Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by pErvinalia » Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:44 am

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Jan 17, 2022 8:17 am

... Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dockworkers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science-fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs, or legal consultants to similarly vanish.1 (Many suspect it might improve markedly.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralyzing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyze London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It’s even clearer in the United States, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against schoolteachers and autoworkers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry executives who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It’s as if they are being told “But you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that, you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?”

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how he or she could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorized stratum of the universally reviled unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc.)—and particularly its financial avatars—but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. ...

-- David Graeber, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, 2013
https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Hermit » Mon Jan 17, 2022 8:36 am

The Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B was a way of removing the basically useless citizens from the planet of Golgafrincham. A variety of stories were formed about the doom of the planet, such as blowing up, crashing into the sun or being eaten by a mutant star goat. The ship was filled with all the middlemen of Golgafrincham, such as the telephone sanitisers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, and management consultants.

Ark Fleet ships A and C were supposed to carry the people who ruled, thought, or actually did useful work.

The ship was programmed to crash onto its designated planet, Earth. The captain remembers that he was told a good reason for this, but had forgotten it, although the reason was later revealed to be because the Ark Ship B Golgafrinchans were a 'bunch of useless idiots'.

A notation in the Guide about Golgafrincham after the departure of the B Ark states that the entire remaining population subsequently died from a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Tero » Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:34 am

You forgot they were all hairdressers and telephone sanitizers and such that were on the ship of idiots.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Hermit » Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:38 am

Tero wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 11:34 am
You forgot they were all hairdressers and telephone sanitizers and such that were on the ship of idiots.
No.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Tero » Mon Jan 17, 2022 12:00 pm

ah...ok. it was longer than a tweet, got lost
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by macdoc » Thu Jan 20, 2022 6:59 am

So does this open predation under the legal system condemn the entire legal system of Alabama ...or legal systems of all kinds because of a seriously rotten barrel of apples.

https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police- ... ource=digg

That's what too many of you would have us believe about capitalism.

Humans behaving badly toward their fellows is not confined to any ism. It's a choice individuals or groups make and is at its most invidious when enabled by the state as this is.

Religions, unions, the military, the boy scouts. realtors.....all can choose to be predatory ....
so too can a capitalist choose to be predatory or not.

Governments tasked with curbing predation can choose to look the other way and do too often enabling excesses that enrich one group over another in a manner deemed "unfair"....allowing something like a drug company to prey on diabetics by bringing in 600% increases in insulin....a drug whose discovery was freely give to humanity by its discoverers.
When inventor Frederick Banting discovered insulin in 1923, he refused to put his name on the patent. He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives. Banting’s co-inventors, James Collip and Charles Best, sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1. They wanted everyone who needed their medication to be able to afford it.
They made a choice within a capitalist sytem.

If we want to curb excesses from any ism it is up to individuals to elect govs that will and to speak out against those predatory practices.

There is nothing wrong with competition and capitalism that is inherent.....rather look to the decision makers to curb behaviour that is damaging to the public weal.
Boards are supposed to do that in public companies like Exxon and in fact a shareholder revolt sponsored by the Rockefeller family succeeded in doing so and altered the AGW denial industry Exxon was funding...forcing change.

Whisteblowers have served an important role for exposing predatory behavior- be it unions, scientology, or Enron.

When those in charge of decisions...from the Pope to Elon Musk to Sun Myung Moon fail to act in an ethical manner, then it falls to the government to curb the damaging behaviour and choices.
When gov abets those behaviors ...Big Sugar, Big Tobacco, The Roman Catholics to name a few predators amongst too many.....sad time for humanity
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by pErvinalia » Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:27 am

I see a lot of 'government should do this', 'boards should do that' in that. Guess what? They don't. Why? The profit motive. Competition for money drives exploitative behaviour. That's capitalism to a C.
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by macdoc » Thu Jan 20, 2022 7:53 am

Well some do...many do, I do, choosing to act ethically and fairly which completely negates any "oh blame it on capitalism" ....easy scape goat.
Several Nordic nations have a good mix of ethical capitalists and social organizations and they rank high on the human development scale.

...and YOUR cure all for for your new society is??
C'mn lay it out in detail your "better system" :pop:
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by pErvinalia » Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:00 am

I don't know. But the topic was started as a campaign in favour of capitalism. Capitalism has failed us. The Nordic approach is definitely the best approach when it comes to capitalism, but even the Nordic countries are moving economically right (like the rest of us). It's inevitable when short term profit is involved. Capitalism is just a giant race to the bottom. If I was forced to implement a system it would probably be a technocracy. Where I'm the head technocrat.. :biggrin:
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:34 am

Meh. Seems to me the financial exploitation of individuals in Alabama by the paramilitary arm of the state epitomises modern Capitalism in action. The idea that Capitalism would somehow be morally neutral, benign, or generally desirable if not for a few bad apples implies that there's some ideal, balanced or natural resting state for Capitalism - a condition which is only diverted by individuals taking the piss. This is bunkum because Capitalism isn't a single entity, or a natural resource, a tool which humans use to help them do something better - something which they would otherwise do anyway, just less effectively or efficiently. Capitalism comprises encompassing systems of social, economic, and power relations, systems specifically designed and operated by humans to comodify and control as many aspects of social and individual endeavour as possible. The Alabama police have comodified something that people were doing and needed to do anyway, driving down the road, and they can only do this because they have the power, which is to say they have the social and economic Capital (in this case backed by the moral authority of the state) to do so.



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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Hermit » Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:38 am

macdoc wrote:
Thu Jan 20, 2022 6:59 am
So does this open predation under the legal system condemn the entire legal system of Alabama ...or legal systems of all kinds because of a seriously rotten barrel of apples.

https://www.al.com/news/2022/01/police- ... ource=digg

That's what too many of you would have us believe about capitalism.

Humans behaving badly toward their fellows is not confined to any ism. It's a choice individuals or groups make and is at its most invidious when enabled by the state as this is.

Religions, unions, the military, the boy scouts. realtors.....all can choose to be predatory ....
so too can a capitalist choose to be predatory or not.

Governments tasked with curbing predation can choose to look the other way and do too often enabling excesses that enrich one group over another in a manner deemed "unfair"....allowing something like a drug company to prey on diabetics by bringing in 600% increases in insulin....a drug whose discovery was freely give to humanity by its discoverers.
When inventor Frederick Banting discovered insulin in 1923, he refused to put his name on the patent. He felt it was unethical for a doctor to profit from a discovery that would save lives. Banting’s co-inventors, James Collip and Charles Best, sold the insulin patent to the University of Toronto for a mere $1. They wanted everyone who needed their medication to be able to afford it.
They made a choice within a capitalist sytem.

If we want to curb excesses from any ism it is up to individuals to elect govs that will and to speak out against those predatory practices.

There is nothing wrong with competition and capitalism that is inherent.....rather look to the decision makers to curb behaviour that is damaging to the public weal.
Boards are supposed to do that in public companies like Exxon and in fact a shareholder revolt sponsored by the Rockefeller family succeeded in doing so and altered the AGW denial industry Exxon was funding...forcing change.

Whisteblowers have served an important role for exposing predatory behavior- be it unions, scientology, or Enron.

When those in charge of decisions...from the Pope to Elon Musk to Sun Myung Moon fail to act in an ethical manner, then it falls to the government to curb the damaging behaviour and choices.
When gov abets those behaviors ...Big Sugar, Big Tobacco, The Roman Catholics to name a few predators amongst too many.....sad time for humanity
:coffee:
Having another tilt at defending capitalism in general? OK. I may as well copypaste a post from Ratskep. It focuses on the issue of the extent to which individuals can make choices when facing the prime objective of capitalism - profit.
Hermit wrote:
Macdoc wrote:
Spearthrower wrote:plain old capitalism is manifestly awful for the environment
not sure what your point could possibly be
....that companies and indviduals make choices that impact the environment negatively has nothing to do with capitalism.
The choice being made, to maximise profits, has everything to do with capitalism. If that is at the expense of the environment, the welfare of the workforce, the safety of the public or whatever else, so be it.

Sure, theoretically there is a choice between maximising profits regardless of any harmful consequences and making do with a smaller margin in order to avoid causing harm, but in practice the default is to "choose" the former, at least as far as medium and large businesses are concerned. The pressure by shareholders, partners and the stakeholders to maximise return on investments is irresistible. If the returns are deemed not enough - and too often not even too much is enough - the chairman, board of directors, CEO, CFO and/or COO get sacked. Unsurprisingly, all of them want to avoid losing their six to eight-digit annual salaries and bonuses, so they cave in to the shareholders' demands. The shareholders typically don't give a flying fuck about environmental and other repercussions. Those are things that happen somewhere far away in place and time. Why would they care if the Amazon or Tasmania get denuded? They don't live there. It doesn't affect them. This is why disasters great and small keep happening. Focusing on the bottom line alone allowed the tobacco industry to falsely claim that smoking is harmless even though they knew bloody well that it is not. This is why the fossil fuel industry lies its arse off, denying anthropomorphic climate change even though their own scientists knew it was real more than four decades ago. This is why thousands of workers die or are permanently damaged every year in the course of doing their job. All of it is just collateral damage caused by maximising profit. Yes, all of it.

The pressure does not only affect top management. Top management regularly arranges meetings with middle managers to review their performance, which is measured the same way everywhere: How much profit did they generate? And on it goes to lower management, supervisors, office managers and so on, who in turn pull up lowly workers for not producing enough widgets, picking enough orders et cetera. The pressure to cut corners, ignore safety procedures and generally take no heed of what adverse consequences might result is pervasive and almost impossible to resist.

The central principle of capitalism is profit. There is no way of denying it. Laissez faire or free enterprise capitalism of the sort Milton Friedman and the entire Chicago School of Economics (among others) advocate means no regulations. No regulations to counteract the pernicious effects of the economic free-for-all. Laissez faire capitalism is evil.
Solutions to problems caused by the profit motive do not lie in choices made by individuals. They lie with government interventions leading to a hybrid economic system combining capitalism and socialism.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by pErvinalia » Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:14 am

. Image
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by JimC » Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:29 am

Shit, that was me 30 years ago... :{D
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Re: Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

Post by Svartalf » Mon Feb 14, 2022 11:25 am

So, are you enjoying unlife? and how come Tilly doesn't scream in fright when she sees you?
Embrace the Darkness, it needs a hug

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