I was just playing Devil's Advocate. Just to see the wisdom in your responses. And I have been agreeing with your responses so far.Palindromemordnilap said:
[Politics]How long until we eat the rich?
- Thread starter Drathnoxis
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The corporate lobby is definitely too powerful no disagreement there. I also think they receive way too many tax benefits compared to smaller businesses. But that is not the issue here. Without companies taking financial risks none of the products they put out would be made in the first place. Profit goes to the shareholders since they also take the brunt of the risk and if they are OK with the CEO earning a ''100 billion'' bonus it can only mean he delivered in increasing the value of their stock. And what if a privately owned company started out by investing personal savings and the founder became rich should that money be taken away as well? Way too ruin entrepeneurial spirit and destroy an economy.Agema said:
"Working hard" is neither necessary nor sufficient to "be rewarded lots of money." It's mostly unrelated; if hard work is involved, there are other factors which are more explanatory. Hard work leading to wealth is as much of an exception for wage and salaried laborers as it is for slaves and serfs.generals3 said:
Why should we rely on the decision of someone like that to determine who gets the means of production in the first place?generals3 said:
Bullshit. Anytime a big enough company loses out on a "risk", the holding company and shareholders get paid out and customers and labor gets shafted. And that's before the company calls in a favor and gets a government bailout. How the fuck do you think venture capitalism works? Long story short, the capitalists make a boat load of cash by transferring the debt of buying a company directly to the company they bought, then file for bankruptcy when, surprise, it's unsustainable. At no point is the capitalist risking losing moneystroopwafel said:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/30/1702985/-How-Private-Equity-Destroyed-Toys-R-Us
https://abc7news.com/business/pg-e-bankruptcy-heres-how-itll-affect-customers-employees-shareholders/5076360/
In this case the reward is indeed not for effort but rather risk and blocking of wealth you can no longer use for something else.Satinavian said:
Many security guards are paid for doing nothing almost all of their time, they're basically paid for blocking their time and not their effort either. I don't see the problem?
Is this meant to be ironic? I don't think North Korea is even remotely equal, while Kim Jong Un lives like a depraved billionaire millions are malnourished and there is a risk of famine. This idea communist societies were more equal is a myth caused by the destruction of the upper middle class. There was less wealth dispersion but there have always been rich elites and a vast majority of poor/lower middle class citizens. All that happened was the impoverishment of the higher middle class and the transfer of wealth from rich capitalists to rich party associates/leaders. Even in Venezuela this can be observed, where the military top brass was given responsibility over key sectors and consequently also key income sources for themselves.
I don't really think technological progress will help solve the fundamental flaws of planned economies. Namely that planned economies tend to be the worst kind of monopolies. Where the state holds the monopoly over production, distribution, sales and legislation of its own industry. When I see how hard it is for politicians to setup good governance rules of the para-public sector over here and how it is (ab)used to enrich members of parties I have no faith whatsoever they'll do any better if they owned the entire economy.
At least now you can hold companies (somewhat) accountable by being able to go to their competition or file lawsuits or vote for politicians who want to increase regulation. In a planned economy there is no competition, and the political classes' interests do not merely converge (due to lobbying and corruption) with that of the "companies" they have become one.
You're right low wages can prevent employees from making meaningful investments in the company they work for. However we wouldn't need to get rid of capitalism and go for a socialist/communist system to solve that.Agema said:
And employees could invest together and appoint representatives during shareholders meetings instead of going through funds. I'll grant that when you look at the valuation of certain companies that will still unlikely give them a lot of power but some power is still better than nothing. And an old colleague of mine also said that owning stocks in the company you work for can hedge against risks of decreasing wages or restructuring which leads to your layoff due to the stock market's positive response to such moves. You lose in wage but gain in stock value/dividend.
But yes i'll agree that this does require a wage increase in order for employees to have some spare money to invest in company stock.
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I think this should come with the caveat that if the company goes under, you risk losing both your job and investment at the same time. Not a great place to be, as many former Enron employees will tell you. For most people, I would imagine that the relative safety of a diversified mutual fund (or owning a number of stocks spread across sectors) would outweigh the minimal influence that holding your own company's stock would provide.generals3 said:
Off course, at that point it's a double loss. It was meant in the context of this topic where the underlying assumption is that wealthy investors and executives make a lot of money at the expense of the employees. If you believe there is a real chance of your company going down you'd better avoid its stocks, and tbh also staying employed there.JoJo said:
(Also note there was certain amount of cynicism in that idea)
Are you honestly arguing for a system that has historically been proven to not work and never have worked any time it's been tried? How many time do we have to see communism and planned economies flounder and choke to death in their own blood before people will get the message through their thick skulls that it doesn't work? How can one argue that a system that destroyed the fourth largest lake in the world is somehow logical or rational?Satinavian said:
Yeah sure, investors all hope a company goes bankrupt b/c some venture capitalists transferred all the debt and sold their stock before the company tanked. Makes total sense.altnameJag said:
Most investors don't even make a lot of short-term revenue like eg the hedge funds do. That is also why I said shareholder culture is bad, b/c it speculates on immediate fluctuations. That is bad for both employees and sustainability. Why would a venture capitalist buy a company that is already far in the red figures? To sell parts that still make a profit and restructure the rest. Other than the hedge funds it are usually the shareholders who want to prevent this at all costs.
Also private equity didn't destroy Toys R Us, online shopping did. They were simply no longer competitive in a changing market.
As opposed to Capitalism which is on its way to destroying the entire planet? We should not make the mistake of confounding Plan Economy with Communism. The latter has plenty of blood on its hands, but Plan Economies are somewhat sustainable if much more rigid then Free Market economies. The harsh truth is that we need to start rationing our necessities and cutting back on our luxuries if we want to have a chance in hell of preserving the current ecosystem on Earth. Capitalism simply can't do that, because it would, literally, destroy the very foundation upon which capitalism rests. Plan economies are, however, very suited for rationing and lean living, simply because the goal is not to make profit by constantly providing more product, but to make as much product as mandated.Specter Von Baren said:
Realistically, neither system is a good fit for the challenges facing mankind in the coming decades, but I'd rather take the system that won't race us to our doom over the one which is structurally incapable of slowing down production.
This isn't a million miles from what some of these types do.stroopwafel said:
Some of my colleagues got specialist equipment from a small biotech firm that was stable and profitable (if not stellar). It was taken over by venture capitalists: they made a load of assurances to its customers, and then basically canned it to use it as a tax write-off for their other ventures. It might not have been as sexy as some boom investment vehicle that could get them bigger returns, but it was a perfectly viable company with plenty of dependent employees.
The only way to mitigate climate change is to address overpopulation, and the only way to address overpopulation is the free market. The free market has proven the richer a country gets the less children it will conceive. You also have misplaced trust in governments to do something about climate change, as they have proven to be historically incompetent. Most of the initiatives for clean and sustainable energies come from the private sector. Governments can only spend, spend, spend and riddle a country with debt. They are very wasteful. If a company was as incompetent as government it would go bankrupt in 1 day. That is the difference between the free market and government, a government has no repercussions for failure. It just goes on and on and on. Without ever having any impulse to change cause hey, there is always more of the tax payer's money to waste.Gethsemani said:
True, small companies are very vulnerable to those vultures. I definitely won't disagree that there should be laws to prevent these kind of takeovers.Agema said:
[Citation Needed]stroopwafel said:
[Citation Needed]stroopwafel said:
No. Firstly, easy access to contraception is the biggest reason we are seeing rich countries have a lower birthrate. Second, the drop in birthrates in rich countries are tied to high standards of living, which isn't necessarily the same as the free market. For example, China is also seeing really low birthrates in their booming middle class and China is definitely not a free market.stroopwafel said:
In the Trump thread you argue that he's not that bad because he's incompetent, not nefarious. This is a similar situation: Governments might be incompetent (though for each incompetent government in a functional first world nation, I can show you a functional one), but capitalistic corporations are by their very existence nefarious. If the choice is between someone who might hurt me because they don't know what they are doing and someone who will hurt me the moment it benefits them, I'm going with the incompetent guy every time.stroopwafel said:
Your problem here is that you are thinking in terms of capitalistic doctrine. If we got rid of the free market and replaced it with a government (or UN or whatever) controlled Plan Economy, how exactly will the government work up debt? Debt requires money lenders and money lenders are not useful in a system without money. The reason the USSR's plan economy tanked was because it focused too much on military production, something the US exploited to start an arm's race that crippled the USSR's economy. But before that it had been functional (if not always good) for over 50 years.stroopwafel said:
Besides, do I really need to point out that Trump was hemorrhaging money in the 80's and 90's, to the tune of billions of dollars in total over a decade, and somehow his companies didn't "go bankrupt in 1 day" despite being vastly more incompetent then any government ever to grace the western world. Free market capitalism doesn't promote companies that do good as much as it promotes savage companies that will do any underhanded thing to stay in business and fuck over its competition, see Agema's post at 112 for a stellar example.
While I totally agree a lot of socialists/greens should start addressing the elephant in the room which is the ever growing population. (Funny how many want to stop economic growth and thus reduce GDP/Capita but not reduce the population, also reducing output and pollution but at least giving the future generations a life worth living) But saying the Free market is the only way to do so is something I would have to disagree with. China managed to stop their population growth through regulation and heck one could say the famines caused by Stalin, Mao and the Kim's were great for the climate. A good start would be for developing countries to stop subsidizing childbirth in their nations (welfare based on amount of children) and abroad (by allowing large immigration). But that would result in the people who are the loudest about the climate to sponatenously combust because being loyal to the politically correct progressive agenda tends to be more important than the planet.stroopwafel said:
Ehmmm..simple observation of the facts? Less people means less pollution for obvious reasons. And the more developed a country is, the less offspring it will produce.Gethsemani said:
How is China not a free market when western economies outsourced almost it's entire production to them? How is China not a free market when the global economy wouldn't even exist without the long supply lines with China? How is China not a free market when the U.S. sees one of the biggest cyber security threats in Huawei? How is China not a free market when millions of people have been lifted out of poverty? How is China not a free market when Chinese corporations own pretty much the entire fleet of ocean carriers the world economy depends on? I could go on and on but you get the idea. Maybe you think China could have accomplished all this with Mao still in control idk. You confuse free market with representative democracy which are not necessarily mutually inclusive. That the CP keeps a tight leash on government doesn't exclude the fact their economy is so competitive it threatens U.S. hegemony as the global superpower. Do you honestly believe they could accomplish this with a plan economy? Lol, no.
The reason for low birth figures isn't contraception, that is just a method, the reason is that women have rights in developed countries they don't have in poor countries. They can go to school, get a good job, not be dependent on a husband. All these things you value so much are only possible because of prosperity. Name me one country in the world that isn't a free market that holds any of those women's rights dear.
Right. So who made the computer you are using now? The clothes you wear? The food you eat? The videogames you enjoy so much? The only nefarious thing about a corporation is the abuse of capital gain by stakeholders but the pursuit of profit stands in stark contrast to the ideological hubris of governments and their incompetent tax wasting policies the private sector(not just huge corporations) worked hard for. Just because governments are a necessary evil doesn't make them preferable and maybe 'incompetence' is the highest accomplishment given the historic alternatives.
You can't possibly argue the Soviet plan economy was 'functional' for over 50 years. Unless ofcourse you think famine, forced collectivization, zero creativity and mass murders is a good time. When Germany was divided between east and west ofcourse everyone wanted to flea to the communist east right?
No it doesn't. Did the taxpayer foot the bill for Trump's fuck ups? No. People only complain he didn't pay enough. Do the taxpayer foot the bill for the government's fuck ups? YES.
TL DR: You don't know much about Chinese economic policy.stroopwafel said:
You use Huawei's probable spying for the Chinese government as a indication of free market, really? What you should take from that is that Huawei is only allowed to operate on a global market because the Chinese government allows it and it does so while under serious pressure to comply with anything the government demands, up to and including putting spyware and spy firmware into their products, because China has a law that mandates that all Chinese companies co-operate with Chinese intelligence gathering efforts.
China is a hybrid economy at best, but the massive restrictions and regulations of companies in China prevents it from being a free market. At its worst it is Huawei spying for the Chinese government, in more innocuous examples you can look at how companies like Valve, Netflix, Spotify etc. all have to seriously alter their products to be allowed into the interior market of China.
For comparison: For a long while in the 50's-80's the USSR was the biggest exporter of weapons and munitions and had the third largest merchant fleet in the world. That didn't make the USSR anything but a Plan Economy that operated on a global market.
China. Incidentally, China sees just the same effect of middle class families having less children as we see in the west. Also, you are now conflating free market for democracy, the same thing you accused me of doing in the same post. Pot. Kettle. Black.stroopwafel said:
You'll also notice I said easy access to contraception. It doesn't matter how well educated you are, how cushy your job is or how independent you are; if you can't get access to a condom, birth control pills or similar, every time you have sex with your partner is a potential risk of pregnancy. This is why the biggest decrease in birth rates occurs when contraception is legalized and easy to access, with a lesser effect occurring when prosperity reaches a certain level.
So if you really wanted to prevent overpopulation, a good place to start would be to oppose Republican's desire to outlaw abortion and curtail sex ed.
These have nothing in common. Who made clothes in the USSR? Who made music albums, popularized and exported Tetris and provided children with summer activities in the USSR? The state (well, technically, Tetris was invented by one man, but you get the idea). I am well aware that everything in my household (including the very apartment I am in) is a product of private companies operating on a market. That means nothing other then that I live in a capitalistic society. You keep making the mistake of not seeing that even though we live in a capitalistic society there can be other options.stroopwafel said:
But if I cut to the meat of your argument: The computer I am typing this on has, most likely, been made by underpaid workers in China or Taiwan who labor under poor working conditions and long hours. Its components are probably made up of rare materials primarily taken from Africa where the repeated human rights violations of mining companies in places like Congo to extract the materials needed to make electronics for the west is well documented. You can say whatever you want about it, but when several human rights violations happens just so that someone can make more of a profit from a GPU meant for gaming, that's pretty fucking nefarious.
And that's even without going into things like Lundin Oil trying to instigate civil war so that they could buy land for exploitation cheaper, to name some really sketchy shit. Or maybe Facebook selling private information to anyone without properly informing users about what information it would sell and to whom. Governments do bad shit to, no doubt about it, but corporations are not any better and are often worse as they actually lack any sort of moral base aside from "MOAR CASH NAO!"
Now you are conflating the economics of plan economy with the politics of communism. Please don't.stroopwafel said:
As was stated amply in the other thread: Trump made sure the workers, contractors and other people associated with his business paid for his fuck-ups. No matter how you dice it, when people fuck up and looses tons of cash, someone pays for it. And for the workers who went without pay and the companies that went out of business because Trump refused to pay for services and goods rendered, I doubt it is a small comfort that it was them who took the fall and not the general tax payer.stroopwafel said:
Sure, and ofcourse there were no political motives from the U.S. when they arrested Huawei's CFO last december whatsoever. The PRISM mass surveillance company that collects information from U.S. internet companies is ofcourse also totally voluntary.Gethsemani said:
I used Huawei as an example as it's one of the most innovative and succesful Chinese companies that could only develop in a free market that is now as competitive(maybe even more so) as it's western contemporaries. Huawei is not to blame for misuse similarly as American ISPs are not responsible for PRISM or any kind of government mandated interception.
Censorship is definitely a problem that is also why I said China isn't a representative democracy(in that way it differs from the west) but do you honestly believe Valve, Netflix etc would have access to China weren't it for a free market in the first place?
The USSR was definitely very good at making a shitload of AK47's still used en masse by terrorists and warlords to this day. Whether that is something worthy of praise is a matter of conjecture. Please name a single contribution of the USSR to the global economy that was actually constructive.
No, I don't. I said a free market makes a country more prosperous, and when a country becomes more prosperous women will have less children. Case in point: China.
Yeah, but what a coicidence it is right, that the countries where birth control pills and condoms are readily available all happen to be free markets?
No disagreement there. I have nothing with the irrational beliefs of religious nutters.
You can't honestly believe a plan economy could operate on the same level of efficiency as a free market. The USSR tried it but became so horribly inefficient that it collapsed in on itself. Cuba tried it with people trying to literally swim to Miami in order to escape it. North Korea still tries it but that country is so brainwashed they honestly believe the famine and going blind from malnutrition is still better than the alternative the Dear Leader protects them from. Venezuela tried it but well, I don't think any further explanation is needed at this point.
You are propagating what is probaly the worst economic system ever devised by man and one of the worst tragedies of the 20th century. Anything wrong with capitalism stands in no comparison.
Again you will find no disagreement that we need to head for a more sustainable future, with clean energy, care for the environment and where people are paid decent wages. And if companies violate human rights they should be held accountable. But what you fail to acknowledge is the millions of lives corporations have improved with their products and services. The lives they saved with medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. Or the innovation they achieve with renewable energy and electric cars. All these things that only exist because of the free market.
See my previous comment there are definitely some evil companies and oil companies are at the top but don't forget they only exist to satiate a demand, a demand that would not be any different if a government was in charge of oil exploitation. Infact it are most often the governments that privileged oil companies in favor of alternative energies because of strategic interests, so it's not like the companies are entirely to blame. It's mostly government policy that have made fossile fuels so profitable by benefiting from a powerful corporate lobby. That is why I think there should be laws for cronie capitalism, as this isn't free market.
I believe Lenin and Marx wrote their manifests in good intention, until Stalin executed it. That is when you see the flaws in the system. But like they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Not something you'll willfully want to repeat though.
stroopwafel said:
Then they made the mistake of not asking payment upfront, which is the most feasible thing to do when making large costs. If Trump really was such a con-man no one would want to work with or for him, yet the opposite is true. He has no problems finding employees, financers or contractors so I have yet to see any evidence this was anything but incidental, if not influenced by alterior motive.
