Does capitalism work?

Does capitalism work?

  • Yes

    Votes: 76 62.8%

  • No

    Votes: 45 37.2%
  • Total voters
    121
L

lixluke

Refined Reinvention
Valued Senior Member
It is clear that capitalism is totally flawed, and does not work.
Every year statistics show that people that know how to work the system are taking more and more from the system. In essence, their pockets grow continuously larger while poverty and enviromental destruction continue to grow as well.


As long as the capitalist system exists the people doing the harshest labor will get the least pay. The people doing the most media manipulation will get the most pay.
Capitalism is not a system that awards great products. It is a system that awards great marketing tactics regardless of product quality.

Any system that uses the illusion of scarcity as its basis is intrinsicly corrupt. Corruption is the illusion of scarcity.

Capitalism is flawed from the inside out. No truly intellectual society would take such a primitive nonsensical corruption infected form of economics seriously. Intellects understand the the planet is the home of the life forms that occupy it. The planet has more than enough resources to support all lifeforms for generations. The planet furthermore has the ability to grow and regenerate resources. Corrupted illusions of scarcity is the ignorance of this.

Capitalism does not turn a blind eye to poverty, scarcity, and desperation. Capitalism ensures desperation exists.
 
Last edited:
cool skill said:
It is clear that capitalism is totally flawed, and does not work.
Every year statistics show that people that know how to work the system are taking more and more from the system. In essence, their pockets grow continuously larger while poverty and enviromental destruction continue to grow as well.
Click to expand...

It would appear that your logic is totally flawed, and does not work.
 
Capitalism works gloriously for the world's ruling 2%. The rest of us get the Trickle Down effect. The vast majority of the world's population reaps little or no benefit from a political system based on profiteering and turning people against eachother in the mad search for money. It is the lowest common denominator humans can reach. Works for the elite (so loved by the right) but doesn't work for the people that really work for a living.
 
I voted no because it only works for a small percentage of the worlds population.
 
I think that Capitalism as you see it should be called 'American Capitalism.' It has been flawed, and no longer works like it is supposed, because of the greed and cold heartedness of people. It is like how communism isn't really a bad idea, but Russian Communism didn't work at all.
 
Its not perfect, but its better than other systems since it enables entrepreneurship and is controlled by market forces. I think it may work more effectively with better regulation of both monopolistic organizations and of government enforced regulations on trade, commerce ad taxation.
 
The problem with capitalism is the invention of the corporation. As democracy replaced feudalism, government realized that it would no longer have an aristocracy to divert the attention of the populace from its own capers. So it invented the corporation, which is basically nothing more than the New Aristocracy. You can't execute a corporation no matter how evil it is, you can't throw it in jail, and if you fine it it just laughs and passes the costs on to you. We get so outraged watching the antics of corporations that we forget to see what's going on in Washington. They burned the Constitution seventy years ago and have been doing pretty much whatever the hell they feel like ever since.

Adam Smith's idea of the "invisible hand" of the marketplace was a good one. He envisioned it as a more or less level playing field with producers and consumers on roughly equal footing transacting business with each other. He did not foresee individual consumers and employees having to do business with corporations with as much money and power as Liechtenstein.

The only reason we had to suffer through the era of the labor union movement is that unions were the only way employees could get any bargaining power against a corporation with billions of dollars.

Consumer's Union was formed because they saw Big Business and Big Labor negotiating with each other and wondered why there was no such thing as Big Shopper to stick up for the multitudes.

Adam Smith would turn over in his grave if you explained the concept of the holding company. A corporation that produces nothing, contributes nothing to the GDP. It just owns the stock of subordinate corporations, just enough to have a controlling interest, and leverages that power down to the point where some kid with an MBA can shut down a factory without knowing what it makes or even understanding the industry it's in.

It isn't capitalism that's at fault. It's the laws that make corporations possible that are at fault.
 
capatilism... works fine... if you own capital which increaes in value..

people who have nothing, like myself... love to complain about taxes..
about inflation... about the crazy prices in the real estate market...

each year... everything gets more expensive... and we get so mad..

until... we own land... then suddenly.. we want inflation.

if we own buisnesses.. we want the price of our product to go up, and our costs down.....

so it depends on your position.


capitalism.. works... but only for so long as the majority of the masses are comfortable and have hope for a better tommorrow..

if the poor.. rise in number... then, it all can collapse.


communism... is worse... why??
cause it quarentees that everyone... is poor.. and stays that way.
thats why it has colapsed all around the world.

-MT
 
It is capitalism that is at fault. Corporations are the result of a capitalist system. The invisible hand takes money from the poor, and gives it to the rich. Corporations or no corporations.
 
YES.. but only capitalism, allows the poor.. to become rich.

socialism.. does not.
communism does not.
monarchys.. can.. if the king wants to.

fascism... might.. but who wants to find out?

-MT
 
You are flawed, bias, and ignorant.

STUPID PEOPLE: Base their comparisons on ineffective sytems.

Intellects compare everything to the ideal.

You are a total moron because you have the short sighted paradigm of only viewing capitalism relative to garbage like facism and communism.

You too dumb to have done this intentionally. You unintentionally compare capitalism to other flawed systems because you are too ignorant. If you thought for yourself for once in your life time, it might occur to you that viewing capitalism relative to flawed systems is flawed and idiotic.
 
Mosheh Thezion said:
ha..

then if you dislike capitalism... give us the better solution.!!!!!!!!!

if you cant.. then shut the fuck up.

-MT
Click to expand...
LOL! Always nice to have these types around in a DISCUSSION forum.
 
Here is his reasoning:
If Cool Skill does not post designs for a better system than capitalism. Capitalism is the best system within the scope of Mosheh's pea sized brain. Therefore, solutions that real intellects have created do not exist.

The fact this idiot believes capitalism is the best system there is, and bases this by comparing it relative to other primitive systems rather than more advanced system shows what a total ignoramous life he lives.
 
Capitalism is fine as long as productivity is equaly up to par, its a direct function of productivity. When we ever start manufacturing motor vehicles in 15 minutes...then we'd be fully appreciating capitalism. In fact the idea started some time when humans were starting to perfect productivity- My guess is some time in the neolitic era. For now I think we don't have much of a choice but to adopt capitalism. Capitalism has its major con- it decentralizes socio-political jurisdiction, but since when has humans never needed a group of leaders to look up to. Besides if everybody was able to produce there will be no market, and no market means its impossible to produce, thats why everybody cannot produce in the first place, thats why we have third world countries- many thanks to good ole capitalism

FYi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic

The mentality between cummunism and capitalism is this "if you don't have enough you share, if you have enough why do you need to share?"
 
Last edited:
Captalism works unless you're looking for a free ride and aren't willing to compromise to get where you want to be. It takes discipline and sacrifice to get up from the bottom or thereabouts. We didn't want to be billionaires, we just wanted out of debt. We tightened our belts, changed our spending habits, budgetted our money, and learned to recognize financial opportunities which were available even at the level of "not enough money to live but too much money for welfare". All it took for us was not waiting for the finance fairy to come up and wave a wand. It was rough, but it only took us a few years of working, hitting setbacks, pushing through again, and just slugging away at it. We never filed bankruptcy, never wasted time with lottery tickets, and just rolled up our sleeves and got to it.

We eventually got into a position that allowed us to play the market for a little bit, but like any gamble we didn't do more than we could afford to lose. We researched stocks, chose our investments carefully, lost some, won some, and eventually cashed out enough for a downpayment on a nice little chunk of land.

Not bad for $30,000.00 total in debt while working in barely above minimum wage jobs.

Our other biiiiig helpful factor? No kids until we got out. We've been free for a couple of years now, and we're in no hurry to have kids. It's alot easier to make the sacrifices if you don't have them to worry about.
 
cool skill said:
Here is his reasoning:
If Cool Skill does not post designs for a better system than capitalism. Capitalism is the best system within the scope of Mosheh's pea sized brain. Therefore, solutions that real intellects have created do not exist.

The fact this idiot believes capitalism is the best system there is, and bases this by comparing it relative to other primitive systems rather than more advanced system shows what a total ignoramous life he lives.
Click to expand...

OK... SO WHAT IS THE BEST SYSTEM?????????????

unless you can offer one... then it is you who are a moron, since in fact... all you are doing is putting the system down...

its easy to protest.. its easy to say how bad it is...
but doing so without proposals for how to make it better shows that you...

you.. coolskill, are the idiot and moron.

im sorry...


you arent up to it.. you dont have any answers..

all you can do is complain... like a moron.

-MT

OH... AND IN THE ABOVE QUOTE.. you say..
"rather than more advanced system "

please, enlighten us to these systems.... hahahahaha
 
For 100-200 years, America had a good approximation to laissez faire capitalism. I view the end of it to have been initiated when the constitution was amended to allow a federal income tax, giving the central government great economic power (about 1913). Some believe its demise started with the Sheridan ant-trust act (about 1890) and the beginnings of government regulation.

At any rate, for that 100-200 years the standard of living of the average person grew by leaps and bounds. In the beginning of the 20th century, a factory worker had a life that would have been the envy of all but the very wealthy landed nobility of earlier eras. Their standard of living continued to increase until well into the middle of the 20th century due to the productivity resulting from laissez faire capitalism. The improvement in the standard of living of the average person was not accomplished by social legislation, labor unions, government regulation, or government redistribution of wealth.

We no longer have even a close approximation to laissez faire capitalism anymore. We have a society dominated by government and bureaucracy at all levels: Local, state, and national. The government and the bureaucracy has the power to ruin any business. Politicians buy votes by making deals brokered by lobbyists. The average person is led to believe that this is the fault of big business. Actually, it is a bit like a criminal protection racket. In the guise of protecting the average person from the bogeyman (big business), politicians are acquiring wealth and power and creating an ever growing and expensive bureaucracy. The system is slowly falling apart.

The maligned robber barons created jobs and produced products at prices that the average person could afford. Now we have some strange mixture of communism, fascism, and capitalism.
 
cool skill said:
It is clear that capitalism is totally flawed, and does not work.
Click to expand...
No. It is clear that formal (or the assumption of) education in a capitalist economy doesn't automatically guarantee the ability of any one person to actually know which vowel to buy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top