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posted by martyb on Friday January 24 2020, @04:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the Better-ask-Betteridge? dept.

Capitalism is in trouble – at least judging by recent polls.

A majority of American millennials reject the economic system, while 55% of women age 18 to 54 say they prefer socialism. More Democrats now have a positive view of socialism than capitalism. And globally, 56% of respondents to a new survey agree "capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world."

One problem interpreting numbers like these is that there are many definitions of capitalism and socialism. More to the point, people seem to be thinking of a specific form of capitalism that deems the sole purpose of companies is to increase stock prices and enrich investors. Known as shareholder capitalism, it's been the guiding light of American business for more than four decades. That's what the survey meant by "as it exists today."

As a scholar of socially responsible companies, however, I cannot help but notice a shift in corporate behavior in recent years. A new kind of capitalism seems to be emerging, one in which companies value communities, the environment and workers just as much as profits.

The latest evidence: Companies as diverse as alcohol maker AB InBev, airline JetBlue and money manager BlackRock have all in recent weeks made new commitments to pursue more sustainable business practices.

[...] A 2017 study showed that many companies with climate change goals actually scaled back their ambitions over time as the reality clashed with their lofty goals.

But businesses can't afford to ignore their customers' wishes. Nor can they ignore their workers in a tight labor market. And if they disregard socially responsible investors, they risk both losing out on important investments and facing shareholder resolutions that force change.

The shareholder value doctrine is not dead, but we are beginning to see major cracks in its armor. And as long as investors, customers and employees continue to push for more responsible behavior, you should expect to see those cracks grow.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @04:40PM (53 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @04:40PM (#947996) Journal

    "Commitments to sustainable business practices". The problems that are driving people away from capitalism are overwhelmingly material and concrete problems beyond the scale of individaul bad actors. Climate change, increasing inequality, poverty, and social isolation. Real problems, have to be specifically fixed. You can't good intention them away, even if a single person, much less most people, still believed corporate promises of that sort would hold.

    You want to get people back behind capitalism, it has to be something extreme, and that comes in two flavors, populist fascism a la Trump that makes everything worse but creates an enemy to blame, or something like FDR, where overwhelming popular mandate allows for relatively serious social welfare programs to make some people temporarily more happy with the quality of their life. Straight robin hood shit or outright fascism or civil war in the next 30 years.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday January 24 2020, @04:51PM (50 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @04:51PM (#948001) Journal

    Yes. And therefore Capitalism can't solve those problems, but also doesn't create them. What's wrong is the incentive structure. Change the incentive structure and Capitalism will change what it does.

    Actually, of course, this partially depends on precisely what you mean by Capitalism...but it works with most definitions. If you insist that the business cover external costs, like air pollution, then it will adapt to avoid them. If the incentives encourage recycling, then it will build things that encourage recycling. Coca-cola (etc.) used to buy back the bottles it was sold in, but when the incentives changed (plastic bottles that weren't reusable) it stopped the practice.

    And many, perhaps most, of the incentives are based on legal structures.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @05:01PM (46 children)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @05:01PM (#948008) Journal

      I don't think it's materially necessary to define terms explicitly in PR campaigns where you see what people have positive and negative associations with.

      Is Norwegian-style social democracy "socialism"? The exact same person, will tell you yes and no depending on what they're trying to persuade you of. It's beyond doubt that what has killed captialism's popularity is the republican party, and their attempt to equate absolutely immoral market liberalization reforms that only benefit the rich to capitalism for 50 years now. You don't see things being made actively worse in the name of capitalism over and over and over and OVER and go "Oh yeah, this system is fine"

      Remove the boomer soviet-communists-will-kill-us-all-with-nukes indoctrination that my generation never had and there's very little actual deterrence to socialism.

      None of that has a single thing to do with what the words actually mean.

      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 24 2020, @05:24PM (31 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 24 2020, @05:24PM (#948020)

        Commun/socialism isn't inherently evil, and neither is Capitalism - but the way they have been implemented is - to varying degrees.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @05:40PM (3 children)

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @05:40PM (#948029) Journal

          You can make the case that under certain ethical frameworks, economic systems can be inherently moral or amoral.

          tangent ahead
          I find one of the biggest ironies of all time that
          *The moral basis for capitalism can be argued to be deontological: "everyone has rights and as long as those rights are not infringed, people may do as they wish"
          and
          *The moral basis of communism can be argued to be utilitarian: "society must do what it can to provide a good living to everyone"
          but
          *The biggest critiques of capitalism are deontological: "It's amoral to have an exploitative relationship between wealthy owner and poor worker"
          and
          *The biggest critiques of communism are utilitarian: "20 million died in the holodomor"

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:04PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:04PM (#948101)

            I think you are mixing up immoral and amoral.

            Immoral means morally wrong or objectionable. (Exploiting workers is immoral.)

            Amoral means separate from morality. (If you look at exploitative business practices amorally, they are efficient.)

            • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @08:11PM (1 child)

              by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @08:11PM (#948106) Journal

              I suppose you're right.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:46PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:46PM (#948853) Journal
                But let's suppose we replace "amoral" with "immoral"

                It's immoral to have an exploitative relationship between wealthy owner and poor worker

                What other sort of relationship can there be in this case? The whole point of work is that your labor is being exploited by someone who needs it, and you're paid wages and benefits for that exploitation that pay for what you need and want. In other words, it's always purely wrong. But why aren't similar exploitative relationships of poor worker to whatever is running the show similarly amoral/immoral? What makes those exploitative relations better than Capitalism's exploitative relationships?

        • (Score: 2, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @06:20PM (26 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @06:20PM (#948052)

          Communism is absolutely evil, at least when applied to any society with more than a couple of hundred people. On the very small scale it can work. But on the large scale...

          Communism depends on compelled labor, as no individual has the right to seek a better life. And yet it guarantees only basic subsistence. All profits are controlled by the elites, who dole out only enough luxuries to deter uprisings, keeping everything else for themselves. Psychological techniques are used to condition the underclass to accept their role, and any effort to improve conditions is deterred by fear, backed up by violence.

          Communism is nothing but a gigantic slave plantation on a national scale.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @07:35PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @07:35PM (#948084)

            Looks like Kim Jong Un has mid points today too!

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @07:56PM (22 children)

            by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @07:56PM (#948094) Journal

            You know, rarely do I see someone modded troll for being anti-left and think "Yeah, that's not the correct response", but it's not the correct response here. It's blindly ideological, but I want to actually discuss this, because it actually differentiates the left economic vision from the right one.

            All profits are controlled by the elites,

            This is, like, almost by definition, what capitalism is. You must be an elite to control enough wealth to earn "profit". That's what profit is, the value past what a worker is paid that their work is actually worth. Which comes with the power that owning substantial private property represents. We wrap it up in terms like "investment" or "entrepreneurship", but it's definitely one thing that Marx absolutely got right, whatever else he got wrong.

            If wages are below subsistence, as is increasingly true in America, you cannot possibly gain enough wealth to invest in entirely owning your own work, thus making profit, much less anyone elses', and moreover, the compounding results of that are wages shrinking further as fewer people have more wealth, thus more control over the production of value. A kind of panoply and uncrossable class divide. We used to pretend education a tool for enabling wages sufficient to become an owner, but that, at best, makes the set of "elites" change generation-to-generation. And at worst, just doesn't work anymore because educated labor also becomes fungible and at the mercy of the legal control of the means of production.

            It only gets worse when corruption and policing and government start falling into indirect control of those same elites, but even without that the underlying formula of capitalism is exactly what you describe in your post.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:41PM (11 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:41PM (#948125)

              But that isn't what profit is at all. Profit is the money that's left after the costs are subtracted, and it applies to both workers and investors. If profit was the difference between what a worker was paid and what their work is worth, then a business increasing profits by, for example, negotiating cheaper rent on their office space, actually would have increased the value of their employees work, when it should be obvious that the work hasn't changed at all.

              But more to the point, workers earn profits too. It's the difference between what they are paid and the cost of working plus the value of their time. Under capitalism, a worker is free to market their skills to any potential employer, and to choose the best offer. They're free to reinvest some of their money in better education to give themselves or their children better opportunities. Under communism, a worker is assigned a job, often before they're even old enough to understand what they're being set up for, and if they don't show up, they get sent to the gulag.

              you cannot possibly gain enough wealth to invest in entirely owning your own work, thus making profit

              And yet, on the left, people decry doing exactly that. Every week there's a left-leaning piece in some magazine about how awful the "gig economy" is, when all it really is, is people working for themselves*. California is even trying to find ways to make it illegal.

              * in case you are going to bring up Uber, etc. and how they make money but the drivers don't, it's simply economics. Driving for Uber is approximately perfect competition. Lots of people have cars, driving is a very common skill, and there's almost no difference from one to another. But very few people have the matchmaking service. That's where the value is. The more competitors in the space, the less profit there is. Do something where you provide real value - and you get to make more money and people start to call you a "freelancer" or a "sole proprietor."

              • (Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @08:52PM

                by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @08:52PM (#948136) Journal

                Uber sets the prices of uber rides, not "the market".

                It's a fiction to assuage regulators who think like you do.

              • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:10PM (9 children)

                by sjames (2882) on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:10PM (#948610) Journal

                The problem is that most of our markets seem to be dysfunctional. Smith clearly laid out how with functional markets, the selling price would quickly move to approximate the marginal cost of production. That's not happening a lot in the U.S. today.

                Part of the problem is that everything Smith wrote assumed that the pool of economic actors was all within a couple orders of magnitude of the same economic power. Today, it's mostly individuals dealing with multi-nationals that have at least 6 orders of magnitude more economic power. That would be at least part of the reason Smith advised that corporate charters be handed out very sparingly and that such chartered corporations should be kept on a short leash. He also called for markets to be closely regulated.

                Failure to heed any of that advice is probably at the root of the many dysfunctional markets.

                Note to the hard core Capitalist: Your favorite ism is starting to lose in the market of ideas. Adapt or die! Give us more of the same and you'll easily live to see a different ism reign supreme.

                As a second note, putting the fox in charge of the henhouse is not likely a winning strategy.

                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:50PM (7 children)

                  by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:50PM (#948892) Homepage Journal

                  Note: Approximate not equal. Profit is necessary or you get zero potential for expansion, no rainy day fund, zero for a research budget, etc...

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:24PM (6 children)

                    by sjames (2882) on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:24PM (#949010) Journal

                    That's why I chose the word approximate rather than equal. These days, many products and services reveal no relationship at all between price and the marginal cost of production. The worst examples are found in the area of healthcare.

                    Consumer electronics and appliances are another example. Often the lower priced models in a range are exactly the same as the high end model internally, they just vandalize it by cutting a few traces to make it lower end. That is, it actually costs a little more to manufacture than the high end one did. In other cases, the hardware is identical and the vandalism is in the firmware. Manufacturers actively hunt and threaten sites that tell you which cut traces to bridge together and how to flash the higher end firmware on the device.

                    If we had an actual competitive market, they'd be forced to leave the features turned on and sell at the lower price to match the competition's offering. Of course, many such products are actually identical no-name products with different higher end emblems stuck on it at a substantial mark-up.

                    Note, this is distinct from the common case in server motherboards where you may see solder pads where they didn't place a controller. In that case, the lower end board was at least the cost of that chip cheaper to manufacture. Fair enough, but there are plenty more cheats there, like offering a "hardware" feature that is actually emulated (poorly) using SMM (or now, the Management Engine) to intercept access.Commonly, cheaper "RAID controllers" and just a regular SATA controller with the ID bumped one and a Windows driver that implements soft RAID.

                    As a rule of thumb, if you hear the term "value pricing", the speaker has thrown Smith out the window and is practicing Mercantilism.

                    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:05PM (5 children)

                      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:05PM (#949022) Homepage Journal

                      Which is all fine and good, really. So long as there is a competitive market rather than one that's had the throat of competition artificially stomped on by the government anyway. Or where the government has refused to smack down anti-competitive business practices by those with monopolistic powers. We currently have neither but I'd prefer we fix the root cause to address the problem rather than breeding an entirely new species of problem through idiotic bandaid regulations.

                      --
                      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Monday January 27 2020, @05:22AM

                        by sjames (2882) on Monday January 27 2020, @05:22AM (#949201) Journal

                        I suspect no matter the ideology, anyone suggesting anything that might get to the root of the problem will be branded a socialist by the current crop of fanatics, even if it's a quote right out of "The Wealth of Nations".

                        Getting at the root of it will likely involve nullifying a lot of corporate charters. Somehow, the current "Capitalists" don't see government granted charters as government interference, but what else could it be called?

                        I am not convinced that corporate charters are compatible with a functioning market. The market simply doesn't work that well when there is such a disparity of economic power between buyer and seller. The problem is that some things these days can really only be accomplished at scale. There's no such thing as a desktop chip fab, nor is there a briefcase MRI.

                      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Monday January 27 2020, @05:29AM (3 children)

                        by sjames (2882) on Monday January 27 2020, @05:29AM (#949203) Journal

                        Please forgive the double reply.

                        The other aspect is that we have several generations growing up with the current state of affairs being claimed to be some sort of paragon of Capitalism. Given that the results of what they have been taught is Capitalism are so dismal for so many, is it any wonder they start thinking they'd like to try something else? If the champions of Capitalism don't do less cheerleading and more fixing, it will get tossed out.

                        Simply stripping away the current band-aids will not get to the root of the problem. It will make it even worse for even more people and it will hasten the exit of Capitalism. First fix the roots, then remove the band-aids once the obvoius wounds have actually healed.

                        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 27 2020, @04:06PM (2 children)

                          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 27 2020, @04:06PM (#949371) Homepage Journal

                          No worries. Everyone hits Submit right before they think of something really relevant they forgot to say once in a while.

                          First fix the roots, then remove the band-aids once the obvoius wounds have actually healed.

                          Nah, you can do it all at once. You just have to plan it out carefully before you do. And it's not corporations' existence or even their size that's the problem, it's the size of the market share they're allowed to attain without the government saying "Oh hell no!". Well, that and government granted monopolies like patents and copyright being all kinds of in need of a good enema.

                          Lots of folks here think they'd be miserable and destitute under an economic system run by my ideals but they don't get how truly and vehemently I hold my anti-trust views. I'd make life pretty fucking miserable for anyone with over a 20% market share; globally, nationally, regionally, or locally. And mergers when there are less than half a dozen competitors in a sector would be right the fuck out. A hell of a lot of things they used to call "synergy" would be gone as well, like Disney owning the means of production, the product, and the means of distribution.

                          Capitalism really does work better than anything but you can't play favorites and you can't allow abuse of monopoly powers. If the government isn't doing everything necessary to foster competition, it's not capitalism that they're after.

                          --
                          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                          • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday January 28 2020, @08:01PM (1 child)

                            by sjames (2882) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @08:01PM (#950203) Journal

                            I really doubt it can be done all at once. You would have enough enforcement actions stacked up that it would take years to iron out. The laws would need several amendments to work around the work-arounds bad actors would implement before enforcement could catch up. Meanwhile that misery and destitution would run rampant with the band-aids ripped off before the wounds are healed. I would be amazed if no corporation chose to press forward full steam under their temporary freedom from restraint with plans to spirit away the profits before the music stops.

                            Meanwhile, I believe you would find 20% to be an unreliable threshold. That would yield 5 competitors each vastly more powerful than their customers. Each big enough to disconnect directive from action, which is the formula for creating a virtual psychopath. More to the point, few enough to manage a tacit agreement among them.

                            You would definitely have to address the incestuous relationships between various boards of directors and executive suites. It tends to create a lot of unofficial back channels for that tacit agreement.

                            But keep in mind, Smith didn't likely warn against the granting of charters for his own amusement. He saw it as playing with fire, a sort of Faustian bargain, The history of economies that ignored his advice seem to bear that out. Be sure you're noty missing the root of the problem.

                            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:40AM

                              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:40AM (#950350) Homepage Journal

                              You would have enough enforcement actions stacked up that it would take years to iron out.

                              Not all currently warranted enforcement actions would need to even be taken. A few good high-profile ones get their nuts thoroughly stomped on in public and enforcement necessity will decline drastically.

                              The laws would need several amendments to work around the work-arounds bad actors would implement before enforcement could catch up.

                              This is why coders should write laws instead of lobbyists for the groups that the laws are supposed to regulate. Specifically, paranoid coders who have a hardon for security. Bonus points if you run each past a team of Bytrams several times for QA before finalizing them.

                              You would definitely have to address the incestuous relationships between various boards of directors and executive suites. It tends to create a lot of unofficial back channels for that tacit agreement

                              That ain't no shit. Not even a little bit.

                              By the way, 20% was an off the cuff number. I'd ask for further discussion to see what sounds best but I don't see anyone voting me Emperor of North America any time soon. Which is probably just as well. I'd be pissed off all the time and it would cut into my fishing.

                              --
                              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:29PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:29PM (#949030)

                  The problem is that most of our markets seem to be dysfunctional. Smith clearly laid out how with functional markets, the selling price would quickly move to approximate the marginal cost of production. That's not happening a lot in the U.S. today.

                  Correct [theatlantic.com]

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @09:01PM (8 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @09:01PM (#948140)

              This is, like, almost by definition, what capitalism is. You must be an elite to control enough wealth to earn "profit".

              From the end of the war until recently, everyone could profit from simply saving money because the interest rate was above inflation. It's the expansion of debt and artificially low interest rates that have increased wealth disparity. If you have equity, money has been practically free to borrow for the last decade.

              If wages are below subsistence, as is increasingly true in America, you cannot possibly gain enough wealth

              How is this possible? Birth rates were declining so property should be cheap and the labor market should be tight.

              "The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers." -- Henry Ford [saturdayeveningpost.com]

              • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday January 24 2020, @10:33PM (1 child)

                by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @10:33PM (#948192) Journal

                The interest rate for small accounts hasn't be above inflation since at least the 1960's. There was a brief period when "treasury bills" or "certificates of investment" were above inflation, but just about as soon as they were opened to purchase for less than $10,000, that ceased being true.

                OTOH, the stock market has often been above inflation, and so has the bond market. One is risky, and skimmed off by large players, the other requires long term investment of sizeable amounts.

                --
                Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @11:46PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @11:46PM (#948239)

                  The interest rate for small accounts hasn't be above inflation since at least the 1960's.

                  Inflation 1958 - 2003 [frbsf.org] I opened an account paying 6% interest in 2006. Savings rates historically tracked just below the prime rate [fedprimerate.com]

              • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 25 2020, @10:16AM (5 children)

                by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday January 25 2020, @10:16AM (#948432) Journal

                How is this possible? Birth rates were declining so property should be cheap and the labor market should be tight.

                Based on the total money that is in the world, property is cheap. Trump could easily buy a whole street without even noticing the loss of money. But the money is concentrated in very few hands. Add to that the fact that in our current economy manufacturing goods is not the best way to generate profits, speculation is. You don't need many employees for speculation (and those are certainly well-paid). Oh, and then there's globalization for those who still produce: What is barely a living wage in one country is a luxury income in another. So you produce in cheap countries and sell in rich countries. And put the headquarters in a low-tax country. Neither of which countries needs to be the one you are living in. Of course you need to have enough money to be able to afford this.

                Yes, on a global level this still isn't sustainable. But at that scale, it is easy to close your eyes about the consequences until the system actually breaks down. Or alternatively take the position that while there is a problem, there's nothing you can do about it anyway, so you at least try to get the best for yourself while it lasts. Or hold on the quasi-religious believe that in the end the invisible hand will fix everything.

                --
                The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @02:17PM (4 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @02:17PM (#948463)

                  property is cheap

                  Tell that to your barrista. Immigration has been weaponised to depress wages and inflate property prices. Central banks have blown the biggest asset bubble in history and it's tulips all the way down. Not only was it unsustainable (as you correctly point out) but the elites have convinced the "left" that these immoral policies have a moral foundation. Importing unskilled people to do jobs that are ceasing to exist does not protect taxation revenue or create growth.

                  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:13PM (3 children)

                    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:13PM (#948612) Journal

                    You cut away an important part of my sentence, and completely altered the meaning that way.

                    --
                    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:50PM

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:50PM (#948855) Journal

                      [...]im[...]a[...]meani[...]

                      Where would the internet be without selective, deceptive quoting? Huh? You're destroying its deep purpose!

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:34PM (1 child)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:34PM (#949031)

                      You're welcome - you took my contention that property should be cheap out of context by applying it as maxim to the 1% property owner.

                      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:42PM

                        by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:42PM (#950619) Journal

                        Lust re-read your statement in the original context. I didn't take it out of context.

                        You stated that [implied: if the thing you quoted were true] property should be cheap [in the meaning that the market forces should drive it down]. I pointed out the fallacy in the argument by pointing out that, from a complete market point of view, it is cheap, since the 1% are also part of the market. It is not cheap for normal people because of inequality in money distribution. Or in other words, it's not so much that the average house is expensive, as is is that the average person is too poor to easily buy even a cheap house.

                        --
                        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:57PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:57PM (#948863) Journal

              That's what profit is, the value past what a worker is paid that their work is actually worth.

              I agree with the AC. That's not profit. Profit is merely what you get after costs. We all have profit - the amounts of our wages past our costs of working, including such things as transportation, taxes, workplace injuries and illnesses, elevated cost of living, etc.

              and moreover, the compounding results of that are wages shrinking further as fewer people have more wealth, thus more control over the production of value.

              Unless, of course, that doesn't happen. We've been capitalist for centuries. So there should be an insane level of wealth concentration by now, right?

          • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @10:58PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @10:58PM (#948214)

            Capitalism is absolute evil, except when limited to two or so people, like with prostitution, or just a few, like Mercenaries, or slavery, or the Market for Soylent Green. Contracts of Mutual consent.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:52PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:52PM (#948857) Journal
              You do realize you're not really limiting it much by those use cases? And I take it "absolute evil" doesn't mean much these days.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 24 2020, @07:06PM (2 children)

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday January 24 2020, @07:06PM (#948070) Journal

        And the flip side of that coin is that they've also watered down the term socialism to the point of absurdity by labeling literally every proposal that helps people as socialism.

        Obamacare is socialism? Well I like being able to buy my own health insurance.
        The EPA is socialism? Well I like rivers that aren't flammable.

        Etc, etc...

        • (Score: 1) by Ron on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:10PM (1 child)

          by Ron (5774) on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:10PM (#948475)

          I managed to shut down a "socialism is pure evil" advocate by bringing up the military, public schools and the highway system.

          His argument (he happens to be very rich) was that socialism is evil because it takes your hard earned money away to spread it around to everyone else, and that's just not right.

          I pointed out that's exactly how our public schools are funded. He didn't care. "Private schools are better," he said.
          What about the military? We all chip in to pay for that. "Damn right we do," he said.
          Public highways. Imagine having to negotiate a separate transit contract with every landowner between Florida and California to get your goods across the country? Imagine having to go around huge tracts of land owned by wealthy assholes who don't want anyone on their half of the state. All the varying road conditions, rules and regulations... Some aspects of socialism are good. Like the CDC, NASA, Food Safety... We all pay for these in taxes, and taxes that don't go to a king are a socialist construct.
          He actually hung his head and said nothing. I suspect he was just fuming. Some people simply will not see beyond their own circumstances.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:52PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:52PM (#948551)

            I managed to shut down a "socialism is pure evil" advocate by bringing up the military, public schools and the highway system.

            None of these things are inherently socialist.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday January 24 2020, @08:09PM (10 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Friday January 24 2020, @08:09PM (#948105) Homepage Journal

        Remove the boomer soviet-communists-will-kill-us-all-with-nukes indoctrination that my generation never had and there's very little actual deterrence to socialism.

        And anyone who works hard to make a decent living.

        You want to experience socialism? Nobody's stopping you from giving all your income above the poverty line to people below it. You can experience it any time you like.

        Oh, did you mean you wanted someone else's money? Fuck off, you're not getting mine.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 5, Funny) by ikanreed on Friday January 24 2020, @08:15PM

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @08:15PM (#948111) Journal

          ok, boomer

          (no really, way to miss the point of the fuckin post as much as is humanly possible)

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:50PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:50PM (#948134)

          Soooo you're an idiot who doesn't understand democratic socialism? Got it, please go suck off all the CEOs who got corporste bailouts on my dine thaaaaaaanks.

          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:44AM (2 children)

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:44AM (#948334) Homepage Journal

            I understand the "other people" in "other people's money" means everyone who takes care of themselves. I'm not interested in being forced at gunpoint to foot the bill for lazy fucks and dumbasses. Find a solution that doesn't involve taking from me without my consent.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:51PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:51PM (#948516)

              Ok boomboom, your tired points are tired and you are a spineless coward

        • (Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday January 24 2020, @11:03PM (4 children)

          by aristarchus (2645) on Friday January 24 2020, @11:03PM (#948218) Journal

          C'mon, Flautulent Buzzard! We all know you do not have enough money to be worth coming after! You would be dead weight in a Socialist society! What we really want from you is your coding skills, and you seem to be willing to donate these to SN for free! Thanks, Comrade!

          • (Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:46AM (3 children)

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:46AM (#948335) Homepage Journal

            It's not free. I get to smack you around any time I feel like it. That's more than payment enough.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:02AM (2 children)

              by aristarchus (2645) on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:02AM (#948416) Journal

              This is where commodification breaks down under Capitalism. You think you are getting something out of this, but all other Soylentils get much more utility out of smacking you around, especially when you cannot tell you have been smote! Thanks again, Comrade!

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @08:40PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @08:40PM (#948599)

                I gotta say, his willpower is impressive! To ignore reality and be a massively hypocritical douche and still think he is winning requires some serious dedication.

              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:53PM

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:53PM (#948896) Homepage Journal

                That's only a problem if you mistakenly think wealth is a zero sum game. We create wealth in near infinite forms every day from nothing.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 24 2020, @07:51PM (2 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 24 2020, @07:51PM (#948089)

      If you insist that the business cover external costs, like air pollution, then it will adapt to avoid them.

      The way I've seen this done, most often, is hiding the air pollution like scrubbers that "accidentally" get left off more than they are supposed to, or straight up relocating factories overseas or anywhere with a more pollution friendly legal structure.

      Number two is the old operate until you're caught and then legally collapse and bankrupt the entity that got caught - taking all the profits that were sequestered during operations to start up a fresh new (and often government subsidized) entity and do it all over again.

      Forcing personal responsibility tied to corporate operations would at least slow down the repeat offenders.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday January 24 2020, @10:38PM (1 child)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 24 2020, @10:38PM (#948197) Journal

        Yes, it does require serious enforcement. So do laws against bank robbery.

        The problem has been that there hasn't been serious enforcement, so the result has been largely PR.

        Also, the pollution laws don't require that the company pay to clean up the pollution they allow to escape, but rather that they not let it escape. This is a mistake. If taxes on pollution and non-recycled waste were the enforcement, governments would have a lot more interest in enforcement. (Unfortunately, this would have the bad effect of causing the government to not want the pollution curtailed. You don't get just one effect.)

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:08PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:08PM (#948841) Journal

          Also, the pollution laws don't require that the company pay to clean up the pollution they allow to escape, but rather that they not let it escape.

          Except, of course, where those pollution laws do require clean up (spills are a common one where clean up is required). It's worth noting here that a lot of pollution simply isn't economical to clean up. If I emit a bunch of mercury vapor to the air from my shitty coal power plant, there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle without ridiculous effort, such as digging up vast tracks of top soil and removing the trace amounts of mercury.

          If taxes on pollution and non-recycled waste were the enforcement, governments would have a lot more interest in enforcement.

          Non-recycled waste is not pollution! You should not be equating those two. We can always recycle trash later with better technologies and actual need for recycling.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 24 2020, @05:22PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday January 24 2020, @05:22PM (#948019)

    individaul bad actors

    Define individual. Oftentimes, an industry gets into competition with itself (good Capitalism, right?) and the winners are the ones who externalize the most costs possible - using low cost or outright illegal labor, dumping up to and beyond legal limits in the public watersheds, exploitation of "the commons" is the usual theme. So, the "winners" supply us with whatever it is we're paying for at a lower price and/or higher profit, but we're screwing ourselves by encouraging them to cut the price regardless of the cost.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday January 26 2020, @01:54PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 26 2020, @01:54PM (#948838) Journal

    Climate change, increasing inequality, poverty, and social isolation.

    That's a pretty small list for the supposed problems of capitalism. I grant climate change, though it's pretty modest a problem for the benefit we're getting in exchange. The next two, increasing inequality and poverty, I don't grant. Poverty, by far the more important of the two, is getting better, contrary to assertion. And I'd take inequality more seriously, if people were actually trying to reduce that inequality. But with so many people not interested in saving money (the primary way to build wealth), it becomes non problem for me. Moving on, why are we blaming social isolation on capitalism again? It's a non sequitur.

    You want to get people back behind capitalism, it has to be something extreme

    Nonsense. We didn't get to these nice societies in the first place through extreme capitalism. Go back to what works.