Homeless given luxury condos in Brooklyn

[aelf]

So the definition of capitalism is not subjective?

No, it isn't.

 

[Imperialmajesty]

No, it isn't.

Then we are fundamentally in disagreement.

 

[Narz]

A definition shouldn't be subjective. Interpretation is what's subjective.

 

[Archbob]

I thought you wanted to be a freeloader now?

Yeah, except if everyone was a freeloader, there would be no one to pay the bills because well freeloader are kinda of worthless to society.

 

[MobBoss]

Yeah, except if everyone was a freeloader, there would be no one to pay the bills because well freeloader are kinda of worthless to society.

Dont they sit around and play flash games all day?

 

[aelf]

Then we are fundamentally in disagreement.

We're not. You just don't understand what capitalism is, and are probably mixing it up with various degrees of free market doctrines.

Yeah, except if everyone was a freeloader, there would be no one to pay the bills because well freeloader are kinda of worthless to society.

But you said you want to be a freeloader too. So you want to be worthless? I see.

 

[Archbob]

But you said you want to be a freeloader too. So you want to be worthless? I see.

Well, it would be nice to get something for not doing anything. But I like being worth something too, more than I like leeching. Also precious tax dollars should not be wasted by putting worthless people in plush condos. Thats just stupid.

You reap what you sow and in this case, those people have sowed nothing.

 

[Imperialmajesty]

We're not. You just don't understand what capitalism is, and are probably mixing it up with various degrees of free market doctrines.



But you said you want to be a freeloader too. So you want to be worthless? I see.

Please enlighten me, O sage of infinite wisdom.

 

[aelf]

Well, it would be nice to get something for not doing anything. But I like being worth something too, more than I like leeching.

So you got to decide which you prefer.

Please enlighten me, O sage of infinite wisdom.

I already said it. Where you have capital, you have capitalism. It's not arcane knowledge.

 

[JollyRoger]

They give free condos?

Hell, why do I even bother working at all?

I know. I once worked as a trust administrator at a bank. Knew of hundreds of worthless fools living in condos that hadn't worked a day in their lives.

 

[mrt144]

I know. I once worked as a trust administrator at a bank. Knew of hundreds of worthless fools living in condos that hadn't worked a day in their lives.

 

[mrt144]

You're clueless, living in a fantasy world, as are most capitalism fanboys. Scarcity is the base of modern economics. Without scarcity capitalism cannot function, with too much scarcity capitalism cannot function. Capitalism is a delicate creature that's been able to survive during this very unique period in history & soon will die off, never to be seen again. People who see it as some sort of universal truth or pinnacle of evolution or perfect fit for man's nature scare me.

It wasn't ever alive, it's just been gestating in the social contract for a few decades and looking to be miscarried.

 

[Aegis]

Yet you say capitalism does not exist unless the vast majority is made up of extremely poor people.

I said nothing of the sort.

Let's take a look at what you said, then:

Incorrect. A capitalistic system means there will be a very small number of extremely rich people and a very large number of extremely poor. The only way a capitalist system could function without a large number of very poor people is if we all had robot butlers that ran on sunbeams.

You make it sound as if they outnumber everyone else. Why else would you bolden large and say that there are a "very large number of extremely poor." ? The extremely poor come nowhere close to matching the numbers of the Middle Class in the US. There being large numbers of poor in other countries is irrelevant because there is not causation between rich US and poor nation A-Z.

If Americans had to pay the true social & environmental costs of our products we would not be affluent. Well, we might be even more affluent on some levels but not in the same way. People (and animals & the ecosystem as a whole) are exploited for the comfort of Americans. Your denial of this doesn't change it's reality (sadly it's part of what allows it to exist).

I'm sorry, but capitalism works because there is not huge amounts of extremely poor people. We are a consumerist society. Capitalism requires people to spend money on luxuries and buy stuff as much as possible, as often as possible. People don't do that if they're extremely poor. Even the poorest people in the US are rich compared to the poor in other countries.

Why are the extremely poor in other countries poor? I would imagine it has more to do with their system of government/economics, GDP, GNP, lack of education, food, clean water and natural resources, rather than because people in the US are rich.

 

[Narz]

It's amazing how people don't read even when you clarify numerous times.

I didn't see the very poor outnumber the middle class in the US (yet), I said the very poor outnumber the middle class worldwide. Unless you consider living on $2 a day middle class.

 

[LucyDuke]

But I like being worth something too, more than I like leeching.

Me too. Most people do, actually. Everybody likes free stuff, but most people prefer some dignity.

You reap what you sow and in this case, those people have sowed nothing.

Do you really believe that all of these people are worthless bums?

 

[Alassius]

Wrong. Pick up any macroeconomic textbook that deals with growth and there's high chance that it talks about poverty being also a cause of poor institutions. Well, why not? If a country is poor, corruption is much more likely, and the will to fight it much lower. And who can pay for a good judicial system if the country is poor? Maintaining a good police force? How about dealing with bands of marauding rebels? That's why these countries need loans, yes? You think the World Bank isn't aware since the 1970s or 80s of the importance of good institutions and isn't trying to implement them through its aid coupled with conditionalities? Too bad the economic conditionalities often end up ruining the project.

This is pretty much common sense, and it's probably your hackery that prevents you from seeing or admitting it.

All you said were reasons why it is hard to reform poor institutions, not why poor institutions were there in the first place. In particular, poor institutions were not caused by poverty, and they are not tied together. There is no reason to say poor institutions cannot be removed from the poor countries, or that the poor countries cannot become richer in such a way, which was your original proposition.

Profit motive is a deal with the devil. It's a powerful economic force, yes, but it also has the potential to cause a lot of problems. Ideally, profit motive should be balanced with ethical considerations and a sense of solidarity with your fellowmen, but these very sentiments are undermined by having a society that is primarily driven by the profit motive. It's a catch-22. This is what the critique of capitalism revolves around nowadays, not the same old all-or-nothing stuff that capitalists still imagine they are engaged with.

Government is a powerful force, yes, but it also has the potential to cause a lot more problems than profit motive. Ideally, politicians' motive should be balanced with ethical considerations and a sense of solidarity with your fellowmen, but these very sentiments are undermined because politicians have always, always been corrupt. Even after you think you have removed the profit motive, the politicians began to wield the power of distribution instead, and they used it in a much more sinister way.

Pick a crime done by a capitalist, and I can find a crime done by a government that is ten times worse. Why is it that you only have a problem with capitalists, but not governments?

And your understanding of capitalism utterly nonsensical. You're talking about the free market, I presume? But the 'free market' is not really all that free because capitalists wouldn't be limited (i.e. prevented from attempting to destroy competition) without a strong government limiting their power, so you're talking out of your arse. Limiting the government is done through the political process, and the less free capitalists are, the less likely they are able to wield a disproportionate influence to interfere with the political process.

Yet the less free capitalists are, the more likely the government is able to wield a disproportionate influence to interfere with the people's lives. Lock up all capitalists, you end up with Soviet Union. How did political process help the people there?

You cannot think of governments as a panacea for all. No matter how you set up your political process, your government is going to make stupid mistakes, including being influenced by capitalists. A government is necessary to limit the power of capitalists, but the government itself must also be limited. That's the whole point behind America's Bill of Rights.

Not reading ftw.

I have no further comment on that.

I already said it. Where you have capital, you have capitalism. It's not arcane knowledge.

This is where you got it wrong. Capitalism is not about capital. If it is, it would be no different from authoritarianism. The limitations to capital, through laws against, say, murder, is as important a part of capitalism as the protection of private capital. In a functioning capitalist society, a capitalist would not be able to destroy his competition except through offering better products and lower prices, if he is both forbidden from say killing his competitor, and unable to influence the government to kill his competitor, because the government is forbidden from that also. In much of the poorer parts of the world, it is the second case that is the most problematic.

Your mistake is to think the second case can be solved by limiting the capitalists. It can't. Capitalists are not the only source of wrongdoings of the government. The government itself is very well capable of that. Can you argue that the economic plight in Zimbabwe was because of capitalists influencing the government? Or that the warlords in Somalia waged wars on the advices of capitalists? Or that the Great Leap Forward was because of capitalist roaders?

Capitalism as an ideology started as a movement against the absolute powers of the state and the church. It's not meant to simply replace the state with the capitalist class. It's meant to offer freedom to everyone regardless of their birth, through limiting any kind of coercion. It simply sees the government as the biggest source of coercion. It doesn't mean that a limited government cannot be of good or that the government must be abolished. The anarcho-capitalists are mistaken on this aspect as much as Karl Marx himself was mistaken. If you actually read classical liberals, you will find that their idea of capitalism is not what you are attacking. It may not be arcane knowledge, but apparently it's not one that you have grasped.

You're clueless, living in a fantasy world, as are most capitalism fanboys. Scarcity is the base of modern economics. Without scarcity capitalism cannot function, with too much scarcity capitalism cannot function. Capitalism is a delicate creature that's been able to survive during this very unique period in history & soon will die off, never to be seen again. People who see it as some sort of universal truth or pinnacle of evolution or perfect fit for man's nature scare me.

Scarcity is the reason we need capitalism. It's precisely why communism cannot work, because there isn't enough to distribute "according to his need", once this need becomes more than simply food and shelter.

But it is not a reason why poor countries have to be poor. Scarcity simply means we actually need ways to distribute products instead of letting everyone "take all your can". It means not everyone can have a jet or eat caviar every day. It doesn't mean we do not have enough resources to feed and keep warm everyone.

It's amazing how people don't read even when you clarify numerous times.

I didn't see the very poor outnumber the middle class in the US (yet), I said the very poor outnumber the middle class worldwide. Unless you consider living on $2 a day middle class.

But the US is a capitalist country. Those countries with a very large number of extremely poor are not capitalist. Don't confuse authoritarianism with capitalism.

 

[Archbob]

Me too. Most people do, actually. Everybody likes free stuff, but most people prefer some dignity.



Do you really believe that all of these people are worthless bums?

There's a large portion of them are are just drug addicting and career bums. You can confirm this by asking anyone who works in a soup kitchen.

Yes, there are some that have been recently laid off, but those people usually don't stay this way for long.


Narz, last time I checked, it was the Non-capitalist countries that weren't doing so well.

 

[Bill3000]

There's a large portion of them are are just drug addicting and career bums. You can confirm this by asking anyone who works in a soup kitchen.

Statistically speaking, only 10% of the homeless are permanent.

 

[Archbob]

Statistically speaking, only 10% of the homeless are permanent.

Where the source for that?

 

[lovett]

You're clueless, living in a fantasy world, as are most capitalism fanboys. Scarcity is the base of modern economics. Without scarcity capitalism cannot function, with too much scarcity capitalism cannot function. Capitalism is a delicate creature that's been able to survive during this very unique period in history & soon will die off, never to be seen again. People who see it as some sort of universal truth or pinnacle of evolution or perfect fit for man's nature scare me.

I don't think you really understand what he's saying.

Basically, natural resource richness does not correlate with long term high standards of living. Indeed, in many cases they do quite the opposite. The canonical rich world example of this is The Netherlands. 1959 the Netherlands found huge gas fields off their coast. For a decade they're entire economy suffered as a result. For the discussion at hand, a better example includes cases of conflict. Note the difference between the risk of conflict at different primary export levels; at 25% of GDP there's about 33% chance of a conflict occurring in any given year. At 5% that risk drops to a 6% probability. Angola is a pretty good example of this. And let us not forget Nigeria. In the late 60's Nigeria realised it had a fortune in oil on its hands. It started extracting it. Billions of dollars rolled in. A naive view would imagine that Nigeria pulled itself out of poverty with these funds. But that's not what happened at all. Instead Nigeria became crippled by corruption. It's paper democracy became a full-blow military dictatorship. It became crippled by international debt.

Incidentally this isn't 'fantasy world' theorising. This is a firmly established empirically effect.


Of course theories have been formed to explain this affect. As has been mentioned, political institutions are of enormous, perhaps pre-eminent, importance in allowing economic growth. Resource wealth cripples political institutions. It completely divorces a government from those it governs and allows enormous temptation for corruption. In a normal society government garners its funds from a general body of taxpayers who tend to somewhat hold it to account. In a resource boom country, government garners its funds from resource industries. They can be as incompetent or repressive as they want and there is little to hold them to account.

Resource wealth also tend to cripple manufacturing industries. It does this in two ways. Firstly, booming extraction industries suck jobs away from traditional manufacturer employers. There result is a general atrophy of a countries production capacity. Especially bad when those resources start to run out. Moreover resource exports increase the exchange rate. Obviously this makes manufacturers much less competitive, which has much the same affect.