Is Capitalism Dead or Merely Dying?
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Alfred Wertheimer Elvis 1956 New Zealand’s new prime minister Jacinda Ardern calls capitalism a blatant failure. Former Greek finance minister
[See the full post at: Is Capitalism Dead or Merely Dying?]C-section makes it possible for women to bear children with heads too large to fit through their birth canals. It’s artificial childbirth, not natural childbirth. Everybody cheers that mankind has slapped the face of Darwin, so to speak, and made viable the most helpless and imperiled. Never mind that the longer this “system” continues, the greater the number of people will be carrying genes for big-headed babies. Or, if you prefer, the greater the number of women with too-narrow birth canals.
Quoting from the essay, “Unless we would agree that Darwin-on-Steroids is a good idea. We don’t and won’t, because it would mean Stephen Foster’s “frail forms fainting at the door” all over the place. A market ideology that causes widespread misery has no future.”
You can have a continuous, unbroken trickle of “frail forms fainting at the door” or you can circumvent and postpone that trickle, but postponement only means that someday there will be a flood. We’re still debating how to prevent the trickle while ignoring the imminent flood.
Quoting Milton Friedman, ““There are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals—the technique of the market place.”
Varoufakis says the market place has failed. Sounds like a pitch for the alternative. Except that we’ve been practicing the alternative all along, a fact he seems not to realize.
There is a multiple major flaws in the writer’s arguments.
Yes money has been concentrated and not getting distributed. THe real reason for this is not capitalism. “True capitalism is the best possible system.”
The system we have now is a) Crony capitalism b) Fed creating money and market intervention, Central banks buying stocks and bonds (Fed, ECB, BOJ, Swiss central bank, BOE and ECB mainly, PBOC , Canada bank and Australiamn banks also participate), PPT intervention c) Margin DEBT based pumping of stocks and bonds (treasury, corporate, mortgage and other asset based bonds (secured as well as unsecured) d) No Glass-steagall LAW to separate banks (investments banks from retail banks)
SOLUTION To solve this problem:
(0) Prevent banks from creating money from “THIN AIR”
(1) Reinstate Glass steagall
(2) substantially increase transaction costs on all kinds of trades done by anyone ( banks, hedge funds, private equity, sovereign wealth funds , individuals etc etc )
(3) remove margin based trading
(4) ban derivatives
(5) ban obamacare
(6) remove ALL market indexes, index funds, market ETFs etc etc
(7) FREE market should have only stocks of companies, nothing else
(8) remove most unnecessary insurance companies ( insurance is a huge PONZI anyways)
(9) Ban shorts and LONGs who are playing/gambling in the markets
(10) remove welfare schemes ( like minimum wages, medicare, medicaid, Soc Sec supplemental, Soc security and all welfare schemes and replace them with a single lumpsum (not tied to any indexes to people under a particular net worth (not income) level)DON’T blame capitalism ….
CAPITALISM is the only system that truly works. but what we have now for the past 100 years is NOT CAPITALISM after creation of the federal reserve….
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Let’s start by being fair to those who need it most. For instance, to all those people scavenging garbage dumps in India. Now, a fair system would ensure an iPhone for each of them. Along with health insurance and an education. And a basic income, decent shelter and the right to vote.
If the people in the U.S. had any empathy, we’d at least be sending all our garbage to India. Or generating it there the way we do in the Middle East and northern Africa.
EREOI is falling. All grand plans for “new systems” are Towers of Babel. How an atheist like me finds himself at the very point in history when Armageddon is about to occur remains a bit of a fascination. I feel like I’ve won a lottery of some sort with infinitely lower odds.
Darwin’s coming, nobody can stop him, and he’s not very happy.
A “new system” to be presided over by “leaders” who demolish 110-story skyscrapers into tiny piles of rubble, burn down California neighborhoods with directed energy weapons, and who poison us with chemtrails, vaccines, pesticides, GMO’s, fluoride and toxic pharmaceuticals. Governed by people intent on indoctrinating our children in prison settings. People who murder civilians in foreign countries with reckless abandon. Who subject us to back-scatter x-rays, random blood draws, and body cavity searches before confiscating our wealth under the banner of “civil asset forfeiture.” When they aren’t confiscating, they’re extorting, fining and taxing. And imprisoning.
Yes, our beloved “leaders.” Faithfully representing somebody’s needs and desires. Aren’t they just great? Let’s have a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. They serve us selflessly, tirelessly, and (REDACTED).
They’re crony criminals, bribers, blackmailers, liars, rapists, child traffickers, illegal organ harvesters and active pedophiles. These people practice torture, defend torture, relish in torture and drink blood from severely tortured infants.
Why do we tolerate people like this? Isn’t that a form of suicide? We’ll later claim it was genocide, but in reality, we committed suicide. Amazingly, people devote time, energy and wealth to these monsters, HOPING to put them in charge.
How can I be proud of my country when I’m so deeply ashamed of my species?
During the presidential campaign of 1928, a circular published by the Republican Party claimed that if Herbert Hoover won, there would be “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Well, it’s 1928 all over again, and I think the Republican Trump shouldn’t be too chicken to give us pot, and sex robot car mechanics in every garage. Just add pot and robots to the growing list of entitlements, and presto!
Capitalism isn’t the problem, numbskulls.
Re: CAPITALISM is the only system that truly works.
Re: SOLUTION To solve this problem1) There’s no such thing as capitalism or socialism. There’s only the smart-n-savvy people manipulating the less smart-n-savvy people resulting in the smart-n-savvy people winning.
2) When you put the word “true” in front of an ISM or philosophy it becomes a religion (eg There hasn’t been TRUE [communism, socialism, anarchism, pick-your-ism] because [fill in country that tried it] [fill in why it wasn’t TRUE].)
3) To implement your 10 points requires a government strong enough to deal with (confront) the smart-n-savvy people; which means after doing so you don’t have TRUE capitalism either (and the smart-n-savvy people always run the government anyway, so why would they take-on the smart-n-savvy people; it’s the same crowd).
Sorry, the only truth is that the smartest-n-savviest people always win (regardless of the worthless “ISM” name used). They capture the government, form monopolies, and create BS for the dumb-n-clueless about how great things are.
@ john
I like your point # 1
I would add that secrecy/knowledge would be needed to take advantage of other people.
The web is an equalizer.For any Country to be run successfully there needs to be a combination of capitalism, communism and socialism.. When anyone of those isms becomes paramount then the country starts to fail. Certainly in my country, New Zealand, since around 1984 capitalism has become paramount and that has caused a deterioration in the standard of living. Certainly some people have benefited but not the majority. Hopefully the new Government will start to rctify it but it will take a long time. So much damage has been done.
Nassim, what we have experienced, in the name of neo liberalism over the last forty years is definitely a form of capatilism that we never had expetienced before.
Capitalism=trees
Exchange belief=forestThe game won’t end on its own, merely reset. It can only be ended by a critical mass of people who understand that it is more trouble than it’s worth.
Over time the system has become as far away from Capitalism as is possible to be. They claim the failure of Capitalism, then proceed in their own words an examples to highlight a hundred trillion, possibly a quadrillion of market interventions worldwide, naming central banks, bond control, stock buybacks, etc. What did I just read on $400k tax incentives per employee to attract Amazon’s new HQ? And Pa’s Diner in Muncie is going to get a $400k incentive for each busboy? No? That’s not Capitalism.
Practically speaking, if you make employees expensive, like France or using Obamacare, and you make capital equipment free with 0% money then you guarantee, you force, on pain of instant bankruptcy, you demand, coerce, and enforce mass unemployment and the replacement of man with robots. It took $100T bailout and $10s of Trillions a year in interest rate suppression to insure that happens. Does that sound like it’s happening naturally? Does that sound like a free market? 90% of the NYSE is below the 200dma. But you’re going to “wealth distribute” from the 10 remaining companies — most of which like Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, have never made a single day’s profit — back to the people Tesla just destroyed with robots and autonomous cars? And since those 10 companies and their brethren SET the policy, TOOK the $100 Trillion in subsidies, and DEVASTATED their entire host populations, they’re going to say, “Oh sure pal, take all the profits I don’t have and never made, and set up a UBI. It’s the least I can do.” No, Tesla, Amazon, Excellus, they take UBI FROM the people at the point of a gun. That’s how and why they exist at all. If government didn’t steal for them, they’d collapse. Mussolini had a name for this system.
Newsflash: Unemployment, Welfare, the Dole, was never about helping the poor. If they ever wanted to help the poor, they’d just stop stealing from them. Illegally. With bribery, fraud, extortion and graft. ”Welfare” is about protecting the Rich Protecting them from having the poor come over to their neighborhood and burn their house down. It’s a payoff, hush money, a racket. Let me say again, They do not care at all, in any way, in the slightest about the poor, their life or death or suffering. The sale of their men into desperation, opiates, suicide, violence, into the Army, and the sale of their women into rape, pedophilia or prostitution is an active side benefit to be actively encouraged. Think I’m kidding? Visit Greece, Chicago, Akron, or Manchester. That’s why you want a UBI: you’ll really have them by the balls then because anyone who ISN’T on the dole will be instantly be priced out and die in a box, just like happened to honest farmers when farm subsidies started. So let’s not have a sanctimonious discussion about “helping” anyone, Varoufakis. If they cared they wouldn’t murder Greeks, much less Syrians. You of all people know power structures help no one but themselves. Ever. In history. That’s why you want them as small as possible, not ever-larger. OUT of the market, not in it. It’s been 100 years, can we stop doing the same wrong thing now? Just ’cause it has backfired and increased wealth disparity 100 times in a row?
PM of NZ is a gold-framed example to all: after decades of standard Democratic Socialism lite which has all the interventions above, after those 50 years of tax subsidies, 0% rates, and market rigging have driven housing prices in AU and NZ to the highest on earth, locking out a generation and holding them as indentured servants, holding both nations hostage to some form of financial terrorism, she finds the PROBLEM to be the market and the ANSWER to be more government, more intervention, more market rigging. Miss, we have 0% interest rates worldwide and purchases exceeding $100B a month for 10 years, and that is the free market? More than 100% of stock prices are from spiraling debt from rigged 0% rates. Draghi and Abe have bought up their ENTIRE markets. Is that somehow inadequate to you? Requiring more control, MORE intervention? I’m sorry, what “Capitalism” was it you were talking about? Because with no price for money, no possible failure, and government choosing E.V.E.R.Y winner and loser from Beijing to Berlin, we don’t have that. But she has to say it, because the alternative is to say, “We screwed up. You don’t need me, you don’t need government. Honestly, we sociopathic screw-ups need LESS power, to do LESS for you, and do more for yourselves, like honest men and neighbors.”
And your solution? We’re going to “Redistribute wealth?” MNC’s already don’t pay any taxes, ‘hon. Billionaires already pay practically zero taxes. If anything, the taxpayers pay THEM, in bailouts, in monopolies, in S&P futures levitation, in 0% rates that advantage only the 0.001%, probably less than 100,000 total people. So I don’t think raising a 30% tax rate they don’t pay, to a 90% tax rate they don’t pay, will make any difference. They didn’t pay it in 1965 either, that’s why the Beatles moved to the U.S. and why the French have left Paris now. But I’m sure since as they admit, the rich own the government, they’ll be sure to tax themselves good and hard this time and make themselves not rich any more. Breathtaking.
Boghosian is nearly so. He ran numbers from 1989? Gee, why not since Thursday last? That data set is probably just an artifact of one era’s fashion, one flow of tax policy, of one or two Administrations. In short, it means bupkis. You’d have to run at least 2 Kondratieff waves of 72 years to know anything this big. All it means is, yes, when rich people are allowed to bribe and murder at will, — with entire armies killing a million civilians each by invading 15 countries if they so choose – can print money freely, run competitors out by law, shift 3-5% of total GDP to themselves each year, they can indeed collect a lot of money. And you think tax policy, redistribution will fix this? Are you for real? And this is because, like apparently everybody else, he actually believes we live within 1,000 miles of a Capitalist system, anywhere on earth, east or west. Bruce, neither trickle down or trickle up is going to work if the oligarchs own the government and can bribe, collude, arraign, and murder at will. But he’s set to give the bribers and murderers ever more power to “fix things” by redistributing wealth away from themselves. Sure pal. Just this time.
Leads to the next conclusion: The society is not the government. They are not the same thing. Society will decide what governments, what oligarchs are permitted to do, what their incentives are. Right now, like Boghasian and Ardern, society is working tirelessly to give the violent, oppressive, extractive force more violence and more force and wonder why there is yet more extraction. They, with society, are applauding every underhanded, illegal, immoral payoff and act of violence, and lying, cheating and stealing to give the liars, cheaters, and stealers more power. Until that changes, it won’t matter what you do.
But please for the love of things holy, let’s not call this “Capitalism”, shall we?
It doesn’t matter what ism with which we waste our time playing silly word games.
Our single most pressing problem is to greatly reduce the population of humans on Earth by moral and proactive means. Why do we keep ignoring this “elephant on the sofa” until the only means available is by acutely increasing the death rate?Jacinda Ardern is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing ??? ” She is just a paid agent of london city…???
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/10/17/kiwi2_0.png
Whatever, she should decide does she want to be a fashion model or labor leader ?? LOL …. She can’t be both …
Establishment trickster !!!!
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