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"Although today high levels of inequality in the United States remain a pressing concern for a large swath of the population, monetary policy and credit expansion are rarely mentioned as a likely source of rising wealth and income inequality. [...]
The rise in income inequality over the past 30 years has to a significant extent been the product of monetary policies fueling a series of asset price bubbles. Whenever the market booms, the share of income going to those at the very top increases.[...]
[F]inancial institutions benefit disproportionately from money creation, since they can purchase more goods, services, and assets for still relatively low prices. This conclusion is backed by numerous empirical illustrations. For instance, the financial sector contributed massively to the growth of billionaire's wealth"
Source: https://mises.org/library/how-central-banking-increased-inequality
I'll leave my comments as comments, but note that The Mises Institute is proudly, one might say almost by definition, Austrian School. Both the Institute and the School have had their fair share of criticism. Which of course doesn't mean that individual author is wrong on this particular matter. -- Ed.(FP)
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @01:50PM (43 children)
Where are you? Please enlighten us as to why the rich getting disproportionately richer benefits us all, stops all wars, feeds the starving and cures AIDS and cancer. We're all ears.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @04:51PM
Help me Obi Wan Khallow. You're my only hope!
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @05:07PM (38 children)
It doesn't benefit you. Neither does it harm you. What goes on in a billionaire's life by in large has zero bearing on your own.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:33PM (5 children)
Not with money = political speech. Those damn billionaires are subverting democracy and buy laws to favor themselves.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:23PM (4 children)
Take a page out of gewg_'s book then and start your own socialist "buy a politician" fund. The politicians don't care where the money that lines their pockets comes from.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DECbot on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:47PM
Then they are doing it wrong. They should at least vet if the money is a one-time contribution or if it is reoccurring. Likewise, they should determine the possibility of how the news media and the courts would approve of their acceptance of the funds. Taking cash from terrorists==fine as long as you didn't accept the cash in a combat zone while firing on US troops (which may not necessary be bad...); taking candy from babies or white nationalist==career ending.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Insightful) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:03PM (2 children)
So we're supposed to fix the problems caused by wealth accumulating in one part of society by *outspending* the people who have accumulated all of that wealth? You don't see a bit of a problem with that logic...?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:12PM (1 child)
No, I see no problem in that statement. If it's worth enough to you to keep something from happening, pool your money with like-minded people and keep it from happening. Billionaires aren't any more capable of going all-in on every single issue than you are. Not if they want to stay rich.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:10PM
Do you have any idea how skewed the distribution of wealth is in this country? 90% of the nation's wealth is held by people earning more than $260k/year. If the rest of us perfectly coordinate and pool our resources, they can still outspend us 9 to 1. And that's before you consider that I have to spend around 2/3 of my income on food and housing, and they don't.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:33PM (8 children)
In that case, how do you explain the fact that despite productivity increasing substantially, all classes except the ultra rich have either remained stagnant or become poorer? Where is the golden age that libertarian economists have promised us?
It's really simple when you look at the numbers Buz. All of this unaccounted wealth is going somewhere, and it's really hard to ignore the elephant in the room and conspicuous absence of sensible alternative hypothesis to explain what we are observing.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:25PM (7 children)
It's funny that the same people arguing against automation will also argue that the productivity increases had to have come from the workers. Clue: the workers are the same workers they've always been. If you see a productivity increase, it came from someplace else.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @11:40PM (2 children)
It came from technology helping humans be more efficient along with simple business practices like the assembly line or specialized jobs that allow humans to become more efficient at a narrower set of responsibilities. Regardless, there is nothing in your rationale that makes it OK to screw over the workers. You can deny it all you want, but the rest of humanity sees what you are too ignorant / willfully stupid to get.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:13PM (1 child)
And how do you figure they were screwed? Did they pay for the automation that assisted their productivity or are they the same warm bodies they've always been?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by lentilla on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:47PM
Well; in a way; yes to both.
It was the workers that did the; well; work. Yes, they got paid, but when there is sufficient wealth it really does need to be shared with those around you. Perhaps if you visit me you might only get beans, rice and water for dinner because that's all I had in the larder. If one visits a wealthy friend, dinner might be veal, oysters and champagne. I would consider it wrong for the wealthy friend to feed the poor friend only beans and rice - particularly if when we ate together his plate was graced by veal and oysters, and champagne in his cup alone.
I can't argue that there won't always be some level of disparity between people - that appears to be human nature. There does come a point however, where someone has enough to share with the people around him. A moral imperative, if you will. I'm not suggesting you give your only car to a poor man but at the point that you have so much wealth that it starts increasing by itself, you are obligated to share some part of it.
This kind of obligation is not an artefact of the modern age - humans were considering these needs well over two and an half thousand years ago - allow me to quote from Leviticus 19:9:
Now I don't do much reaping of fields or gathering from vineyards personally but I do see the clear applicability of this to modern life.
- = -
Now, on to your second question: "are [not the workers simply] the same warm bodies they've always been?" Well, yes, they are.
(Well; actually; a modern worker is likely to be far more educated than his pre-Industrial era forefather, so in a way an average worker of today is likely to be quite a good bit more than a warm body and muscles. Anyway, I won't explore that further.)
Anonymous Coward says in the grandparent to this post: "It came from technology helping humans be more efficient along with [other various improvements]". I think our Anonymous friend is absolutely spot on the mark. We - humanity that is - have collectively improved over time. "Collectively" is the important part. It wasn't one person who did all the improving, it was millions of humans, most long dead, that contributed to this common wealth. Now the people with the money might have put up some needed capital - and I hope they were richly rewarded for doing so. Don't forget though, that the conditions of the time allowed both; (a) the smart man to come up with an innovation, just as much as; (b) the wealthy man to get (or stay) wealthy. So I really think excess "wealth" - "common wealth" as I said above - does need to be shared.
So are modern workers the same as their ancient counterparts? Well, even if you were to take the affirmative position, I would still say we have an obligation to share the bounty with those around us because this common wealth was earned not by one man alone but by "team humanity" working solidly throughout the ages.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday August 23 2017, @04:12AM (3 children)
So perhaps you would like to live of the same income that agrarian peasants had (adjusted for inflation)?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:14PM (2 children)
I create wealth, thank you very much. Do the same and you can be other than poor as well.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:10PM (1 child)
I am far from poor, thank you very much.
But that's not the issue. You seem to think that billionaires need to be protected. Perhaps you think that one day, you might be a billionaire?
Let's be clear here. You are never going to be a billionaire. You vote and argue against your own interests.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DECbot on Wednesday August 23 2017, @09:35PM
If we're being clear, let's be clear. The billionaire will spend tens of thousands of dollars each year to protect his wealth from the government and will thus be unaffected from any wealth distribution scheme. However, the "fortunate" in the $40,000 to $120,000 income bracket will not have more than a few hundred dollars a year to protect themselves and will likely pay more in taxes than the billionaire.
Your right, nations do not better themselves by enriching the wealthiest of their population. Likewise, they cannot embetter themselves by imposing heavy taxes on the serfs. What we've seen work historically is light taxes on the serfs and heavy penalties on the billionaires for not keeping the serfs gainfully employed.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Insightful) by linkdude64 on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:35PM (8 children)
I would disagree. Eric Schmidt being a part of the Bilderberg group and bedding with the Democratic party, steering his company toward becoming a surveillance monster rather than an advocate of internet freedom is having quite the bearing on our lives in this moment, though we may not notice it, and it will continue to have grave consequences in the future as soon-to-be CEOs brought in and indoctrinated with the Alphabet mindset without experiencing and working with the alternative steer the company further in one direction.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:27PM (7 children)
Fair argument but not really what I was speaking about. I simply meant that someone else having more money than you does not change your standard of living one iota in and of itself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @08:37PM (1 child)
But if enough people have more money than you then your standard of living can change as prices rise since there are now more people able to pay more.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:15PM
True but this is far, far from the case. The 1% are, by definition, 1%.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:03AM (1 child)
Small minded fool, I really am shocked at how one dimensional your thought processes are. Its been 50 years of it and the effects are very clear. Billions for a few individuals means a massive percentage of society can barely get by. While modern economies are much more complex, the pie metaphor works quite well here. The lies about "job creators" has been outed, I'm intrigued at how you'll defend your proposition.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:16PM
You haven't presented a reasoned argument against it, so I've no reason to. See how that works?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:28AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @08:41AM (1 child)
Wrong. Someone else having more money means that person being able to spend more money, which means increased demand and thus rising prices, and thus reduction of the spending power of your money.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:20PM
Except for being utterly wrong, you would be correct. Tell me, how much have prices gone up on your daily staples since the 90s? How about luxury items? Have televisions gone up or down in price for a monster flat panel? Housing? Cars? Yeah... sling your bullshit elsewhere.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:35PM (2 children)
I've seen you make some lame statements before, but wow being this out of touch with reality is something else.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:27PM (1 child)
Troll harder. That was some weak, weak shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:40AM
It matched your original statement, blame yourself.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:43PM (2 children)
>"What goes on in a billionaire's life by in [sic] large has zero bearing on your own."
This is not true. Billionaires affect me in many ways. They can buy up property, goods and services, making them either more expensive or unavailable to me. Their concentration of wealth changes the way I can earn money. On the average, the rest of us have to cater to the rich in order to earn back some money for ourselves. These effects are not wrong per se, but it are not to be dismissed lightly.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:29PM (1 child)
How, precisely? It hasn't changed the ways I can earn money.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Wednesday August 23 2017, @02:43PM
Of course it has changed the way you can make money! (Although perhaps not you, specifically.)
A few years ago, I took a favourite pair of sandals to the local bootmaker and asked him to put a new pair of soles on them. Upon my return I admired his work and said "how much?" "Ninety dollars.", said the bootmaker. I really thought I had misheard him. I gave him his money and walked away feeling very sad - and I had just paid more to have the shoes re-soled than the original purchase price.
The reason that I was sad was the realisation that the local bootmakers' days are numbered. Here's a man who is really good at fixing shoes. His conversation is limited, he's probably not the smartest or most adaptable on the planet, but he happens to good at fixing shoes. Nobody goes into the shoe repair business expecting to get rich. Unfortunately, he's got to eat, and he's got to pay rent - and I'd be entirely unsurprised if the rent on his tiny little alcove in the village shopping centre surpassed $1000 per week. Hence the extreme cost of a simple repair. As I said, this happened several years ago, and I haven't been back. I doubt I'm alone in this - increase the price of repairs to the point where people avoid coming to your shop - the consequence is you can't afford to run the shop and you go out of business.
For most of human history, if you were passably good at (say) a trade, you hung up your shingle in the village and people would come to do business with you. Now, things are different. A lone bootmaker just can't compete, it's unlikely that he has the business acumen to "go online", and he's probably not good at much else than fixing shoes.
So we won't have a local bootmaker for long. Bootmaking is a needed function in the village and now we will be deprived of that.
There are a lot of folk like my local bootmaker - honest, simple and unassuming - but they hold their head up high in society (and rightfully so) because they contribute something useful and their needs are met. I fear we are growing a class of people that can't find a place for themselves in society, and also mourn the loss of their contributions.
(Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:26AM (1 child)
Wealth is power. Wealth is political voice. Huge wealth is easily translated into political power. As you point out there are many different political stripes that are wealthy.
But in balance there are more selfish people then people who want what is best for the major majority. If they have a political axe to grind they can employ people full time to see that that axe is ground.
But the biggest problem with wealth is that it is accumulating at an accelerating rate. That is, approximately for each magnitude of wealth, you can get an additional .5% income from said wealth. How? if you have 100K$ wealth, at 1% spent on wealth manager you have him for part of his time. at 100M$ you have 1M$ to spend on manager, probably do better finding deals, can broaden investment portfolio etc. Or as in this article you have access to investing best opportunities at financial institutes. Somewhat minor cost of living is not proportional to income. Higher wealth allows for more income to be available for re-investment.
There are positive feed-back loops on income+wealth at low and high ends driving it to extremes. This is going to further destabilize the economies of the world.
The decisions of the wealthiest have big influence on every bodies lives. The more wealthy the bigger the possible influence.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:24PM
I fail to see any of that as a problem. Someone having a pile of money big enough to paper the walls of their mansion has no effect on me. Money and wealth are not remotely finite.
Political power? It's still one man, one vote (or one corpse, one vote if you're a Democrat). You really want change, stop voting for the ones that you know will sell you out. I did.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:33AM (2 children)
>What goes on in a billionaire's life by in large has zero bearing on your own.
Poop of all the farm animals.
The disproportionately wealthy buy and hold large swaths of coastal real-estate, restricting my access to the beaches and oceans.
Billionaire individuals and corporations are the primary customers of Gulfstream Aviation, employer of ~12,000 people near the booming town of Pooler, GA where I had lunch today. A relative of ours works 4:30am to 2:30pm 4 days a week for Gulfstream, good job if you like that sort of thing - but without the Billionaire crowd, there wouldn't be a private jet market at all.
Billionaires, and lesser wealthy individuals, feed angel investment funds - most of my career has been in and around startup companies that live off of these investment funds. A major part of the business involves courting investment, which basically means knowing (intentionally, or accidentally) how to appeal to these people and get them to choose to invest in your company instead of the hundreds of others clamoring for their attention. Logic, experience, a sound business plan, solid research, and ability to execute are only a small part of how you actually close those deals.
The highly wealthy keep places like the local beach-spas operating, employing hundreds of local people and training them in the art of hospitality, aka serving the rich.
Billionaires and their kin own your Congresscritters, just try to get something done "for the constituency" against the rich benefactors and find out how much.
If you don't deal with the ultra-wealthy directly, you're probably less than 3 degrees of separation away from someone whose life is utterly ruled by them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:26PM (1 child)
Start up a fund and buy your own then.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 24 2017, @12:24AM
How many plebes does it take to out-bid the billionaires? Virtually all of them, at least all of them that you could mobilize to donate some of their disposable income - just ask Bernie.
There's a funny curve of economic position vs political influence. On an individual basis, you can get some political influence without money, but of course with money your influence is greatly magnified. In both instances, it takes both money and man-hours to get effective political influence - though with enough money you can buy man-hours, so infinite money always wins. But, given the (rough) formula of I = N * t * (k + di) where:
N is the number of people pushing in the same direction
t is the time invested (note that t = t of the individual + t purchased from representatives, so you can in effect substitute di / r for t where r is some hourly rate
k is a constant representing the respect given to individuals regardless of money (let's put this at about $50) and
di is disposable income devoted to influence
At the bottom end, the unemployed have nearly zero di, but high N and very high available t, so they can wield a significant amount of political influence
Moving "up" to the working poor, they have neither t nor di, so their effective political influence is approaching zero, regardless of their N
Then you get to the "middle class" (whatever that is) where you can kick around $50 now and then, and maybe attend a rally once a month or so without destroying your whole life to make it happen, some influence per individual, very high N, but t and di are still really small.
Once you progress to the independently wealthy, their t increases by a factor of 10 or more, simultaneously with a dramatic increase in di - their numbers are small (say ~2%), but if they should choose to become politically active, they have great lobbying power, even as individuals
Then you can climb into the stratosphere of the 0.1% - they command so much disposable income that it can translate directly into political influence simply by hiring lobbyists - effectively out-shouting all other classes combined without investing any more of their personal time than they want to.
This sort of bathtub curve seems to reflect the tax and spend patterns - "incentives" for the rich such that they have the lowest effective tax rate (as a % of income) even while their need for that extra income has nothing to do with survival and everything to do with power and influence - coming down the curve you come into the bulk of the taxpayers, paying the highest rates while receiving the least of the benefits, then at the bottom end the unemployed are actually qhite well taken care of - when I became unemployed my children started receiving the best insurance coverage I ever experienced, for free. We went to all our same doctors, had lower or non-existent co-pays, same choice of treatments as the private pay insurance, and no premiums - all I had to do to receive this $10K+/yr "benefit" from the government was be unemployed.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:09AM (2 children)
That statement, is both wrong and stupid.
It's wrong in that what billionaires do very definitely affects my life. For example, the influence of the Mercers on the recent election, or the creation of the Tea Party by the Koch Brothers.
It's stupid in that:
a. It assumes the status quo, where we have extreme wealth inequality.
b. The phrase is "by and large", not "by in large".
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:29PM (1 child)
You think the Koch brothers created the Tea Party? You poor, kool-aid-drinking fool. You probably even think the election was bought last time around as well. Pro-tip: if it had been, Hillary would have won.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:07PM
You actually want to deny the links between the Tea Party and the Kochs? Really? Are you for real, or just trolling?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @09:13PM
OK, if a person has more money than you could ever hope to get, why does it bother you whether he has $1 billion or $1 trillion? What is the difference in your eyes? And please explain it without trying to spend that money for him.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 22 2017, @11:53PM (1 child)
Those are excellent questions. But let's start with the obvious implied question. What is the problem with wealth inequality in the first place? As The Mighty Buzzard pointed out, Bill Gates being worth a trillion dollars or a million isn't going to matter one whit to whether we have a society that can check off the points on your list. None of those items require us to cap our wealthiest.
Second, the key reason that the wealthier get wealthier is due to the increase in the size of the labor force over the past 50 years. Developed world labor lost some of its pricing power as a result. Meanwhile capital and other investments aren't similarly affected. Thus, the wealthy got wealthier relative to those whose wealth is highly dependent on the wages that their salaries command. Thus, wealth inequality increases are the result of global labor competition - a symptom of a problem rather than a problem in its own right.
The other big contributor to wealth inequality is the grotesque regulatory environment and the shifty economic schemes cooked up and enabled by government (such as the monetary policies mentioned in the main story). Big corporations can more easily navigate such environments as well as influence the government to act in their favor. My view is that most plans and policies intended for the improvement of labor's situation instead act to strengthen the economies of scale advantages of large corporations without doing much of anything for labor.
In addition, I'll note, once again, that the scarcer party in the employment relation is the employer. There are plenty of would-be employees out there, but not so many employers. Sorry, but that makes the employer more valuable than the employee and why I favor policies that help employers over policies that help employees. In particular, I think it highly delusion to assume that employers will continue to employ people in the face of aggressive laws attacking employment or the holding of wealth. We have contrary to the assumption strong indications that employers will drop developed employees for automation and outsourcing to the developing world whenever possible. That indicates to me that employers are far more sensitive to costs of employment than the idealists would like, and that it'll be disaster when someone finally shoves in a rule that heavily disrupts employment (like for example, a universal $15 per hour minimum wage, the dissolution of corporations because "corporations aren't people", or the widespread seizure of assets of the wealthy).
I'll note here that contrary to the assertions of the parent poster, I have never advocated policies that favor the wealthiest aside from opposing schemes to destroy the wealth of the wealthiest on basic principles of fairness and sanity. I just don't take concerns /about wealth inequality seriously since that's not a major contributor to the problems that humanity faces. My view is that the concern about wealth inequality is first and foremost a propaganda move. Most places, world-wide are making even the poorest better off. But focusing on wealth inequality allows one to continue to flaunt concern for poverty even when poverty is declining over most of the world.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @09:44AM
I agree so far, but for me that means that we lack employers, and instead of putting our help to incumbent employers, we need to re-widen their base and their supply on the market, as competition puts them out.
Obviously, what we have there is regulatory capture - wealthy employers wouldn't want employees to get too much, but they certainly don't want to make it easy for wage slaves to cross over and become small businesses too easy, hence, laws which on their surface look like they are designed to protect employees (or customers, or others) are actually there mostly to keep employees corralled in the pen.
So, not all wealthy are employers, but wealthy employers want to make it difficult for the poor to become employers (or self-employed).
I must add that there is not one single line of division: Among wealthy employers, those wealthier are pushing for the laws which hinder and put under pressure those less wealthy. That is the origin of legislature which "protects" employees.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Tuesday August 22 2017, @02:00PM (47 children)
We know that "trickle down" is hogwash, yet it is allowed to continue on the false premise that we all benefit from appeasing the monarchy (financial industry), when in fact we don't even get the leftover crumbs.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @02:16PM (7 children)
No, trickle down works; they just got one detail wrong. It's not the money that trickles down, it is the cost.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 22 2017, @02:19PM (6 children)
It's not the money that trickles down, it is the rich people pissing on the rest of us.
FTFY
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday August 22 2017, @02:29PM (2 children)
Based on the volume of flow, one can't call it a trickle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:46PM (1 child)
That's why I usually refer to it as "tinkle-down economics".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:44AM
Golden monsoon economics?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @02:51PM (2 children)
Wait a second! That isn't RAIN!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 22 2017, @03:00PM (1 child)
I suppose that in some rare circumstances, rain drops might be yellow. But, look carefully. Is it yellow tinged? It probably ain't rain.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday August 22 2017, @09:29PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0QhxF4OmhQ [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 22 2017, @02:58PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday August 22 2017, @03:35PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday August 22 2017, @04:11PM
> monarchy (financial industry)
oligarchy
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @05:08PM (17 children)
Stating opinion as fact again?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by https on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:39PM
How about the IMF? https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf [imf.org]
"The benefits do not trickle down." [quote from Executive Summary].
Or maybe you think the IMF has too much power to be impartial, to look at things from a cool and academic perspective. Maybe Stanford University [stanford.edu]? The only people whose incomes have been rising since trickle-down became a thing has been the top 20% [stanford.edu]. (figure 2, page 2) It ain't coming down to the rest of y'all.
These aren't opinions you're complaining about, they're observations. Sorry if reality conflicts with your belief systems.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:04PM (15 children)
It is fact. I watched what happened when it went full throttle. I mean, sure there were benefits, all going one direction, to the people that implemented it and their specific benefactors and 'contributors', but it's entirely bogus. The spoils aren't shared, they are hoarded. It's not a thing really. It's a perfectly natural, so arguing about it is silly.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 22 2017, @07:43PM (13 children)
Strange, it took my family from eating government cheese to driving fancy cars and living in nice houses for most of a decade.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:23AM (11 children)
Empires always need a percentage of well off citizens, gives everyone hope, makes it easier to divide society. There are only so many high paying jobs, bootstrapping is a myth. But I wouldn't expect your narrow minded viewpoint to understand.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:58AM (7 children)
Wow, that's pretty clueless. The automobile industry was not the bicycle or wagon industry repurposed to make cars. It came from nothing. The modern computer and high tech industries came from almost as little.
Don't care can look a lot like don't understand to the ignorant.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:13PM (5 children)
That's just outright bullshit. It wasn't the *same* industry, but it certainly replaced most of it. There were a hell of a lot more wagons being sold before the automobile was invented. There were a hell of a lot more jobs as secretaries or computers before the digital computing industry took off. Displacing one industry with another does not magically create a larger employment pool.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:24PM (4 children)
Bootstrapping isn't about creating multiple independent industries that don't compete with each other, though that can happen as with the case of some of the web services created in the past two decades (though these do often compete with existence services). It's about creating iteratively more and more complex systems and infrastructure from what came before. Automobiles in the beginning did rely on technology knowledge and infrastructure derived from the construction of wagons and bicycles and it eventually replaced much of these older technologies as a mode of transportation.
But the bootstrapping effect is in the creation of infrastructure capable of building tens of millions of cars per year today from a collection of workshops in specific locations (such as Detroit or the Ruhr) capable of building thousands of wagons per year in the distant past not in the non-replacement of older technologies.
It's worth noting here that secretaries and human computers simply couldn't be anything resembling a modern website. They can't iteratively design better secretaries and such. They can't react fast enough.
I agree. Creation of more and better jobs is the end result even in a lot of places with high regulation of labor, but it doesn't have to be that way. There are a number of countries, such as Greece, Venezuela, and North Korea, that are finding out that you need more.
My take is that somewhere around half the world's population is currently engaged in labor that is directly connected to our global trade network. That wouldn't have happened without massive job creation from technology development. But some countries are faring much better at this process than others. China, for example, fares better than India, even though the latter has a natural advantage with the widespread use of English, the current lingua franca, not being in economic isolation till 1989, and a head start back in the 1950s and 60s on wealth, technology, and infrastructure from being in peace for a long time before independence. Yet now, China is the powerhouse and India is playing catch up.
As a final note, in this thread, one side spins vague fairy tales about how bad things are, while the other side points out real life counterexamples. Sure, maybe some day all this technology will replace us. But it hasn't happened yet. And I can't take seriously people who don't even know what's going on in the world like the AC I replied to earlier. How can that AC make any useful observations when they get basic principles so wrong?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 23 2017, @04:41PM (3 children)
I'm not arguing that these advances don't create jobs; I'm merely saying that, as the AC said, there IS a limited number of high paying jobs. And that's provable with nothing more than basic logic -- if *everyone* has a high paying job, then it's not high paying anymore, because "high paying" is a relative measure. No amount of hard work and intelligence can change that. Nor can creating new industries. Nor can technological advances and automation. Not everyone can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" -- even the ones lucky enough to have boots can't all do it unless we're going to break the laws of mathematics.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 24 2017, @12:13AM (2 children)
Then what's the point of the argument? It's just circular reasoning.
Bootstrapping doesn't mean high paying (in the relative sense) jobs. A serious hole in your argument is that you don't give a reason why "high paying" jobs are at all relevant. It's certainly not relevant to bootstrapping.
No offense, but it sounds to me like the argument is a) circularly arguing that not everyone can have a "high paying" job with the implicit connotative assumption that "low paying" jobs are bad, b) then leaping to the assumption that having a "high paying" job is necessary for economic bootstrapping. This leads to conclusion c) that there's a lot of people who can't bootstrap because being on the lower end of the wage scale (no matter how high that low end turns out to be) somehow precludes that. I think that is all bunk.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:39PM (1 child)
Huh? This conversation started with you asserting that the claim that there's a limited number of high paying jobs is "pretty clueless", that's what I was responding to...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:36PM
Well, that's because I think "high paying job" should mean something useful, like say a job that pays well in excess of what you need to get by. Using that definition, it is quite possible for most or all jobs to be high paying and similarly, it possible for most or all jobs to not be high paying. Thus, you have a distinction of relevance.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 23 2017, @02:22PM
The automobile industry was not the bicycle or wagon industry repurposed to make cars. It came from nothing. The modern computer and high tech industries came from almost as little.
:-) *golf clap* [wikimedia.org].
One minor correction, it was the airplane industry that arose from the bicycle company, and fat government contracts.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:33PM (1 child)
My father did it. I did it. Some of my brothers have done it. I fail to see how you have disproven what I have directly experienced and witnessed. Mostly I see the mediocre who refuse to learn anything of value to an employer being paid like exactly what they are.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:34PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @02:52PM
All economists bootstrap to calculate non-parametrically the standard errors in hypothesis testing.
- Just an economist geeking out...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:50AM
Oh, man... You're not gonna go all anecdotal on me, are ya?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @06:09AM
My sharing agreement with my employer is working fine for me. Maybe you're just doing it wrong?
As to the Reagan era, I think a lot of people are forgetting just how messed up the 1970s were economically for the US. By the mid 1980s, Japan was looking to overtake the US. That lead, for example, to a bunch of bad science fiction which is interesting now mostly for reflecting the fears of the US at the time. But in the stretch from 1980 to 2000, we saw a remarkable improvement in the US economy which in turn led to decent improvements for the US citizen. That all started with trickle down and a variety of policies for reversing some of the bureaucratic and political excesses of the previous decade.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @09:16PM
That wasn't REAL "trickle down." REAL "trickle down" has never really been tried!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:36AM (16 children)
We don't get the crumbs, we bake the bread, we even get a slice of every loaf for our labor. The other 19 slices of course go to others more deserving of remuneration due to their position of ownership, risk of their capital, etc. etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @07:05AM (1 child)
Actually for every loaf of labour, the govenment takes a part, directly in income taxes. Indirectly they take some more because the taxes that employers pay mean that employees are competing with government for the rest of the loaf. And the government has the IRS and men with guns.
Eventually when you want to spend it the governments takes sales tax. Oh and you have to pay property taxes. Oh and everything you buy the business selling has to pay taxes on, so they charge you more.
I guess the government walks away with most of the loaf. But sure, blame business. It is much easier to go work for somebody else, who pays better, or start your own company, but you have to immigrate to get a different government.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:11AM
Yes, after I bake 20 loaves for the company I get a loaf of my own, and I (at my level of income) give 2 slices to the government in taxes.
I feel like I get a lot more for those 2 slices than I do for the 19 loaves that the company invests in other places than my personal discretionary fund.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:45PM (13 children)
So what industry is this where labor gets only 1 part of the profit while the owners get 19 parts? It certainly isn't any sector of industry or commerce I've heard of in the developed world.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 24 2017, @12:36AM (12 children)
Let's talk about my most recent project, R&D morphed an existing product onto a new hardware platform, less than a year of development, and now it has transitioned into sales gathering millions per month in profit (above and beyond the cost of production which includes all the sales and production workers' income).
We, as R&D, baked that bread, put together all the documentation and instruction required to bring it to market, a team of ~15 people working for ~ a year, we received approximately $1.5M in collective income for our efforts, and received shiny stars of appreciation for a job well done. 24 months later, the new product has pulled over $30M of gross income for the company, and is on a growth curve projected to reach several hundred million over the lifetime of the product.
There are other worker bees who do the sales, man the production lines, etc. but, when you shake it all out, labor accounts for less than 5% of the income the corporation is getting. The company is "growing income" by ~10% per year, but they do this by rolling up those profits and buying promising young startup companies that can repeat the pattern. The internal processes of the big company are too conservative to break into new markets, they simply protect their high profit margins (if cost of goods is >20%, we're strongly encouraged to engineer that down), and then re-invest those profits into early-stage growing companies that have taken the risk and demonstrated viable new markets. Something over half of the "bread we bake" ends up in the pockets of the investors in the startup companies while we use those acquisitions to fuel continued growth - all while maintaining a net positive cash-flow.
It's very impressive, and depressing, all at the same time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 24 2017, @03:38AM (11 children)
So right there, that's 5% just from your small group and you indicate that there's a lot more employees out there than just your group. Not looking like 5% to me!
Moving on, this is the new 100 acres. If we are to take your statements at face value (and assume that your R&D group contributed as much as you claim it did), a business has generated a vast amount of value with a modest initial investment of $1.5 million. I guess things look different when you're the tenant farmer rather than the owner of the 100 acres.
I find your cognitive dissonance interesting. It's clear that you think there's something wrong with society that it doesn't continue to support the 100 acres business plan. But in your example, we see that it does and the return on the investment is quite ample. Now, I don't know how much you desire this scheme, but it seems to me that if you're attached to the model, maybe you should figure out how to do it in today's modern world, rather than complain that old tricks no longer work in a changing world.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 24 2017, @11:42PM (10 children)
If this is the new 100 acres, you're putting it up well above my estimate of 2.5M - into the range of tens to hundreds of Billions.
And what does this mega-capitalized model do with their vast profits? Mostly spend them on new acquisitions which translate to paydays for investors who place large long odds bets. I've worked for a series of these "startups" which the system expect to fail 95+% of the time, in my experience 1 limped along acting not entirely startup-like for 10 years, unable to compete due to lack of capital and unable to attract investment capital without switching to a high risk business plan. Then I spent ~3 years with a very atypical 100M/yr "organic growth" company that only got where they were by attracting a CEO/investor who had personal use for the company's product. Then a series of 5 "high risk" businesses, none of which provided any long term (>2 years) stability for any employees - I don't mind changing jobs, but I do mind having to change towns to get the next job, or spending my life in airports commuting to the work. The last startup I chose got the "golden ring" $100M buyout for the investors who had only put about $10M of seed money into _this_ venture, but easily $90M more into other ventures that hadn't done well - so, now I'm on the other side of the looking glass - in the big acquisition machine.
It feels like the Japanese real-estate bubble, these company valuations are large multiples of projected earnings up to a decade out, and for what? The idea that seems to have gotten traction, lucked it's way past the regulatory minefield and into a decent reimbursement structure.
I find your cognitive dissonance to be a strong tell of Scott Adams fandom. I enjoy _most_ of his humor, but his disconnect from reality has gotten very profound in the last 5 or so years.
What I think is wrong with society is that, while I'm just barely on the comfortable side of the wealth divide, the gap is growing at a crazy pace. Prices I learned growing up in the 1970s have mostly inflated 10x, as has my income, meanwhile the bottom end of the income scale (virtually anyone below me on the job-value ladder) has only grown maybe 3-4x, it's pretty sad for the majority of the population.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 25 2017, @01:36AM (5 children)
1.5 million is below 2.5 million and certainly well below tens to hundreds of billions.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 25 2017, @02:32AM (4 children)
That 1.5 million is useless in a vacuum, it was a development on existing intellectual property in the context of a system churning billions per year of product sales.
It "takes money to make money" always has, but back in the 100 acres days the amount of "honest work" required to bootstrap up into that realm where you can make money was achievable in a relatively short period - say 10 years of hard work and frugal living. Today it requires multiple lifetimes, or a privileged starting point, or a great deal of good luck along the way. Some people win the lottery, I hear someone won $700M+ recently, but it's not something you can plan your life around - and the odds of business success when starting without a significant stake are getting bad enough to start to feel like hoping for a lottery win. In your "golden years" of the 1960s-80s, $100K or so would buy a franchise on a business that had a high chance of success - the prices are going up and the odds are going down.
The fact that with a multi-billion dollar infrastructure you can turn 1.5M of investment per year into an income stream that nets 100s of millions over a decade is indicative to me that the playing field is too slanted. As you say, it seems like imaginary / insane profit, but I assure you it's real, it's how it's done on this side of the looking glass, and it's how the pointy haired bosses, Wallys and Teds of the world not only survive, but thrive in their crazy niches.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 25 2017, @07:37AM (3 children)
So... in other words, your story was bullshit because you deliberately neglected to mention this system and its costs when discussing your contribution to the business's profits. It wasn't 1.5 million dollars made potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. It was 1.5 million dollars, plus the enormous existing labor costs of the business made possible a significant amount of additional income. At this point, I no longer buy your argument that labor costs were a mere 5% of the overall profit of the add on.
You just can't let go of that exploitative scheme. The world doesn't have an obligation to preserve your business model.
Even in December, 1980, $100k would be $280k in today's dollars. Still enough to start businesses. And the 1970s weren't "golden years".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 25 2017, @11:29AM (2 children)
Not bullshit, the infrastructure of billions is a sunk cost, existing machine - I work inside that machine and it makes 19x much profit as it shares with me - as you say: I'm the human capital, without me (or an equivalent replacement) it doesn't happen. It's like saying a couple of guys on the deck of an aircraft carrier can sink a fleet of PT boats - absolutely true. And we're letting analogous aircraft carrier groups roam our business arena preying competitively on the small business players.
Sharecropping was certainly an exploitative scheme, but far less exploitative than what's going on today.
Depends on who you ask about the 1970s, people holding real-estate were very happy when their net-worth tripled.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 25 2017, @08:19PM (1 child)
No, it's also recurring costs as well. They have to maintain and use that infrastructure. Let us keep in mind this is like claiming that a grocery is making enormous profit off an employee's activities just because the employee as a part of their work stocked up some snacks at the front counters (which are much higher profit spaces than general store placement). Just because there are a few high profit parts doesn't mean that the whole enterprise is similarly high profit.
You've already given a fair number of indications that this statement is false.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 25 2017, @11:42PM
You've already guessed that the 19x statement is false a number of times, with even less information to base your guesses on than I have.
Maintaining an infrastructure of intellectual property is largely about retaining the human capital that understands how to exploit it. As I have already stated, labor costs are far less than 5% of gross income. Cost of goods runs in the 15-20% range, and there's some rent to pay. A significant spend is on travel, most employees who travel regularly cost the company more in travel than they are paid in salary. That travel is to some degree necessary to maintain the relationships that keep the sales rolling. But, what's really driving the machine is the ability to sell large quantities of both capital product at ~80% profit margins, and 3-4x that volume (in dollars) in associated disposables at profit margins closer to 95%.
The competition in sales and twisted reimbursement structures make this equipment fabulously expensive, and yet people continue to pay for it, almost entirely via insurance. The whole system could be deflated to 10% of its costs and still deliver the same products and services, but without highly competitive sales forces and fabulously expensive acquisitions driving overall business growth. And we can't have that - must maintain the expected growth rates to keep the shareholders happy - so the machine continues to suck out over 10x more money from the customers than it needs to to simply comply with regulations and deliver safe and effective products to the users.
Pays the mortgage, and funds the 401(k) - I'm not quitting out of disgust with the system, but I do recognize the Koyaanisqatsi - esque nature of it all.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 25 2017, @07:17AM (3 children)
What evidence exists for this? I grant that there is wealth inequality and it has appeared to grow somewhat over the past 40 years. But there is no "crazy pace" to it. For example, we have a Pew Study [reason.com] that shows by their measure, the Middle Class shrinking from 61% in 1971 to 50% in 2015. Roughly, 20% shrinkage in 44 years. That's your "crazy pace". Even worse for your narrative, the upper classes grew more than the lower ones as a fraction of total population. So two thirds of the fraction that were no longer middle class were now upper class.
It seems to me that getting basic facts about the economy wrong would be more of an indication of suffering from a disconnect from reality.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 25 2017, @05:41PM (2 children)
Facts are largely where you find them. If you want to be told that things are getting better (whatever your measure of better may be), there are always groups who will tell you that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 25 2017, @08:10PM (1 child)
The Pew Study is interesting because they spun it as negatively as they could, that is, the middle class was shrinking and income inequality was increasing.
Sounds like good advice. Perhaps you ought to listen to it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 25 2017, @11:28PM
How many levels of spin are at play?
The recent "pepper spray canister return, rubber bullet to the crotch" news clip seemed like it was being spun up as a big deal to listen to the airtime, etc. Then "astute observers" point out that there are only a few protesters in the shot, and this is "proof" that the news is blowing up the story to be bigger than it is. However, it was a tight cropped shot, the better to see the protester crumple to the ground when shot, police who were obviously present weren't even shown. So, is this shot "video proof" that we have a small band of protesters making big news, or are there hundreds, or even thousands, out of frame? You can't know what you can't know - if you don't have other sources there's just not enough information being provided to know which way this story is being spun - and "observer reports" of crowd size are notoriously inaccurate - in either direction, usually toward the preference of the reporter.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jelizondo on Tuesday August 22 2017, @03:45PM (14 children)
Capitalism operates on the principle of maximizing profits by means of buying low and selling high; whether they are buying raw materials or labor, capitalists will seek to pay the least amount possible.
Nowhere in their tenets is community building or ameliorating society’s ills. The world has bought into Hayek’s postulate that all human activity is economic activity and that everything therefore has a price in the market.
A great symphony, painting or sculpture has no inherent value as an object of beauty; it simply has a price. Thus we have fallen into the trap of thinking that moral values, not having a market price, are worthless.
IMHO, we need to rethink ourselves as something greater than economic agents to create a better community; one that conserves its national parks, for example, for the enjoyment of future generations and not one that seeks to exploit them for short-term economic gains.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday August 22 2017, @03:59PM (3 children)
Google "cost disease" for an interesting tangent related to this notion.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 22 2017, @05:21PM (2 children)
Seems to me "cost disease" is a capitalist's sob-story about not being able to squeeze the little guy as hard as they like. Clearly the wages wouldn't go up if the value delivered by the workers wasn't at least equal to the new wage - so either:
1) The work was initially under-payed thanks to an overabundance of labor (using "appropriately payed" = "payed the actual economic value of their labor" = no excess profits to be pocketed).
or
2) The market value for the product has increased even though productivity has not - i.e. even though each worker is producing the same amount of good, the value of that good has increased. Meaning *economic* productivity has in fact increased.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:57PM
I think it's something of a Rorschach test. I think economists' read on it is particularly poor. Economists want to believe compensates related to quantity and quality of output.
As a mathematician I'll note that the examples of "cost disease" are jobs without a linear notion of quality or quantity. Assigning compensation to them has to project them onto a linear basis and that requires making arbitrary decisions. People don't actually make conscious decisions on how much to compensate orchestra musicians or artists, but at least some subset of these groups benefits from arbitrary comparisons against luxury goods. The budget for new paintings and donations to the orchestra is weighed against what the same money could purchase in terms of high end eel estate or other goods with materials costs or other costs that experience inflation. To some extent the price allocated in this manner has to be sufficient to convince musicians and artists not to pursue alternate careers, but it's not clear what the sensitivity is and what role money plays in these decisions.
I see no evidence that you can pick an "optimal" outcome in cultural goods and services, regardless of how you define your optimum. Implicitly there are arbitrary decisions to make about how much of these things should be produced and how dearly their makers should be compensated.
These same kinds of arguments may also apply to jobs like teachers and managers. The value added to society is difficult to measure and different assumptions, methods, and priorities generate different answers. That's why I say it's a Rorschach test.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 23 2017, @10:07AM
I think everyone (including Baumol) is getting a myopic view of what is going on: it is a reversed "broken window fallacy".
Simply, productivity increase makes whole society better of, but in that enhancement, large groups, especially the ones which became more productive, are left behind - in richer society, they can be compensated less and still get by, or, in other words, their lagging behind is essentially the way increased productivity manifests itself, and those whose productivity stayed the same (e.g. performers of classical music) are actually fixed points and they have only seemingly advanced (an effect of inflation).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @04:21PM (1 child)
Filthy Communist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @04:58PM
Capitalist pigdog.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 22 2017, @06:27PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:53AM (2 children)
So what? If the mere act of wanting something is enough to get it, then clearly you don't want to change this situation hard enough. I find it interesting how so much criticism of capitalism comes to the motives rather than the consequences. Show me the society where people with such base motives help their societies better than they do in a capitalist society.
Yet another indication that you've never figured out that intent != outcome. There's a reason for the saying, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
I quite disagree. That's not a trap since moral values can have profoundly negative value even as morals. For example, the Communists of the 20th century thought that forcing people into their scheme was a moral positive. But you have to have a pretty twisted view of reality to think that creating a billion slaves is a good idea.
Further, capitalist societies have never had trouble creating objects of beauty. They have by far been the best at it.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Wednesday August 23 2017, @03:26AM (1 child)
Most European countries, because they do not practice crony capitalism (as in Russia) or savage capitalism (as in the US).
So intent is irrelevant? Google mens rea and educate yourself a bit
You mean like British, American, Spanish and Portuguese created millions of slaves for profit? Or do you mean like Christians imposing their faith on millions of Native Americans against their will or Western countries imposing ‘statehood’ on tribal lands in Africa and the Middle East? Or do you mean like selling opium at gun-point in China?
Your economic education is lacking. Michelangelo, Da Vinci (Renaissance), Bach (Baroque) and many others belong to a feudal economic system, not capitalism. In your mind anything other than socialism/communism is capitalism, sorry but no, capitalism is fairly recent invention.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 23 2017, @05:09AM
Huh, contrary to your assertion most European countries practice some degree of crony capitalism, for example, UK, Germany, France, the PIGS, and the former Eastern Bloc, to name a few.
We're not speaking of crime, so yes, intent is irrelevant.
Why yes. It's almost like you get it. The only difference is the Communism did it on a bigger scale and collapsed before it could harm people for centuries rather than a few generations.
And Pink Floyd, Van Gogh, and Frank Lloyd Wright "belonged" to a capitalist system. Capitalism is just private ownership of capital and the necessarily systems (such as markets to trade said capital and laws to protect private ownership of capital) which support the concept. Sure, there were good artists before there was capitalism, but there's been vastly more good artists since.
For example, there's probably tens of thousands of people in the world who can do amazing things with guitars. They didn't happen just because some political/economic elite decided to support a handful of performing artists for the prestige. The distributed nature of capitalism means that one doesn't have to be connected to political or economic elites in order to learn to play the guitar at a world-class level or to make a living from playing the guitar. And capitalism has helped in other ways. A remarkable thing about such music is that there is an immense variety of music as compared to older systems of musical expression which tend to follow various traditions and formulas. Capitalism isn't the sole cause of this - democracy has played a huge part - but the ability to fund unusual forms of music with unusual business models or funding sources means that art can be expressed today which would have never existed in the past, even discounting the advanced technology available to us today.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 23 2017, @01:39AM (3 children)
Seems like moral values should be given a price - and weighed in economic calculus accordingly.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 23 2017, @12:34PM (2 children)
They are. Morality is an individual trait though. No two people's is going to be identical outside a cult.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 24 2017, @01:06AM (1 child)
Can't remember the last time I was paid cash money for moral values - nor anyone I know for that matter. I have often seen exercise of "high moral standards" being expensive to the practitioner.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @06:13PM
So, you've never worked in sales then?