Where Capitalism Fails

[DetroitDad]

http://money.cnn.com/video/fortune/2..._fail.fortune/

"If you ask capitalism to do what it clearly can't, to deal with social objectives, you will set it up for failure, and you will set society up for failure".

"In my line of business, the historic capitalist model has been; explore, exploit, extract, export, leave ghost towns, hence the resource curse..."

I am very interested to see why some of you think these quotes and the video is incorrect.

[firstandten]

I feel neither the quotes or video were incorrect. Regulated capitalism is a key to addressing social issues and making sure the common man has a stake in our economic system, while enabling us to maintain a level of wealth unheard of in other societies.

The key is striking a balance between regulations and capitalism.

We may have gone too far in one direction during the great society years and we are now just coming back from going too far in the other direction for the last 30 years.

People think that the market will serve as the balance to capitalism. Markets can be too easily manipulated. Getting perfect information about markets is what makes laissez-faire capitalism work. Finding perfect information is next to impossible. In other words how can we make the buyer beware, if the buyer doesn't know what to beware of?

Just to give a simple example.

People say that the market should dictate that companies do not discriminate in their hiring practices. That the market will make companies pay for discriminating against people of color or age or sexual orientation, by them losing business and good employees to companies that don't discriminate. But its actually the regulations that make companies pay for discrimination. If companies get caught, its the regulations that require companies to pay huge fines to the victims and not the market. And to ultimately force companies to do the right thing.

Were it not for the regulations the company that discriminates would just go merrily along its way piling up quarter after quarter of profits not worrying or caring that they discriminate.

So thats why countries like S. Africa is so concerned about how capitalism affects there society. The possibility for civil unrest is great but on the other hand they want a functioning economy.

Its a balancing act.

[Retroit]

Regulations can be just as harmful to society as they are beneficial. Discrimination was a legal regulation at one time.

[Jimaz]

'Just Business': Capitalism is an Anti-Social Disease

Let’s face it. Capitalism is a disease--a raging infection that causes its hosts to become sociopaths....

Now we have a well spewing toxic crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in the biggest purely man-made environmental disaster in the history of the Gulf and of the United States. That’s “just business” too: the company’s managers were paying over $1 million a day to rent the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig from TransOcean, and so they cut some corners to get the well finished so they could cap it, and get rid of the rig. Unfortunately, the corners they cut ended up causing a blowout that killed 11 men, sank the rig, and broke open the wellhead.

“Just business.”

The truth is that capitalism is but a blip in the history of mankind. Think about it....

[oladub]

Jimaz, I agree. Despotism, rather than capitalism, is the norm. How was Chernobyl a by-product of capitalism though?

[Gannon]

Nice try at creating a strawman there, Oladub.

Nobody is talking about Chernobyl. I haven't seen it in this thread, or in the article Jimaz linked to...and it does nothing on either side of the argument to propose some non-associated accident or failure, unless of course you are going to attempt the lame argument equating the economic systems because they both suffer failures!


Now...back to the topic at hand.

Capitalism is a marvelous creator and ACCUMULATOR of wealth. As long as you are at the top of the pyramid scheme, you do well. Closer to the top, the more comfortable a life you will enjoy. Anywhere OTHER than the top? Yank harder on your bootstraps, buddy.

Unless you can jump on any of the associated bandwagons of opportunity that seem to glom onto it when things are profitable and growing...and kill it very quickly when it is stagnant or worse. Things like unions [[necessary at the worst of times, more than trouble during the best of 'em), excessive regulation and taxation [[both seem necessary if you're in government, but again in the bad times laws written during good times are dangerous to the system), and usurious lawsuits [[those frivolous ones, not the basic slaps for obvious product deficiencies and company behavior) all seem to suffocate a dying or diseased system.


Then there is the infiltration of the banking industry at every level from raw material sourcing, to manufacturing, to warehousing, to retail, then to consumers...all but the smartest stack up debt during the boom years, much to their chagrin during the INEVITABLE busts. AND the use of the military to secure and insure the sourcing of raw materials and delivery of manufactured goods to market...and even the repayment of banking debts!


Nah, corporate capitalism in its current form needs an enema...after it is resuscitated, of course. Then a strict diet of ethics and morals, and perhaps a decent feedback loop of employee ownership...and corporate charters that do not automatically last forever. Make them answer to the populace they profit from...and account for their abuses of power and continual grabs for more, more, more.



I think corporate capitalism is horrible because it exacerbates, if only due the excesses of incentives, the WORST of mere human behavior. As far as I can tell, each of the seven deadly sins is greatly encouraged by this abuse of an economic system...and overall that cannot be good for humankind.


Now, if we could only morph it into a form of socio-capitalism...where there ARE some strict values placed upon the source of raw materials and the basics of raw labor...where money would always be less important than people and the environment...then there might be some hope. I don't see it happening, though...the current system has built-in stops against that sort of behavior, only allowing fully the MISbehavior that we are currently enjoying.


Cheers, anyways.

[Patrick]

Let's dig up Milton F. and see what he thinks about this eh....

[Jimaz]

The conspicuously subtle disappearance of objection to regulation in the current aftermath of Disaster Capitalism is in itself conspicuous.

We're at the cusp of the sheep beginning to recognize the wolves in sheep's clothing for what they truly are. And no, the teabaggers are not those sheep. They're just a diversion designed to appear as those sheep.

[oladub]

Nice try at creating a strawman there, Oladub.

Nobody is talking about Chernobyl. I haven't seen it in this thread, or in the article Jimaz linked to...and it does nothing on either side of the argument to propose some non-associated accident or failure, unless of course you are going to attempt the lame argument equating the economic systems because they both suffer failures!.

I thought that Jimaz's quote was a little over the top. "Capitalism is a disease--a raging infection that causes its hosts to become sociopaths...." It ignored, for instance, the Obama administration's negligence in delaying the deployment of skimmers for three months with bureaucratic nonsense or the choices it made not to impliment the full measure of regulations it was entitled to make.

How are these articles about capitalism?

U.S. exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study [[2009)

Interior Rewrites History, Erases BP From List of Finalists for Safety Award [[2009)

Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling [[2009)

Either the oil spil is completely the fault of money grubbing capitalists or the complicit regulators now under President Obama or both. I would choose the last option. Remember too that candidate Obama was the largest recipient of BP largess. He might be a corporatist but Obama is not a Ayn Rand type capitalist.

My point was that other systems also have their failures which would suggest such problems are not specific to capitalism as Jimaz's article seemed to imply.

[Gannon]

While I admire your attempt at making this a partisan effort, I stand against all of the recent administrations on both sides of the [[false diametric) aisle...especially against their full-bore support of the current system as it is practised, as well as the basic premise that we 'need' a war economy to go well beyond surviving, into thriving [[at the world's and MANY innocent's surprise and eventual demise).


I would say that Jimaz's argument was along the lines of the documentary The Corporation, whose author used the standards of the American Psychiatric Association to prove the sociopathic nature of the current form of corporation...if not its total psychopathic anti-human and anti-planetary tendencies.


I don't see how focusing on the current usurper of power in the White House will do any bit of good, other than to continue the false divide between the citizens...who as Jimaz has correctly pointed out are quickly coming to fully learn of this Machiavellian gameplay. Now, if they could only learn to counter it, and finally get rid of the real perpetrators of the fraud that kills millions on the way to 'earning' billions for a few very evil men [[and the occasional power-mongering woman, too), then I would feel better about this partial revelation and awakening of the masses.


Cheers

[Papasito]

Big banks blamed for the deepest economic dip since the Great Depression? Public schools scathingly dubbed a failure to the nation’s children? Journalists gloomily surveying this week’s ham-handed bobbling of a delicate story about politics, race, and the state of the media?
You can all breathe a small sigh of relief. People still like you better than Congress.

Public confidence in the group dubbed “the world’s greatest deliberative body” has hit an all-time low in this year’s Gallup Confidence in Institutions poll, with only 11 percent of Americans saying that they have "a great deal" or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news...congress-media

lol, lol & more lol
They spend trillions more then they take in and still cant make people happy


Other interesting approval ratings:
The military – 76 percent
Small business – 66
The police – 59
The church/organized religion – 48
The medical system – 40
The presidency – 36
The Supreme Court – 36
Public schools – 34
The criminal justice system – 27
Newspapers – 25
Banks - 23
Television news – 22
Organized labor – 20
Big business – 19
HMOs – 19
Congress – 11

[oldredfordette]

If people are stupid, and keep watching television instead of doing genuine research and serious reading, they'll say all sorts of things. Then there are people who believe in television polls...

[Papasito]

some people are full of hate..

especially when others say things they don't want to hear

[firstandten]

some people are full of hate..

especially when others say things they don't want to hear

Well yes, thats because many people are not open minded to the extent that they are willing to examine... no critically examine there values when faced with facts that may debunk what they were believing

[maxx]

Let's dig up Milton F. and see what he thinks about this eh....

"A rising tide...."

But when the tide goes out, the little boats stay afloat, not the luxury liners. Bad analogy either way.