The Impending Death of Modern Capitalism
Let's make sure we're all on the same page on the definition of capitalism.
It's basically a system in which private ownership of everything prevails. It's a system which provides rewards to the people who meet the marketplace desires of consumer.
I will define "modern" as the system of the last half century when the dominant generation (Boomers) of the dominant nation (USA) entered the workforce and decided they no longer wanted to pay taxes leading to the 49 state blowout win for Ronald Reagan in 1984 and the Democratic Party takeover by neoliberals like the Clintons (and later Obama) whose economic policies were effectively equivalent to 80's Republicans. It's a system which doesn't have a balance of power between labor and capital.
Before I go on, let me say that I don't consider myself an ideologue. More like a carpenter who has to choose which tool to use in order to complete a task. Capitalism is a tool and I want to give that tool a great deal of credit for many of the historical advances in human civilization. I foresee a future in which some elements of capitalism are retained. I believe the people who have the scarce skills and willingness to contribute what is necessary to maintain a flourishing civilization should be well rewarded for their contribution. Positive reinforcement will always be a good idea.
Capital has a gravitational force. It is invested where it yields the greatest risk adjusted return and it has purchased the American government outputs. The mission embedded in the Preamble to the US Constitution of maintaining domestic tranquility is obviously not being realized. We are a polarized nation of people who have aggregated into tribal affiliations full of cognitive dissonance.
Societies fail when too many of their citizens fail.
The cracks in the system are morphing into giant crevasses. The private insurance market which backstops the US mortgage market and property values is disintegrating due to both increasing extreme weather and inflation in the cost of building replacements. In states like Florida and California, the insurance industry is migrating to socialist state administered insurance. The physical health of our citizens is deteriorating as well. We're increasingly obese, contaminated with environmental toxins like plastic and our sex hormones are rapidly declining.
The problem with capitalism is that literally anything which makes money is considered virtuous. There is no desire which is considered negative.
The problem we run into is when there is a conflict between what we desire and what we need.
We need food, water and shelter from dangerous environmental factors.
There is no incentive under modern capitalism for the selfish players to contribute to the protection of our shared environment. So we see the rise in environmental poisons such as greenhouse gases, plastics, PFAS, metals growing without regulation.
Democracy in the US is effectively already gone. We are effectively living under feudalism with a group of actors / performers in both major parties offering no substantive difference in economic policy.
Socialism is going to emerge because it must in order for us to survive as a species. It may be an authoritarian and dictatorial socialism like the Nazis or it may be a democratic socialism as espoused by FDR and the pre-Boomer Democratic Party.
Any species whose population grows unchecked is destined to drown in its own toxins. A system which depends on perpetual growth on a finite Earth is programmed to eventually exceed its limits. Survival does not accrete to the strongest. Survival accretes to those most adaptable.
Adaptation is coming. The cliffhanger is whether the adaptation will be timely enough for us to continue the human experiment. In 4 billions years of life on Earth, money has only existed for 1 millionth of that time and our attachment to it is becoming fatal. It's time to let go of money as the basis for human hierarchy. A reliable food supply and the ability to reproduce should be at the top of our list.
It's not true that I want to remove PUBLIC vehicles. I want to remove most private vehicles.
With self-driving cars, you can just order a public EV to come get you and take you where you need to go. If you're going on a road trip, then you reserve a vehicle for as long as needed.
If someone is driving 10,000 miles a year at an average speed of 30 miles per hour, that's 330 hours a year of driving or 14 days out of 365. The car is sitting idle 96% of the time. We don't need everyone to have their
I honestly dont know if your an anti communist troll at this point when you went from human needs and healthcare being a top priority to literally the next day contemplating murdering the old and week and then this but i will take your post at face value.
Are rhese self driving cars going to be like teslas driving everyone around and where would you rather have them sit 96% of the time?
Why not just supply the EVs for free and have the state pay rhe protections and rhe state own the vehicle? A need for a third party to get a person in a vehicle in this scenario when we are working with evs is not efficiency.
People complain about consumer credit and then they complain that rich people have access to loans. I don’t think people actually know how any of this stuff works.
It’s much better actually to do all your day to day finances through credit cards in reality. Much more secure and you get money back for purchases. That’s if you use it correctly.
a (vast) majority of people cannot control themselves, at least some times.
those of us who learn that soon enough develop "controlled forms of lack of control", vices if you wish that we keep in check in order to be able to assuage impulsive urges in other more damaging life dynamics.
it's hard to believe it if you are in the upper echelon of force of will , raised by people who were the same and mostly interacting with people who are the same, but a lot of people can't avoid spending money they don't have if they are provided cheap credit in an easy to use form. they can avoid doing it SOMETIMES, but they can't avoid it all the times.
so the question as with a lot of other stuff in life is:
1) do we have a moral responsibility to protect adults from themselves (my answer is absolutely no, never, unless they arent sane of mind in which case though they should lose a lot of other rights including the vote, entering contracts and so on)
2) if state mandated paternalism is correct, how much is it proper to limit access to an activity that can be abused by people who can't control themselves, but which is beneficial to those who can interact with it properly (and good luck finding proper tradeoffs here even in a model which I fully disagree with, where paternalism is correct)
a (vast) majority of people cannot control themselves, at least some times.
those of us who learn that soon enough develop "controlled forms of lack of control", vices if you wish that we keep in check in order to be able to assuage impulsive urges in other more damaging life dynamics.
it's hard to believe it if you are in the upper echelon of force of will , raised by people who were the same and mostly interacting with people who are the same, but a lot of people can't avoid spending money they
I’m not really convinced of point 1, because if there are super easy fixes that cost very little but can save those lower will people a lot of headache, then it should likely be mandated. Like mandating that there are reminders for people on when to pay there credit cards, even if those reminders are 100% opt in, seems like a useful thing to have in society that won’t cost much. Unless you think that we have an implicit right towards skullduggery which almost no one believes, as fraudulent behavior itself could be argued as free association in some sense.
By this I am thinking of the classic ancap argument that there should be absolutely no state mandated punishment for lying about what a product does. It seems that bullet point one would eliminate us from creating that type of regulation because it is logically possible to avoid this consequence in a completely laissez faire situation.
There’s a thin line between having willpower and disproportionately benefiting from the regulations that are already in place. Someone like me with relatively average IQ might benefit strongly from current credit product regulations because it gives me just enough information to give me the ability to use them responsibly.
The only point is that I don’t have that disposition about regulations because I think it’s almost always going to involve complicated moral and epistemic calculus what regulations work and which ones don’t rather than having a simple rule that eliminates all regulations as being on the table unless extreme measures are taken.
Maybe the point is though, that because these considerations are so complicated we should err on the side against those regulations, but that only seems to obtain on those borderline cases. So maybe it’s better to say that you are pushing the borderline closer to the side of free markets and anti-paternalism than the side of protecting people from themselves and inferring a deficiency in market solutions.
It's not true that I want to remove PUBLIC vehicles. I want to remove most private vehicles.
With self-driving cars, you can just order a public EV to come get you and take you where you need to go. If you're going on a road trip, then you reserve a vehicle for as long as needed.
If someone is driving 10,000 miles a year at an average speed of 30 miles per hour, that's 330 hours a year of driving or 14 days out of 365. The car is sitting idle 96% of the time. We don't need everyone to have their
With a bit of real talk, I do sympathize with the idea of having a state run fleet of vehicles in regards to emissions and waste and it could lead to less cars and manufacturing and overhead in regard to insurance and ****.
But i don't think it would be anywhere in the ball park as successful as nationalizing healthcare for example. Or even the postal service, but that's a whole nother discussion.
I'm mean, you're cutting out the empty vehicles driving around to their pickups and removing the issues of waiting and availability, why make the bureaucrats work harder when their busy figuring out food distribution when you can just give them the tool directly?
But Elon approves of your idea.
Absolutely NOT.
The electricity footprint of a bitcoin transaction is something like 1,000,000x a standard debit / credit transaction.
What does bitcoin do for society besides consume electricity ? Does it increase food supply ? No. Does it improve medical care ? No.
It's a completely superfluous activity which adds an incredible amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. It should be banned forthwith.
Sure, but banning bitcoin isn't really feasible now, china banned mining a few years ago which dropped the price but the price still snapped back when people found another way.
The demand for personal freedoms can kind of be the kryptonite for a lot of communists obv, but there are things like this, that are going to have to be accepted even if you play the role as emperor.
In the end, negotiations are going to have to be made to some extent, and the weight of public opinion is going to trump your personal ideals of personal vehicles or free enterprise if you're attempting to sustain a civilized society.
It's arse over tit
The focus has to be on cheap clean renewable energy - we can do this and we can do it much faster. Also working on waste and some behavioral changes to buy a bit of time.
bitcoin may be utter shite but it's the wrong focus here. We want to able to use energy without any concerns and we definitely dont want to hold back technological advances which we need to deliver a better for life for everyone.
Make things like bitcoin pay through the nose for dirty energy. Not only can that money be invested in the good stuff but they will then drive clean energy
People complain about consumer credit and then they complain that rich people have access to loans. I don’t think people actually know how any of this stuff works.
It’s much better actually to do all your day to day finances through credit cards in reality. Much more secure and you get money back for purchases. That’s if you use it correctly.
But there is cost still using credit card in fees .
We don’t see it but there is .
There is no hidden fees when u pay cash .
FWIW I’m not saying one is better then the other financially but one is clearly egret then the other for privacy .
I hope we end up in 1984 world style by banning cash…
Absolutely NOT.
The electricity footprint of a bitcoin transaction is something like 1,000,000x a standard debit / credit transaction.
What does bitcoin do for society besides consume electricity ? Does it increase food supply ? No. Does it improve medical care ? No.
It's a completely superfluous activity which adds an incredible amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. It should be banned forthwith.
FWIW , transferring real value (like money-> Bitcoin) will always cost more than “fake” value (promises of future payment -> credit ).
I honestly dont know if your an anti communist troll at this point when you went from human needs and healthcare being a top priority to literally the next day contemplating murdering the old and week and then this but i will take your post at face value.
Are rhese self driving cars going to be like teslas driving everyone around and where would you rather have them sit 96% of the time?
Why not just supply the EVs for free and have the state pay rhe protections and rhe state own the vehicle?
Can you cut and paste a quote of mine which says I would recommend murdering anyone ?
Wazz, I listened to the entire video. I think you do just fine articulating your points and it seemed pretty close to hers.
She isn't at all what anyone would consider a full-fledged communist but clearly a more of a "social democrat" but labels are so ****ing dumb and these terms are so outdated that it annoys the **** out of me when folks start labeling everyone and every form of implementation into the single lense of one or the other.
She raised important issues regarding corporate power and used fancy metaphors to reign in her point but her solutions wasn't a bunch of lazy knuckle dragging communist talk.
She wasn't for eliminating private property, but redistributing wealth.
SHe acknowledged the role of certain private businesses.
Her ideas mirrored nordic style socialism more than marxism.
She didn't avocate for abolishing markets, and specifically allows homeownership.
All of that is literally fine and I've stated that taxing corporations at a higher rate, especially those that benefit from the use of AI at the expense of the workers, should pay more to both replace the income of those not working, and the society at large for literally creating the world were people no have the opportunities to make a living as before, should absolutely have their money funneled away into a govt program that protects them - as well as damages caused to the environment and how that personally affects the people living in it.
But there is a gap between doing just that, something that can actually happen, and has happened, and some of the idiotic ideas purported in this thread or those advocating for communism out of just envy and animosity.
If you want to make a case that the US or the west, needs to burn down. Lead with that. There is an argument there, i think. But there is no reason to make really ****ing dumb communist aligned economic systems like the op to make it happen. Just argue want you actually wan't. It isn't a big deal.
Wazz, I listened to the entire video. I think you do just fine articulating your points and it seemed pretty close to hers.
She isn't at all what anyone would consider a full-fledged communist but clearly a more of a "social democrat" but labels are so ****ing dumb and these terms are so outdated that it annoys the **** out of me when folks start labeling everyone and every form of implementation into the single lense of one or the other.
She raised important issues regarding corporate power and
Like me, in certain situations she'll sound outright communist - she'll talk about the means of production, exchange vs use value, the marxian theory of labour, dialectical and historical materialism, class warfare, false consciousness, and so on.
No communist is in favour of eliminating personal property. Not all are in favour of eliminating personal property ownership, within limits.
Essentially no communist is motivated by envy. This is most likely originating entirely in projection, and written into a very american cultural understanding of redistributive policy as the poor wanting wealth without having to work for it. It is more like the poor no longer wanting to be exploited. It is a case of arguing for an equality that inevitably feels like a downgrade to those who have been the ruling class. When the bakery steals your loaf of bread that you made at home, it's not theft to take it back.
As to animosity, yes, a lot of working class people have a huge amount of animosity towards their slavemasters and landlords, and for good reason.
I do believe the west burning down today would be better for humanity in the long run, but I don't believe that's on the cards, and there are better ways of doing this than burning things down, so I don't advocate for it. But I also don't advocate for purely electoral participation in politics, and do advocate for civil disobedience. So YMMV.
The 'dumb communist aligned economic system' OP has set out has far far far more in common with what I've described than our current system. We disagree on little but the finer details. I think he's got the hi covered but he's misread the board and he's actually got second nut low. So I'm 3/4ing him and your big blind ty.
Yes, she certainly had moments of some rather strong takes but w/e.
Im not against some of her ideas. Id rather not have to work and have the govt supply my needs for me and the fam. What i have a problem with is the assumption that some of these requeats, even the ones not deep into the communist derp, are horrendously likely not to work in practice, even with public support, which there isnt. Which is why ive been asking you guys some queations. And im going to ask more in the next day or so.
But there is cost still using credit card in fees .
We don’t see it but there is .
There is no hidden fees when u pay cash .
FWIW I’m not saying one is better then the other financially but one is clearly egret then the other for privacy .
I hope we end up in 1984 world style by banning cash…
I mean I don’t particularly care if someone knows that I went to Ralphs.
But yeah I get it, your name is attached to the card.
This can be a benefit though, as I stated with credit cards you can dispute charges, with cash you can’t. Credit cards have a provenance of ownership, cash doesn’t.
Cash also doesn’t do any work for you. It’s just what it is. The benefit to holding some of your net worth in cash is liquidity only.
But yeah, I don’t deny that people can have bad habits or lower intelligence so they might benefit from only using cash, but it’s not inherent to credit products that they are a scam, as some people say. In fact for personal finance they have many benefits, let along business strategy.
I mean I don’t particularly care if someone knows that I went to Ralphs.
But yeah I get it, your name is attached to the card.
This can be a benefit though, as I stated with credit cards you can dispute charges, with cash you can’t. Credit cards have a provenance of ownership, cash doesn’t.
Cash also doesn’t do any work for you. It’s just what it is. The benefit to holding some of your net worth in cash is liquidity only.
But yeah, I don’t deny that people can hav
Never forget credit is not cash , just a promise of payments .
Cash is a finalized payment .
And cash actually can work for u , when u live a deflation crisis .
Now if u believe government could never control how u spend , or just take your wealth “hostage” if u do something your government doesn’t like -> aka trucker protest in Canada , then I think u should ponder on it a little bit more .
A cashless society is something I would not want.
Using cash is a form of liberty believe it or not by preventing government potential having control or spying on your finances .
Centralizing even more power into the government with all the cash of the country into its hands is a no go for me …
Ps: obv I use a lot my credit card but I would stop immediately if some project of cashless society I love into would emerge .
I still live in a free democracy but seeing how the U.S. are becoming and elsewhere around the world , I should start being paranoid about those thing they try to do for the “supposedly greater good”.
Then you have the worst of both worlds: People who pay for everything with their debit card. All the downsides of cash, none of the upsides of credit cards.
I have roundabout access to bank statements for a variety of middle-class Americans, and I am continually shocked at how many people abuse a debit card.
Do not give random merchants direct access to your checking account, people. Even if you are technically protected from fraud, the amount of damage that can occur while you're blissfully unaware of an issue is pretty nuts. Cleaning up the mess after a bunch of important checks bounce is not fun.
Pay for everything in life using a credit card, and pay the card off every month. Even if you don't make particularly good use of cash back programs for a credit card, you're protecting yourself from all sorts of potential headaches.
For any of you with children: Get them a couple credit cards the second they turn 18, and give them some bills to pay. Teach them to use the cards responsibly.
Never forget credit is not cash , just a promise of payments .
Cash is a finalized payment .
And cash actually can work for u , when u live a deflation crisis .
Now if u believe government could never control how u spend , or just take your wealth “hostage” if u do something your government doesn’t like -> aka trucker protest in Canada , then I think u should ponder on it a little bit more .
A cashless society is something I would not want.
Using cash is a form of liberty believe it or not by prevent
Personally I don’t think an actual cashless society is possible without extreme social control. Reason being if you look back historically, cash proxies have been used and become quasi-currencies. Even trading in cattle/animals, stables crops like beans or coffee, and precious metals. The benefit of having cash is that it is highly regulated and the value is extrinsic from the material used to produce it. So it is less susceptible to manipulations like cutting coins with different alloys, shaving coins, etc, or in the case of other cash stand ins trying to trade sick/diseased animals or crops to deceive.
I’m not advocating for cashless society myself, just pointing out the commies are a bit deceptive with how they talk about things.
Then you have the worst of both worlds: People who pay for everything with their debit card. All the downsides of cash, none of the upsides of credit cards.
I have roundabout access to bank statements for a variety of middle-class Americans, and I am continually shocked at how many people abuse a debit card.
Do not give random merchants direct access to your checking account, people. Even if you are technically protected from fraud, the amount of damage that can occur while you're blissfully
I agree with all of this but
FWIW im talking cash, not debit card .
Debit card ends up the same has credit card in the end if u promote a cashless society .
Personally I don’t think an actual cashless society is possible without extreme social control. Reason being if you look back historically, cash proxies have been used and become quasi-currencies. Even trading in cattle/animals, stables crops like beans or coffee, and precious metals. The benefit of having cash is that it is highly regulated and the value is extrinsic from the material used to produce it. So it is less susceptible to manipulations like cutting coins with different alloys, shavin
Hopefully you are right but seeing how the world is going lately , seem to me we are on the right tangent to get to that point …
I mean I don’t particularly care if someone knows that I went to Ralphs.
But yeah I get it, your name is attached to the card.
This can be a benefit though, as I stated with credit cards you can dispute charges, with cash you can’t. Credit cards have a provenance of ownership, cash doesn’t.
Cash also doesn’t do any work for you. It’s just what it is. The benefit to holding some of your net worth in cash is liquidity only.
But yeah, I don’t deny that people can have bad habits or lower intelligence s
I am not sure why we aren't discussing prepaid cards in this convo because that's a very normal way to pay in Europe, where we don't have meaningful rebates from credit cards anyway (because fees are low and capped by regulators).
most people I know including me have a credit card only for the very small niche uses where they still ask for one sometimes (car rentals and the like).
I don't personally know anyone who carries a credit card balance though. it's not normal in my circle, like at all, I never used it as "credit" in my life nor did any of my friends or relatives in Italy.
my dad had to rethink this completely when he moved to the USA and had to create a credit score
Then you have the worst of both worlds: People who pay for everything with their debit card. All the downsides of cash, none of the upsides of credit cards.
I have roundabout access to bank statements for a variety of middle-class Americans, and I am continually shocked at how many people abuse a debit card.
Do not give random merchants direct access to your checking account, people. Even if you are technically protected from fraud, the amount of damage that can occur while you're blissfully
debit cards here (eu) cannot be abused by merchants I am not sure what you mean.
everyone I know uses them all the times satisfactorily (we don't have the concept of a credit rating to build using credit cards, nor rebates)
It looks like cash use has stabalized in the last year after declining for a while obv.
I dont think cash is going anywhere for a while and if lending continues to tighten like it has, ita going to keep the demand there for cash - especially in a recession.
I don't know anything about the EU banking industry, and it's not like American credit cards are constantly getting stolen, but if there's ever a breach or you lose your credit card, your actual cash is safe.
In America, the land of the overdraft fee and credit scores dictating societal quality of life, quite a bit of damage can be done if your checking account is compromised and you bounce some checks.
It's also a much bigger pain in the ass to get and distribute new checking account info here. My guess is EU banks have evolved different norms and practices than we have.
I am not sure why we aren't discussing prepaid cards in this convo because that's a very normal way to pay in Europe, where we don't have meaningful rebates from credit cards anyway (because fees are low and capped by regulators).
most people I know including me have a credit card only for the very small niche uses where they still ask for one sometimes (car rentals and the like).
I don't personally know anyone who carries a credit card balance though. it's not normal in my circle, like at all, I
Prepaid cards in the US are horrible. There are a million fees associated with them. Reason being only absolute morons who destroy their credit would choose a prepaid card over a bank account. (Or drug dealers too I suppose)
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
And sure, if you don’t get benefits out of credit cards then yeah not much use for them. In the US there are substantial benefits, not the least of which is improving credit score and increasing credit access through consistent responsible usage. Banks will often automatically increase my credit limit based on x amount of years of responsible usage, which can give you access to higher loans for both business and personal.
Prepaid cards in the US are horrible. There are a million fees associated with them. Reason being only absolute morons who destroy their credit would choose a prepaid card over a bank account. (Or drug dealers too I suppose)
Consumer Financial Protection BureauAnd sure, if you don’t get benefits out of credit cards then yeah not much use for them. In the US there are substantial benefits, not the least of which is improving c
a standard pre paid card here costs like 10 Eur once, to get it, then 1 Eur to charge it (or not, but if not associated with a checking account that's usually one Eur), and that's it.
most of them lately also can receive and send wire transfers as they have an IBAN (dunno the acronym outside Italy), anyway our swift-equivalent code.
it's just digital cash with minimal attrition.
if you are paranoid, some of them come with associated smartphone apps where you need to click notifications to approve a payment.
banks here lend exclusively based on stable salary, no history of having missed previous debt payments, and that basically it (unless you put up collateral).
mortgage tates here are the same for everyone almost always, you either get it or not, but if you do the rate is the same given yearly wages, other debts, and loan to value.
we have "credit risks" (people who didn't pay in the past and so on), but never using credit isn't a negative around here, actually a slight positive.
btw it's not prepaid vs bank account.
you have your bank account, pre paid is how you shop around instead of cash, so you have no coins given back, can track all your expenses exactly and so on.
some young people do prepaid only with app (Fintech stuff) like revolut for example, but that's not normal (yet?).
Then you have the worst of both worlds: People who pay for everything with their debit card. All the downsides of cash, none of the upsides of credit cards.
I have roundabout access to bank statements for a variety of middle-class Americans, and I am continually shocked at how many people abuse a debit card.
Do not give random merchants direct access to your checking account, people. Even if you are technically protected from fraud, the amount of damage that can occur while you're blissfully
we were literally trained in school to "get a credit card for emergencies only and otherwise always pay with the debit card"
i think the school system doesn't believe people can be financially responsible and would just go hog wild with their credit
