Debunking Crapitalism

[VIDEODROME]

Those areas of over production will be taken out of production and those workers engaged in something else, ie, do we have to have 30 different models of washing machines? Why are we doing washing at home when the factory can do it more efficiently?

Factory? I dunno about that.

I have used a Laundromat if that is what you really mean. It was nice because I could run a few machines at the same time if the place was slow and do a big heap of laundry all at once.

Or maybe you mean a service like those companies that clean uniforms for hospitals and restaurants. I don't think it's realistic for one facility to handle everyone's laundry in a city. Maybe a few small places can do some of it like the Laundromat I used.

 

[dannno]

Oh man, I hate the laundromat more than any other place in the world.

If you make me use a laundromat I am going to kick you in the balls.

 

[Ronin Truth]

Oh man, I hate the laundromat more than any other place in the world.

If you make me use a laundromat I am going to kick you in the balls.

Helpful hint # 643 If you time it right, you can do 20 loads in the same time it takes for one load.

 

[Ronin Truth]

you are SO clever! quoting yourself...

uh, what is Capital?

https://www.google.com/search?q=cap....0...1ac..34.heirloom-serp..0.0.0.wnuVHkibVvA

 

[GunnyFreedom]

Helpful hint # 643 If you time it right, you can do 20 loads in the same time it takes for one load.

.... by dropping some $50 in change. Couple of those and you can buy your own washer and dryer.

 

[Ronin Truth]

.... by dropping some $50 in change. Couple of those and you can buy your own washer and dryer.

That's hint # 644.

 

[dannno]

//

 

[Paul Or Nothing II]

Houston, we have a communist on-board! And he's oblivious to Economic Calculation Problem that has repeatedly brought down utopian communism!

Economic Calculation Problem refers to the problem of allocating limited resources most effectively without a Price System. It's the Price System that tells everyone that more miners are needed or that more factory workers are needed or that more managers, accountants or whoever are needed, by raising the price offered for the job (wages/salaries), this way labor is most effectively allocated throughout the economy; the stronger the demand for a particular kind of labor, the more money will be offered by the employers to the people who are willing & capable of doing the job. This is why doctors or accountants or bankers or any high-paid employees get paid more than janitors or waiters or burger-flippers or whoever; it's because the demand for & supply of their kind of labor is indicated through the Price System.

Similarly, profit tells everyone where investment is needed, the stronger the demand for investment in a particular area of the economy, the higher the POTENTIAL profits to be made. And the word "potential" is important because most businesses fail in the first year so failure-rates being so high, starting a business, with no certainty of the success, is a huge risk. So those businesses that do succeed deserve their profits for taking the risk of losing their capital otherwise there would be no incentive to fund & start new businesses.

The workers accept the security of a regular income over the uncertainty of profits (or losses) that could be made by starting a business. So, when people say that the profits of a business should be distributed amongst workers (& that investors/owners don't deserve it) should consider whether & how many workers would want to work for a business that offered to distribute profits amongst workers ONLY IF the business succeeded, otherwise the workers wouldn't be paid at all! But most workers choose the certainty of a certain wage/salary over the uncertainty of profits/losses, if that's "wage slavery" or whatever then they have chosen it, even though they had the option to offer their labor without expecting a guaranteed return.

http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

Even if the socialists have been able to create a mighty army of citizens all eager to do the bidding of their masters, what exactly would the socialist planners tell this army to do? How would they know what products to order their eager slaves to produce, at what stage of production, how much of the product at each stage, what techniques or raw materials to use in that production and how much of each, and where specifically to locate all this production? How would they know their costs, or what process of production is or is not efficient?

But no "market socialist" has ever suggested preserving or carrying over, much less understood the importance of, the specifically entrepreneurial functions of capitalism:

Nobody has ever suggested that the socialist commonwealth could invite the promoters and speculators to continue their speculations and then deliver their profits to the common chest. Those suggesting a quasi-market for the socialist system have never wanted to preserve the stock and commodity exchanges, the trading in futures, and the bankers and money-lenders as quasi-institutions. One cannot play speculation and investment. The speculators and investors expose their own wealth, their own destiny. This fact makes them responsible to the consumers, the ultimate bosses of the capitalist economy. If one relieves them of this responsibility, one deprives them of their very character. They are no longer businessmen, but just a group of men to whom the director has handed over his main task, the supreme direction of the conduct of affairs. Then they--and not the nominal director--become the true directors and have to face the same problem the nominal director could not solve: the problem of calculation.

For Mises, in short, the key to the capitalist market economy and its successful functioning is the entrepreneurial forecasting and decision-making of private owners and investors. The key is emphatically not the more minor decisions made by corporate managers within a framework already set by entrepreneurs and the capital markets.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

So many errors to choose from....

Ok, but why should we leave wage slavery in place?
Even if crapitalism were performed by only sole proprietors it would still exploit people for their inability to produce goods.
Would you pay somebody to shave your face or mow your lawn if you could do it for yourself?
Crapitalism exploits the inability of the 'customer' to produce the product themselves.

No, it solves the problem that people cannot produce everything themselves.

Autarchy (everyone producing only for their own consumption) means that a person will barely be able to feed himself.

People can live much better producing for exchange than producing for themselves, because of the law of comparative advantage. In short, if Franz is better at producing food than Bob, and Bob is better at producing clothes than Franz, it is better for both of them if they each specialize in their respective area of strength (and exchange the resulting products with one another), rather than both trying to produce both food and clothes. Aka, the division of labor.

We have to have workers we don't have to have dollars.

We need exchange (see above), and so we need money to facilitate exchange. Barter (direct exchange of good for good) severely limits the opportunities for exchange, and therefore the division of labor, with all of its attendant benefits.

If the people that make the products and the people that distribute the goods show up to work then the goods will be on the shelves even if the accounting department jumps off a cliff.

The people that mine the minerals, refine the minerals into raw materials, fashion the raw materials into finished products, and those that distribute those products could care less if the corporation collects it's billions or not, as long as they continue to show up to do the work then the products continue to be on the shelves.

We have to have workers to produce the goods, we don't have to have dollars to make the goods available.

If the workers just take what they need from the shelves in order to continue producing the goods then the goods will continue to be produced.

They could just order what they need from the net and have it delivered to their door.

What I am asserting is that if the workers do the work the system continues to supply the shelves in the absence of an accounting department.

This does not eliminate management. It just changes who the managers are. Before it was some guys in suits, now it's the workers.

Well, gee whiz, that must be better, right? Now the workers get to keep the full product of their labor!....except now the workers also have more work to do. Yes, they get to divide up the salaries of the ex-managers, but they also have to divide up their workload, don't they? So, where's the gain? On top of that, the average worker (say, cashier at Walmart) probably isn't going to make as prudent business decisions as someone trained in business management, is he? Again, division of labor.

Not exactly.
We work because we don't want to be parasites on the other workers.

Of course, people will work for free; and the seas will turn to lemonade.

Somebody has to make the cars, shoes, houses, etc,...the most efficient way to do this is by the division of labor.
The miner mines and the refiner refines because they know the farmer will grow the food and the trucker will distribute it.
I would assert that the mathematicians will devise some measure so that we can know that working in the shoe factory for 10 years is sufficient to ensure that what we eat from the farmer is equated by our production of shoes, but this number would have to be a guideline or we have just traded dollars for the new measure.

Never heard of the socialist calculation problem?

 

[NewRightLibertarian]

Money and the wage system arise organically through the marketplace because individuals find them to be beneficial. What this barely literate moron suggests would require massive levels of brute force wielded by the state to enact, whether he will admit it or not. FreeBornAngel sounds a lot like one of those mentally-ill Zeitgeist RBE cultists to me.

 

[Dr.3D]

Barter (direct exchange of good for good) severely limits the opportunities for exchange, and therefore the division of labor, with all of its attendant benefits.

I like barter when it's possible, it eliminates those nasty taxes the state wishes to impose on the exchange of money.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Money and the wage system arise organically through the marketplace because individuals find them to be beneficial. What this barely literate moron suggests would require massive levels of brute force wielded by the state to enact, whether he will admit it or not.

but but but, the workers will do all this voluntarily because pure love or something...

FreeBornAngel sounds a lot like one of those mentally-ill Zeitgeist RBE cultists to me.

FYI, for anyone unfamiliar, that's "resource based economy," and yes they are basically idiot pop-communists who often don't realize their "fresh new" plan is just rehashed communist tripe that was theoretically obliterated centuries before they were born.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

I like barter when it's possible, it eliminates those nasty taxes the state wishes to impose on the exchange of money.

Indeed. A beautiful example of how the state's economic interventions represent retrogression to more primitive forms of social interaction.

 

[Ender]

Corporatism is wage slavery. Capitalism is prosperity. The Austrian School provides the fundamentals and the data to best fashion that kind of capitalism to enhance general prosperity.

Correct.

What most people, including the OP, call "capitalism" is nothing close to capitalism. What we have today is mercantilism- which is basically what the Revolution was fought over.

Real capitalism means that I can make Widget 1 and you can make Widget 2. If the populace likes your Widget 2 better than mine, then I better find a way to make a more useful widget. If YOUR widget is popular and begins to sell, then you can produce more and more widgets and bring the price down, while employing more and more people. When the government begins to interfere and plays favorites with certain corps while adding regulation upon regulation, then we have the world today- which is NOT capitalism. Add fractionalized banking to the mix and we become completely enslaved.

And as far as Walmart goes, it only gets bad-mouthed by the MSM because it won't unionize. I like Walmart and think it is much closer to a real capitalistic business than most anything else in the US.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

^^^I think the OP's objecting to real capitalism too.

 

[Deborah K]

Capitalism or Competition is a tricky thing. I think it can be both really great leading to innovation and just as easily be something terrible when a minority dominates the market and actually stifles competition.

Some will cite government picking winners and losers in the economy as enabling this and I think that's a very fair argument. In a lot of cases though, it just takes an industrialist (Robber Baron) and one wealthy banker backing them to just out-spend and out bid the competition.

So I just see it as a mix. The innovation we see in areas like Silicon Valley is astounding, and yet I'm also annoyed at how the computer industry is really dominated by Microsoft and Apple. They are both positioned to crush any business startup they see as a threat.

I see Capitalism as being very beneficial, but also badly flawed and there needs to be checks against corporate tyranny. One tool might be the government if they didn't sell out for corporate donations to their campaigns. I'm not sure if any reform can get passed to stop that. Otherwise, maybe it's just up to the people to revolt by Unionizing.

this

 

[GunnyFreedom]

^^^I think the OP's objecting to real capitalism too.

Of course he is. He wants his bread delivered by servants on a silver platter for free instead of earning it 'by the sweat of his brow.' Real capitalism would see him go hungry.

 

[VIDEODROME]

Helpful hint # 643 If you time it right, you can do 20 loads in the same time it takes for one load.

I used a Landromat for a while when my washer broke and I'd use 2 or 3 big washers to just do everything while I just hang around and read a book.

 

[r3volution 3.0]

Capitalism or Competition is a tricky thing. I think it can be both really great leading to innovation and just as easily be something terrible when a minority dominates the market and actually stifles competition.

Some will cite government picking winners and losers in the economy as enabling this and I think that's a very fair argument. In a lot of cases though, it just takes an industrialist (Robber Baron) and one wealthy banker backing them to just out-spend and out bid the competition.

So I just see it as a mix. The innovation we see in areas like Silicon Valley is astounding, and yet I'm also annoyed at how the computer industry is really dominated by Microsoft and Apple. They are both positioned to crush any business startup they see as a threat.

I see Capitalism as being very beneficial, but also badly flawed and there needs to be checks against corporate tyranny. One tool might be the government if they didn't sell out for corporate donations to their campaigns. I'm not sure if any reform can get passed to stop that. Otherwise, maybe it's just up to the people to revolt by Unionizing.

What exactly is your concern?

A firm having a large market share (even 100%) is not in itself a problem. If it can produce widgets better/cheaper than anyone else, so that no one can complete, why would we want anyone else producing them?

Large market share would only be a problem if it enabled a firm to raise prices above the market rate, to screw consumers. Economic theory tells us this is impossible, since as soon as it raises prices it will lose market share to the competition (and if none currently exists, the higher prices will draw new firms into the market). And history, to my knowledge, offers not a single example of this happening (except when the firm has governmental support).

 

[FreeBornAngel]

This post was mistakenly posted in an incomplete format, it is posted in it's entirety on the next page in post #64.


Let me state here for the record that my proposal comes without an enforcement arm, all interactions are voluntary.
I have seen multiple references to communism failing in the past and I posted this link,...Emma Goldman,....No communism in Russia, an on the spot report from someone that was a student to the people that defined the term in it's modern meaning, not the one that was coopted by the soviets, and the one commonly held by those educated in crapitalst schools.
As for the economic works that I have read, I have not read Das Kapital, I saw no need to follow that path, I have read The Conquest of Bread by Pitr Kropotkin, however he didn't have the structure that is Costco to coopt or maybe he would have been accepted in his own time.
I don't think that any of you seriously debate that the workers that fill the shelves care one whit if the accounting department collects it's billions as long as they have their bass boat, beer and wwe.
If you do dispute that the workers work is what fills the shelves and not the accounting departments book keeping the I suggest you watch somebody change a tire on your car, did the tire magically transform when you paid the bill, or was the tire changed by a worker regardless of the corporation collecting is pay?
So, banks and their servant, dollars, have led us into feudal serfdom.
If you defend this then you are just repeating what the slaves did when slavery was to the feudal lord.
Stop making arguments to justify our enslavement, please.
So, in order, from the top,....