A consequence of capitalism?

@Khethil,

Khethil;130817 wrote:

Well put gentlemen; to bend on infinite growth within a finite construct - materially - is suicide to us all.

It's not infinite growth, it's going to peak at 9 billion. But that isn't even important because it's not a finite construct.

---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 12:14 AM ----------

You people who believe in this simplistic view of running out of stuff. Educate yourself on what the reality is. Read this: The Ultimate Resource II: People, Materials, and Environment

And I don't quite understand how government is supposed to gave us, when you look at the track record it was governments that are to blame for deaths and famines in the last century.

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@Jackofalltrades phil,

The CATO Institute? Surely you could have gone full bore to NewsMax.

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@Krumple,

Krumple;131500 wrote:

You make it sound as if capitalism is the thing doing the polluting as if non-capitalists don't pollute. This seems a little silly. You have the same businesses either way, so in reality non-capitalists pollute just as much as capitalists.

I think the underline problem is not so much pollution or running out of resources, but instead certain governmental policies strangle alternative sources of resources and also impose restrictions on competing businesses so you get low grade production with the highest pollution. Let the free market solve itself. You don't need to change an economic system to circumvent pollution or preventing depleted resources.

No.... i have not made it sound like that. I am in fact stating facts that the most polluting states/nations happen to be capitalist nations. America is at the top. Is there a causal link or not?...... I can prove the linakges in many pages. Having said that, it is not to mean that non-capitalist economies do not pollute their environement. Some of the worst environmental disastors of soil degradtion and water pollution can be found in Soviet Russia and China respectively.

The point is that in communist states it is easy for an effective managment and control of polluting industries, while it is difficult in extra liberalised, free market, free economic structures as practised in US of A. Therefore the criticism. The only submission is to reign in the polliuting industries. Okay, let us suppose that there are stricter environmental norms and ambient air regulations on industries, but what happens when the consumer - the citizen of a nation becomes the polluter. The question is how do we control their behaviour. The moment one talks about curbing or taxing materials that pollute or are energy guzzling, engine powered, fuel consuming things, the right to live as one wishes to or the freedom of choice principle is invoked subverting any governmental control.

A good example is the recent crisis in Dubai. Although arabic by tradition the emirate of Dubai, is the newboy in the Capitalist town. They used a logic which said - create infrastruture, create environment, create hospitality, create buildings and residential complexes, manufacture demand, and money and men will follow, and perhaps flow. What happened or is happening. Nothing. The government - one of the wealthiest emirates is in debt today. The common people or the labouring class is taking the burden of lower wages and depleting resources and declining facilities.

Capitalism - the filthy variety of it, tends to create a market where none exists. This is the problem. A problem of human tendency. Just like communism with boisterous nationalism was a problem of human tendencies. The Disney land or Fantasy land and various other theme parks will not survive if the last man cannot look up or hope to be there oneday. What use is Disney land in the neighbouring state, if i do not have gas in the filling station of my neighbourhood towns or may be expensive beyond my ability or for an unemployed.

Free market made a mess of the banking and financial systems. But to throw a perspective i am all for market dictated production. The governement cannot ask me to manufacture this or that, the market can decide it. I have no problems with that.

Somewhere, we should agree that to have a peaceful, safer and beautiful world we need to have self discipline, corporate discipline, even government discipline. Discipline the other day, Dalai Lama explained to Larry King of CNN - is all about the way to better ones life.

Whats wrong in discipline?

1 Reply

@Jackofalltrades phil,

Jackofalltrades;131746 wrote:

No.... i have not made it sound like that. I am in fact stating facts that the most polluting states/nations happen to be capitalist nations. America is at the top.

The US is not a true capitalist model, there hasn't been a free market here fore over seventy years. What you are seeing and blaming capitalism for, is actually governmental polices. This is typical, the US government wants you to blame capitalism so they can impose even more restrictions and control markets even more than they do now. This is only going to make industries worse not better.

---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 02:52 AM ----------

Jackofalltrades;131746 wrote:

Free market made a mess of the banking and financial systems. But to throw a perspective i am all for market dictated production. The governement cannot ask me to manufacture this or that, the market can decide it. I have no problems with that.

This is so laughable. The freemarket is not to blame for failing banks. The government allowed for banks to write loans with money they did not have. Basically what the government has allowed is for every dollar that a bank has it is allowed to write ten loans for that dollar. That causes banks to become insolvent. This is something that could never happen in a freemarket system, this was caused by the goverment by protecting preditory banks.

The other laughable aspect is that banks are not even in a competitive market and that is why they are so preditory in nature. No true freemarket bank would be able to exist how banks are currently. Once again the government has protected banks and closed the door on the competition to become a bank, so banks now had the freedom to gouge customers and provide low grade customer service.

1 Reply

@xris,

xris;131406 wrote:

Have you looked at the difficulty in obtaining oil from shale. I hope its true, the sw of England has one of biggest supplies of it europe if not the world. It has been looked at but it would cost more to extract than what its worth. If we dont consider our future needs now, it will be too late when it actually runs out. Everything has a finite supply and it aint that far away.

Have you considered the prospects of alternative energy sources (save for nuclear power) like windmills, and waterfalls, providing our energy needs instead of oil? Yet there are those who advocate turning to those, and not looking for, and getting, more oil. There is a lot more, if only we are willing to find it, and dig it up.

If, as you say, extracting oil from shale will cost more than it is worth, then if, as you predict, we run out of oil, it will no longer cost more than it is worth. At one time we were worried about replacing the horse so that we could get rid of the mounting pollution of horse waste. And, we did it.

---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 08:40 AM ----------

Jackofalltrades;131746 wrote:

No...
Whats wrong in discipline?

Nothing, if you want to live like Tibetans. I don't.

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@xris,

xris;131507 wrote:

The problem lies in the fact that capitalism will not accept that this constant desire for growth, is the major cause of our woes.

You are looking at it wrong. Growth is not some danger that needs to be overcome. Growth is the very mechanism that makes life better for each of us.
Big numbers and hockey stick charts sound frightening. But there is nothing rational about fearing large numbers. And growth being a hockey stick chart is just an artifact of how you draw the graph.
Technological progress doesn't just happen, it happens because of necessity, because of scarcity. And were does scarcity come from? Growth. Humans were hunter-gatherers for 99% of our history. If that had been sustainable, we would still be hunter-gatherers. If supplying humanity with horses had been sustainable there hadn't been cars. And if our current use of oil was sustainable there wouldn't be nuclear fusion.
So things get better only because we are not sustainable. In the last half century, with "explosive" growth, we had greater abundance of resources than ever.

In that sense the constant mistaken predictions about running out of this or that are merely an artifact of mathematics. They say nothing about the world. What this means is that they are bound to find immanent doom and be wrong unless:
a) They couldn't predict doom. - There is no danger of running out of the things we currently use. In that case there would be no technological progress and instead of moving humanity out of poverty, as we currently do, we all had the living standard of the stone-age.
b) They are not wrong. - We actually do run out of the stuff they predict we run out of. In that case something would have ran out a long time ago by hitting some wall. Then humanity had reached the limit of it's growth. You wouldn't see "explosive" growth in that case.
Maybe "this time it's different" and humanity is not able to find alternatives for what we are going to run out of this time? People have been thinking that their time is special forever. That's quite an irrational fear, there are a bunch of technologies waiting to potentially relieve scarcity. Yeah, there is some difficulty with them, but technical difficulties in getting more resources are quite different than resources being "finite".

---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 06:19 PM ----------

RDRDRD1;131732 wrote:

The CATO Institute? Surely you could have gone full bore to NewsMax.

Oh, I see. It's biased. Then just go ahead and disregard it out of hand.

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@Jackofalltrades phil,

Krumple your contention that the freemarket is blameless for America's financial meltdown is strained at best. You argue that "the government allowed banks to write loans with money they did not have." While that's a misleading and pretty gross oversimplification of what happened - i.e. freemarket deregulation - it implies governmental responsibility for the blundering that followed. I wasn't aware that government forced the banks to loan money they did not have. That would be a very curious state of affairs, wouldn't it?

Canada came through this made-in-USA meltdown better than any other G20 nation. That's because when Canada's chartered banks came to Ottawa for permission to follow the harebrained practices of their southern big brothers, our Liberal government said "no, you're banks, stick to banking" and refused to deregulate them. Hence our banks remained banks, not security companies, not insurers of bogus securities in the form of derivatives and credit default swaps. Like every other Western nation there was some spillover but I think our "bailout" came in at $47 billion to purchase TARP-style assets.

I have finally realized that what's causing us to have such irreconcilable disagreements on the future of capitalism is our respective belief or disbelief in global warming. It's as though one person believing the earth round began arguing navigation issues with another convinced the earth is flat. Neither side is prepared, at this point anyway, to relent and so there's a factual disconnect that renders discussions of capitalism, resources and energy matters largely meaningless.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;131800 wrote:

The US is not a true capitalist model, there hasn't been a free market here fore over seventy years. What you are seeing and blaming capitalism for, is actually governmental polices. This is typical, the US government wants you to blame capitalism so they can impose even more restrictions and control markets even more than they do now. This is only going to make industries worse not better..

What do you mean by a true capitalist model. USA has preached, advocated and follow the free market model relying on private capital to run its economy.

I had never heard of this, that the US government wants you to blame capitalism.......... i am a bit perplexed. This is a bouncer. Can you give a logic behind this conspiracy, which appears to be the world most secretive doctrine. ????

---------- Post added 02-24-2010 at 02:52 AM ----------

Krumple;131800 wrote:

This is so laughable. The freemarket is not to blame for failing banks. The government allowed for banks to write loans with money they did not have. Basically what the government has allowed is for every dollar that a bank has it is allowed to write ten loans for that dollar. That causes banks to become insolvent. This is something that could never happen in a freemarket system, this was caused by the goverment by protecting preditory banks.

The other laughable aspect is that banks are not even in a competitive market and that is why they are so preditory in nature. No true freemarket bank would be able to exist how banks are currently. Once again the government has protected banks and closed the door on the competition to become a bank, so banks now had the freedom to gouge customers and provide low grade customer service.

Well..... after reading you out twice..... the first feeling i got was, after all this years of trying to understand economics...... the fundamentals of which i have studied......was all futile.

What do you mean by...... "The government allowed for banks to write loans with money they did not have."

If you think you can work your way out of this........ best of luck!

Please explain:
1) Under which authority and how did the government ALLOWED it.

2) The bankers were clerks by qualification, were they ?

3) Define free market?

1 Reply

@RDRDRD1,

RDRDRD1;131856 wrote:

I have finally realized that what's causing us to have such irreconcilable disagreements on the future of capitalism is our respective belief or disbelief in global warming. It's as though one person believing the earth round began arguing navigation issues with another convinced the earth is flat. Neither side is prepared, at this point anyway, to relent and so there's a factual disconnect that renders discussions of capitalism, resources and energy matters largely meaningless.

Why do you believe in global warming?

Scientific grants are handed out by governments. Governments hand grants to those who agree with global warming so they have an excuse to implement cap and trade schemes for their rich owners.
The scientists act in their self interest. The politicians act in their self interest. The oil companies act in their self interest by investing in cap and trade. Occams razor - I don't see how this is not an easier explanation than all that global warming stuff.

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@Jackofalltrades phil,

Why do I believe global warming is proven to a point of acceptable (not absolute) certainty? It helps to live in a region where the effects are quite tangible. I also believe the "hoax" line to be the sign of a very gullible mind. When, please explain when, has a hoax of this magnitude been perpetrated? How many nations, how many leaders and how many scientists would have to be keeping their dark secrets under their hats? How difficult would that amount of effort be for Big Oil and Big Coal to expose? If all of these scientists supposedly abandoned their integrity to perpetrate a fraud of this magnitude why are they all continuing to lead their decidedly middle class lives? Something like that would be worth vast riches. Governments want to appease their "rich owners"? Are you quite mad? No sane person believes that nonsense.

1 Reply

@RDRDRD1,

RDRDRD1;131867 wrote:

Why do I believe global warming is proven to a point of acceptable (not absolute) certainty? It helps to live in a region where the effects are quite tangible. I also believe the "hoax" line to be the sign of a very gullible mind. When, please explain when, has a hoax of this magnitude been perpetrated? How many nations, how many leaders and how many scientists would have to be keeping their dark secrets under their hats?

The core data, the correlation between warming and co2 in the atmosphere, that all other research bases itself on, is understood by a group of around 20 scientists. That's it. You need 20 people to abandon their integrity and a whole lot of mindless foot soldiers.

RDRDRD1;131867 wrote:

How difficult would that amount of effort be for Big Oil and Big Coal to expose?

None. The cost of all this is borne by the taxpayer. Big oil and big coal get the carbon credit business for free. That's why they finance global warming.

RDRDRD1;131867 wrote:

If all of these scientists supposedly abandoned their integrity to perpetrate a fraud of this magnitude why are they all continuing to lead their decidedly middle class lives? Something like that would be worth vast riches.

So-called climate scientists get to travel to interesting places to do research and hold conferences because they believe in global warming. They get attention, they are important, they make a nice living. All that would end if they expressed doubt with the doctrine. They would be unemployed in a recession with expertise that nobody needs. The only reason they are employed is the fear of global warming. You seriously think that it's some sort of conspiracy theory that scientists agree with global warming? Those with integrity express their doubt and get replaced. That apparently doesn't hurt the "consensus".

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@Jackofalltrades phil,

Jackofalltrades;131857 wrote:

What do you mean by a true capitalist model. USA has preached, advocated and follow the free market model relying on private capital to run its economy.

Talking about free markets does not mean the economy was being led by free markets. When the government steps in and has to set prices on goods or services, it means there is no longer a free market. Where has the government tried to set prices? The most well known price fixing is the interest rates. So many people believe that interest rates can not free float and they require government intervention. No, it is a lie, the only reason they want to control interest rates is so they can control the money supply and hide inflation. Meaning, they can inject money into the system and hide it. If interest rates were free floating, it would be a clear indication of just how much money the government was "printing".

Gas. The US tried to place price control onto gas in the 70s as an attempt to control the market. It failed and caused nothing but lines and angry people. They tried to write it off by saying there was a shortage, but it was a lie. The reason they wanted to control gas prices was again to hide inflation. They felt that if the prices of gas continuously rose that people would catch on to just how much inflation was present. They found another solution so they didn't have to price fix gas.

Jackofalltrades;131857 wrote:

I had never heard of this, that the US government wants you to blame capitalism.......... i am a bit perplexed.

For a long time, they have slowly been picking away at capitalism and increasingly introducing socialist programs. Most of these programs are just ponzi schemes to funnel money from one group and inject it into another group.

Jackofalltrades;131857 wrote:

What do you mean by...... "The government allowed for banks to write loans with money they did not have."

Have you studied fractional reserve lending? Banks can lend money while holding only fraction of the amount in their reserves. What does that mean? Well let me try to simplify it.

You are a lender and holder of money, and Tom comes to you and says he wants to save one dollar and he gives it to you to hold. You say alright, and give Tom some interest for holding onto his dollar for him. The government comes in and says that you only need to hold ten percent of the money you have in savings accounts so you can lend out the rest. So you only need to keep ten cents of Tom's dollar and you can lend out the other ninety cents to someone else.

So you owe Tom a dollar still but Linda shows up to barrow some money and you lend her the ninety cents of Tom's dollar. Linda goes and purchases a new outfit with the ninety cents and the store, George comes to you to save the ninety cents he just got from selling some clothes to Linda. Now you still owe Tom one dollar, but now George shows up to save the ninety cents in which you say alright. Now you can lend out seventy nine cents George's ninety cents to someone else. Fred shows up to barrow that seventy nine cents and he too spends it on some ski equipment. That shop turns around and puts the seventy nine cents into savings. The process goes on and on repeating. Initially you still owe Tom the dollar, so if he showed up you don't actually have the dollar to give back to him because the government said you only need to have ten percent of reserve cash for savings accounts. Not only are banks creating money that does not exist but it also makes it impossible to repay savings to individuals who show up to get their money.

Tom you owe one dollar to.
George you owe ninety cents to.
Shop you owe seventy nine cents to.

A owe a grand total of two dollars and sixty nine cents. This money does not actually exist in your reserve account. So if all three of them were to show up to withdraw their money, you can't give them the money because you don't physically have it. This is referred to as being insolvent. So you created money where none exists. The reason why is because you have never actually had more than one dollar in your possession but you owe more than you lent out.

Free market banks wouldn't be allowed to operate like this, only government controlled banks would do such a thing. This is why the government has to prop up banks so they won't go bankrupt.

Jackofalltrades;131857 wrote:

If you think you can work your way out of this........ best of luck!

Did I work my way out? Or should I say maybe you need to work your way into a few economic courses?

Jackofalltrades;131857 wrote:

Please explain:
1) Under which authority and how did the government ALLOWED it.

The FED.

Jackofalltrades;131857 wrote:

2) The bankers were clerks by qualification, were they ?

I am not even sure what you mean with this question so I can't answer it.

Jackofalltrades;131857 wrote:

3) Define free market?

The unregulated exchange of goods and or services not manipulated by the government unless there is fraud or force.

2 Replies

@Krumple,

Jackofalltrades;131857 wrote:

3) Define free market?

Krumple;131895 wrote:

The unregulated exchange of goods and or services not manipulated by the government unless there is fraud or force.

It gets even simpler: Noncoerced transactions.

1 Reply

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero;131901 wrote:

It gets even simpler: Noncoerced transactions.

This of course includes a prohibition on economic coercion, right?

1 Reply

@Deckard,

Deckard;132176 wrote:

This of course includes a prohibition on economic coercion, right?

Includes? - No.
It warrants it, but it doesn't include it.
"The free market" as a concept just includes transactions that happen voluntarily.
But yes, to get as many as our transactions to be voluntary, i.e. inside the free market, prohibition of coercion can be a tool.

1 Reply

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero;132192 wrote:

Includes? - No.
It warrants it, but it doesn't include it.
"The free market" as a concept just includes transactions that happen voluntarily.
But yes, to get as many as our transactions to be voluntary, i.e. inside the free market, prohibition of coercion can be a tool.

Voluntary is by definition uncoerced, n'est-ce pa?

1 Reply

@Deckard,

Deckard;132197 wrote:

Voluntary is by definition uncoerced, n'est-ce pa?

Sure. What's your point?

1 Reply

@EmperorNero,

Krumple provided a definition of "free market".

Krumple;131895 wrote:

The unregulated exchange of goods and or services not manipulated by the government unless there is fraud or force.

In response you said

EmperorNero;131901 wrote:

It gets even simpler: Noncoerced transactions.

And then I asked

Deckard;132176 wrote:

This of course includes a prohibition on economic coercion, right?

To which you responded

EmperorNero;132192 wrote:

Includes? - No.
It warrants it, but it doesn't include it.
"The free market" as a concept just includes transactions that happen voluntarily.
But yes, to get as many as our transactions to be voluntary, i.e. inside the free market, prohibition of coercion can be a tool.

To which I responded with this question

Deckard;132197 wrote:

Voluntary is by definition uncoerced, n'est-ce pa?

To which you rseponded

EmperorNero;132214 wrote:

Sure. What's your point?

Your own definition of "free market" not only warrants the prohibition of economic coercion and coercion in general but also necessarily includes it. If there is economic coercion or coercion of any kind then the market is not free. That is my point.

1 Reply

@Deckard,

Deckard;132217 wrote:

The definition of "free market" not only warrants the prohibition of economic coercion and coercion in general but also necessarily includes it by your own definition. If there is economic coercion or coercion of any kind then the market is not free. That is my point.

Nope, the definition of free market includes only voluntary (=uncoerced) transactions. That means that transactions that are coerced are not part of the free market, not that the free market necessarily includes prohibition of coercion. That's why I say it only warrants it.

1 Reply

@EmperorNero,

EmperorNero;132218 wrote:

Nope, the definition of free market includes only voluntary (=uncoerced) transactions. That means that transactions that are coerced are not part of the free market, not that the free market necessarily includes prohibition of coercion. That's why I say it only warrants it.

Interesting distinction. I get your point. The next question is: How long can a free market be maintained without regulation i.e. the prohibition of coercion? This is more of a practical question than a question of mere definition.

1 Reply

A consequence of capitalism?

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