits also makes consumer preferences in the market inadequate to solve problems of environmental degradation and social justice for workers, etc. My objection is specifically to the utopian proposal to get everybody in the polity to vote on reallocating resources for each and every innovation and and other creative changes. Much better to let private investors decide whether or not the risk may be worth it, let them produce the innovation and put it out on the market, and then let everybody else decide at that point whether they want to buy it or not. By comparison, running all creative personal ideas in front of a public voting system before you can do anything with them is preposterous.

What about this solution: freeze it, ban all the spontaneous innovations (except, perhaps, some specific socially approved attempts to resolve some specific issues), and adjust the standard of living to fit the current (and forever) technological level. No flying cars for you, fuhgeddaboudit. Learn to live within your means.

It’s not an obviously wrong idea, I must say.

Sorry for the formatting.

The correction:

My objection is specifically to the utopian proposal to get everybody in the polity to vote on reallocating resources for each and every innovation and and other creative changes. Much better to let private investors decide whether or not the risk may be worth it, let them produce the innovation and put it out on the market, and then let everybody else decide at that point whether they want to buy it or not. By comparison, running all creative personal ideas in front of a public voting system before you can do anything with them is preposterous.

What is preposterous is your suggestion that it’s as easy as all that in our current system. Inventors and innovators in our current system must jump through dozens of hoops before getting to production. And the issues don’t stop there. There are patent reviews, copyright issues, government approval reviews — for instance, FDA, for new drugs. There are legal formations for corporations, business permits, zoning permits, insurance issues and so on. Sometimes, even in our system, they must also fight through local protests, a la Walmart, when it seeks to open a new store. Or, coal companies when they seek to lop off mountain tops, etc. etc. Products are pulled from the shelves, after production, by the government, if they are found to be hazardous.

And you also make it sound like it’s easy to find investors and that everything happens in our current system instantaneously, rather than the slow, laborious process that occurs in reality. Even well-established tech firms take years to develop new products, and they have to go through endless internal reviews and checks as well.

You seem so determined to defend capitalism at any cost, you’re willing to overlook the complexity, the constant bottlenecks and slowdowns of our existing system, even within companies, not to mention with their local, state and federal interfacing.

And, this really baffles me: You continue to ignore my repeated mention that this new system is 100% publicly owned, for the public good. There is no private business or private entrepreneurship. This is a radical break from our privately owned, but mixed economy.

And further:

In my hypothetical, we’re proactive. We don’t wait for Bill Gates. We meet in town councils, discuss what we need for our town, and then commission those things. There is no onslaught to deal with, because we get there first. We debate, hash out, reach consensus on, the needs of the community, the need to fix existing structures or add new things, and then we commission the work. We do this via democratic process.

Again, we don’t wait — or have to wait — for some Bill Gates to get an idea in his garage. We meet in a metaphorical garage weekly — or, if that’s too much, monthly — and we brainstorm regarding community needs.

We won’t ever, ever be overwhelmed by some onslaught of new innovation, because we go there first. And because we’re the innovators, the inventors, the review board (all in one, one for all) and can assign funding as well, the process is streamlined and faster than it would be in a capitalist system like America’s. It’s actually faster.

Lee 275,

Do you see how my hypothetical could have an advantage over our current system, as described? Think about it.

Citizens meet weekly or monthly, discuss community needs, hash it all out, commission what needs to be done — proactively. They contain the innovators and inventors among them. They are a part of the hashing out process. They are both inventor and part of the review process. An equal part, with an equal say. Part of the review process and the funding decisions. All in one. No need to go through endless hoops after all of that, and citizens, as a matter of process, check for adherence with the Constitution plus regional* and federal goals and guidelines.

*My hypothetical gets rid of the states, opting instead for regions similar to those suggested below:

http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-there-are-11-americas-map-2013-11

http://colinwoodard.com/

Lee A. Arnold 277,

No. I don’t want to reform the process. I want to completely overturn the existing system and replace it, as described throughout this thread. Why do you think we should keep a system that you admit needs so much reform? That makes no sense, when other alternatives exist.

If you like, think about it in product terms. Why would you want to keep hacking away at incremental improvements of item X, with all of its attendant faults and contradictions, when you can just replace it with something far more beneficial, of much higher quality, in need of far, far less maintenance, and no “reforms”?

Why cling to a system with a direct, built-in opposition and enmity for “social justice,” believing you can somehow inject it into that system, bit by bit, when you can replace it with one that has “social justice” already built in?

The liberal project is this endless campaign to prop up and keep alive an unjust system, in hopes that liberals can eventually “get it right.” All the while the powers that be shut down or roll back the meager and rather lame “reforms” already (but o so temporarily) won by liberals. You are Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up the hill.

And you seem not to care that the very system you defend is the one blocking your attempts at reform. Its structure actually promotes this, requires this, and increases its own power and ability to block those reforms, through time, and cumulatively, etc.

In short, the system you defend owns the vehicle you require to make your reforms happen.

Lee A. Arnold 279,

You are assuming that we need growth and that growth is good. Both would be incorrect.

The earth won’t sustain continued growth. We’re already running up against its limits all over the world, and would have hit the wall a long time ago if not for our obscenely immoral levels of inequality.

As in, the richest 20% of the world consumes 85% of its resources. The World Wildlife Fund estimates we will need two entire earths to meet existing demands by 2030, if we’re still in this inequality paradigm. If we all consume like average Americans, however, we will need four entire earths.

Do you not see the problem?

Promoting capitalism means promoting economic apartheid, massive inequality and massive ecological damage. We need to dump capitalism, because it depends upon growth (Grow or Die) and the earth can’t sustain it. And we in the wealthy countries can’t really downsize as much as we need, because of the trap of capitalism. Downsizing would crash the economy and cause immense suffering and dislocation.

The answer is to get out of that trap, democratize the economy, go wall to wall commons and cut back to natural limits. We in the rich nations can then downsize radically without harm, and help the so-called “third world” up off the ground.

Plume: #280: “You are assuming that we need growth”

Most people on the planet think they need growth. Their mistake and yours is to think that growth always needs more and more input of materials and energy. But innovations, in machine and materials, might enable growth that uses less input. There is no hard and fast rule about this. The historical evidence is that we have not had a long enough period to try to do better after the widespread acknowledgement of environmental destruction in the 1970’s. 30-40 years might not be enough time to turn a spaceship with 7 billion around. We don’t really know anything at all, so it is foolish to foreclose options.

@283
sorry Lee, im gonna have to bow out. i followed the 1st paragraph, and i followed your youtube link, but was quickly lost after that. maybe it is on the definition of socialism that we differ? idk. i just don’t really understand the meaning of “We need to promote both capitalism and socialism” if we are speaking at the level of the macro-economy, because one of those is founded on private property and the profit motive and the other seeks to replace those with collective ownership of the means of production and democratic control of the allocation of the social surplus.
like, i get ‘mixed economy’ type arguments and if i had to guess i’d say that you are working in the David Soskice research programe here, which is one i much admire and all, but i don;t think any of this really gets beyond ‘varieties of capitalism’ and touches upon socialism.

Lee A. Arnold,

I think your definition of capitalism is far too vague, general and abstract. It rather conveniently makes it seem harmless and ignores its actual effects.

Basically, capitalism is the first economic system based almost entirely on the production of goods for future sale, without regard to locality or local need, with an emphasis on exchange value rather than use value. It’s the first to sell products for no other reason than to multiply capital for ownership.

It’s also the first system to sever itself from the land, from the local, from the community. With capitalism, the land, the local economy and the community become irrelevant. You can sell products anywhere, from a great distance, and impact is no longer a consideration, because ownership doesn’t live in the markets they control. It’s also the first to institutionalize wage labor, and got its start due to the primitive accumulation process aided by slavery, the expulsion of “the peasants” from the countryside (ending their ability to self-provide), the enclosure of the commons and so on.

This separation makes it so it matters not what the capitalist produces for sale. If a capitalist could sell shit on a stick and profit from it, they would. We know this given the long list of products which cause cancer, diabetes, obesity, destroy vast ecosystems, rain forests, etc. etc. And if you read the expose on Smithfield hams, you’d know we aren’t that far from the sale of shit on a stick.

It’s an obscene and immoral, despicable and unnatural system of widespread oppression and abuse. And you want to promote it, apparently.

Lee A. Arnold 287,

I’m not here to gain new adherents. Are you? I don’t see anyone agreeing with your take on things, either.

Especially your bizarre bit about monetizing the health care system or the EPA. That was definitely incoherent, and I don’t think you know what the word means.

G’night, all.

In my utopian future, we will all spontaneously evolve golden tendrils in our hair and gain the ability to read each others minds. Deception will become impossible, crimes will be trivial to solve, and exploitation will be seen for what it is and stopped before it starts.

Also, I’ll have a house on Mars, an underground lair in a hollowed mountain and an atomic penknife made from ten-point steel.

Not adherents for yourself, but for your utopia. You indicate this must be a radical break; no shoring up of the old system will do, it would be tainted by the poison of “capitalism”. Surely you have not engaged in this descriptive exercise to waste time. So how does it happen? Do you convince enough people, or do youu somehow gain power to impose the new system, and get rid of everyone who doesn’t agree?

So “expanding the realm of conversation” requires that we must accept your definition of “capitalism” and if I “do not see the problem” then I “apparently want to promote” an “obscene and immoral, despicable and unnatural system of widespread oppression and abuse”?

“Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets and wage labor. In a capitalist economy, the parties to a transaction typically determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.”

I suppose Wikipedia is a reasonable starting point – for slow learners. To move one from this you need to apply a bit of intellect.

If: “Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners “ then all of the so-called“Central characteristics of capitalism … capital accumulation, competitive markets and wage labor.” are subject to this “system” and serve its’ so-called goal which according to Wikipedia is “private owners … making profits”.

So why did Wikipedia fail to mention that making profits includes profit maximisation?

The Wikipedia text is a school-boy approach. How on earth does the fact that ” the parties to a transaction typically determine the prices at which assets, goods, and services are exchanged.” describe capitalism, when this happens within any market system – mercantile, market socialist, or even bartering.

Capitalists make bigger private profits when the parties to a transaction do not equally or fairly determine prices at which goods and services are exchanged.

This has always been known by anyone with an ounce of sense. Even Adam Smith noted that “But though in disputes with their workmen, masters must generally have the advantage” and “Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. ”

He also noted: ” the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest”.

So here is the real meaning of Adam Smith’s capitalism, private profits maximisation, unfair dealing with workers, and compounding profits. In fact everything that leads to a Global Financial Crisis.

Marx’s slightly different definition of capitalism was derived from Smith and others, but introduced a new concept “surplus value” which demonstrated more clearly how any why capitalism destroys its own society and leads to a final economic catastrophe once countervailing tendencies have been exhausted.

Those who peddle the Wikipedia definition are displaying their lack of knowledge and lack of respect for humanity.

No.

Chris Warren, surplus value can also come from both innovation and more efficient organization, so surplus value does not logically require exploitation of the workers. That comes from greed, and it happens a lot, but that doesn’t make it the moral structure of capitalism. Greed is a primary thing. It is not caused by something else, it takes advantage of that something else.

Plume, an historical development doesn’t always determine a logical conclusion (except maybe about history itself). Primitive accumulation is a horrible history (I read Perelman’s book the month after it went to paperback) but that does not determine the eternal moral structure of capitalism. Today, most people appear to think that individual creativity needs an investment strategy to allocate resources for the experiment as quickly as possible, and to reward the individual, if the individual wants it.

The problem of both of you is that you have defined “capitalism” as “plutocracy”, which the rest of us ALREADY KNOW has gone overboard. After thousands of words, you didn’t tell us one single thing we didn’t already know.

Chris Warren,

You are writing about the labor theory of value. But labor is not the only source of value.

Labor theory of value was implicit from Smith through Marx, though Marx started showing holes. Starting with Marshall, people have found several problems with it.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a non-greedy “capitalism” worthy of the name; I can’t see how you can take “greedy” off the properties of the capitalism-you-will-permit and not change its nature pretty significantly.

[real-world, of course, when we make changes, we change the thing a word points to rather than changing the word, because the latter way requires admitting that we were wrong…]

OK, let’s look at Marx’s argument for the LTV. First he distinguishes two kinds of value possessed by commodities: use-value, which is the value they gain from being useful for some purpose, but which is not directly comparable to other commodities that generally will be useful in different ways and for different reasons, and exchange-value, which is the value that is expressed when commodities are exchanged for one another or for money. These are two entirely different things: exchange value is not a function of use value, but of something else. He then argues that exchange value is exclusively the product of labor – the labor that went into the finished product, plus what went into the tools, extracting the raw materials, etc, and that the value this labor produces is a function of the time expended doing it (well, he says that the production of skilled labor is always some definite multiple of that of unskilled, so he can treat it all as unskilled for simplicity). He recognizes that this actual quantity can vary for identical commodities, so he doesn’t hold that a specific commodity is valued according to the specific labor time that went into it, but instead that all are valued according to the average – the average labor time socially necessary to produce such a commodity.

Then there is the question of what if labor is used to produce something that is not socially useful. Marx’s answer: that doesn’t count! Labor whose product is not useful does not count as labor. But if labor’s nature as labor and as a value-creating agent are contingent upon the product being useful, then the product’s exchange value is contingent on its being useful, and we are back to exchange-value being a function of use-value. Further if labor can either create value or not based on nothing to do with the nature of the labor, but rather with the nature of its product (whose usefulness may exist at the time of production but not later. It may become obsolete, in which case the labor that produced it gets converted to non-labor retroactively. I bet the workers would love that), then labor is not putting value into that product, at least not independently of other factors.

And of course Marx has absurdly oversimplified by treating utility as a binary proposition – the products of labor either are useful or they are not. However, usefulness is obviously a continuum. There are degrees of usefulness. However, if we recognize this, then the status of labor as labor and as value-creating agent is continuously modified according to the usefulness of the product. This is actually just icing to my argument – the argument stands even if usefulness is binary – but it becomes important when we trace the implications. However, I don’t know if this thread is going to be kept open, and I don’t know how much time I’ll have later, so I leave that aside for now.