https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/the-pain-you-feel-is-capitalism-dying-5cdbe06a936c#.s5xga5v52

It can be very confusing to know that you won’t find a decent job, pay off student loans or put in a down payment on a house in the next few years — even though you may have graduated from a top-tier university or secured glowing references from all those unpaid internships that got you to where you are today.
Even if you are lucky enough to have all of this going for you, you’ll still be one among hundreds of applicants for every job you apply for. And you’ll still watch as the world becomes more unequal, with fewer paid opportunities to do what you feel called to do in your work or for your life path.
What’s more, you won’t find much help from your friends because most (if not all) of them are going through the same thing. This is a painful and difficult time that is impacting all of us at once.
There will be people who tell you it’s your fault. That you aren’t trying hard enough. But those people are culprits in perpetuating a great lie of this period in history. The standard assumptions for how to be successful in life a few decades ago simply do not apply anymore. The guilt and shame you feel is the mental disease of late-stage capitalism. Embrace this truth and set yourself free.
To see how broken things have become you’ll have to think systemically. Take note of the systems built up to create this situation and understand how it came to be — so you’ll see why it cannot possibly continue on its current path.
First, a diagnosis of the problem:
A Global Architecture of Wealth Extraction has been systematically built up to rig the economic game against you. This is why a tiny number of people (current count is 62) have more wealth amongst them than half the human population. Decades of those using tax havens to hide their wealth, unfair trade agreements designed to extract wealth from poor countries, banking regulations and austerity measures meant to destabilize entire economies so massive transfers of wealth can go from everyone else to a tiny financial elite, and election rules that all-but-guarantee only those who become whores to these financial pimps will ever sit in high office.
So yeah, it’s okay to feel restless as capitalism winds itself down from these system-level harms to society.
Why do I say that capitalism (in its corporatist, wealth-extracting form) is dying? There’s a long, detailed story that could be told about this. For the sake of brevity, I will answer with two essential pieces that show how business-as-usual is finished. It is physically impossible for it to continue much longer.
Reason 1: There Are No More Profits to Extract.
As eloquently described in the writings of Jeremy Rifkin and Paul Mason, the primary motivator for capitalists — to extract wealth from consumer exchange in the form of monetary gain — is crippled by the fact that the science of wealth extraction has become so advanced that every new wave brings diminishing returns. What is called “marginal cost” by economists, the difference between how much it costs to produce something and what people are willing or able to pay for it, is nearly zero now for everything we manufacture or provide as a service. This zero marginal cost trend is breaking capitalism down by the unexpected outcome of its own spectacular success.
Add to this that most of the growth in the global economy in the last 40 years has been in speculative finance. The money system grows faster than the productive “real” economy — with the predictable outcome of market crashes, financial collapse, and structural adjustments (wealth extraction) when the mismatch grows too large. What we end up with is bloated debt too large for everyone to pay back. Combined with the end game of wealth hoarding mentioned above, this is a death knell for capitalism as we’ve known it in the last 100 years.
Reason 2: Damage Built Up in the Natural World
There is no such thing as an economy that exists without the physical world. The delusional idea that markets are separate from nature has guided mainstream economic policy for a long time — and now we are seeing the consequences in mass extinctions, loss of topsoils, climate change, collapse of fish stocks in the world ocean, rising levels of pollution, and more.
Physicists would describe this as increasing entropy, which simply means the rise in social complexity of human economies comes with a corresponding deterioration of the larger natural environments they are embedded within. And we have crossed the unprecedented watermark of history in the 20th Century — with exploding population growth, and the crossing of several essential planetary boundaries (any of which, if passed, will place our civilization in jeopardy). At current count, we have passed four of them.
So the nails are in the coffin for capitalism. What remains to be seen is whether this will take down our globalized civilization as well. I am hopeful, yet sober about our prospects. It’s going to be a very turbulent time (for the rest of our lives) but I think we can make it through this restlessness by acknowledging that it’s real, naming the architecture of wealth extraction that created these systemic harms, and dismantling this globalized system to release vital monetary resources for the emergence of a new, life-affirming paradigm for economic development.
But before we can begin this great work of our times, we must acknowledge the pain that a dying capitalist system creates in our personal lives. I know it hurts. It is quite natural to feel ashamed when you try really hard and do your best, yet still are unable to succeed. You’ll need to change the rules of the game (a few of which I have outlined here). And doing this is going to require going through a healing process internally for yourself and with your friends.
You are not alone. All 7.4 billion of us alive today are going through this. We are doing it together. Now is the time to become fully aware of the systemic nature of what we are going through. The future will not be like the past. It is going to be painful and confusing at times. Yet the prospects for getting through this struggle are nothing less than a thriving planetary civilization that is inclusive and nourishing for all people while at the same time remaining in harmony with our home planet of Earth.
Onward, fellow humans.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Because they don't remember when mass socialism had its day of reckoning and the Soviet bloc fell.

Lemme let you in on a little secret here folks, as long as there's a system of resource allocation and it is operated by humans, there will be elites who control who gets what and some folks who get screwed by the system.

If it's the state through a centralized economy, then the bureaucrats will reign.

If it's private industry through capitalism, then it's the executives.

No matter how you slice it, your admonition of capitalism is brutally misinformed and your tacit embrace of the alternative is borne of your own naivete.

Capitalism isn't the problem. It's the fact that people expect capitalism to be more than what it is that's fucked up.



my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

Aren't you the dude posting about Dunkin Donut employees and sh!t? Stick to that.

Maybe pick up an intro to Econ book or something that you can browse in between contemplating the "hood boogers" or the "jammers" on a politician or whatever....

This dude talking about immature millenials...LULZ

And you didn't graduate from college during the worst economic crisis in living memory or come of age during an era of increased economic turbulence.

Stop pretending like Western Liberal Democracies and Capitalism haven't evolved and transformed in the 30 fucking years since the Cold War ended.

You're precisely the problem. You want so bad to believe that young people are just lazy and they just need to roll up their sleeves Horatio Alger style and everything will be okay.

God forbid people take a sober look at whether or not our current economic and political structures are actually good for the nation as a whole.

Not to mention, if people take a good hard look at capitalism and increasingly find it unsatisfactory who the fuck are you to say that they're wrong for looking for alternatives or corrective measures?

The entire concept of a "free-market" is one the biggest hoaxes of neo-liberalism. People decide how their societies should be run, and when they no longer have confidence in that system they have every right to seek alternatives.

And those alternatives aren't necessarily "Soviet Style Mass Socialism". Are you in a time warp? As if there are only two options on the board.




"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..." -The Bard

Between 9/11, the great recession, market consolidation, company IPOs, 401K losses, AND student loans, my generation knows a little bit about how a bad economy looks.

But you don't see us sitting around and saying that it's capitalism's fault. There are a shitload of factors that have contributed to inequality and blaming capitalism or neoliberal policies as THE issue will prevent you from finding viable solutions within the system to solve its problems.

No one is saying that capitalism is perfect, but free markets and free societies go hand in hand to benefit free people.


my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..." -The Bard

>No one is saying that capitalism is perfect, but free markets
>and free societies go hand in hand to benefit free people.

Realising the true benefits of a free market requires perfect competition (i.e. a market with many buyers, many sellers, no barriers to entry/exit and perfect information). The current economic structure can hardly be called free when so much power and wealth is in the hands of so few.

...but too few capitalists. -G.K. Chesterson.

No joke. You need to see it.

---
"People that need positivity around them all the time are weak individuals in my book" - @lilduval

The whole time Millenials are crying about it, folks come here, take advantage of everything this country has to offer, and carve out a decent living for themselves.

No they may not drive a new 3-series or I-series like Millenials do, they may not have the latest, greatest iGadget or Galaxy S whatever device, no they don't live in nice condos, but they make it where somehow Millenials can't.


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"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

That's the same shit conservatives try to pull to shame poor black people.

Coming here with the express purposes of trying to get a better economic situation from a different country and culture is entirely different than someone who was born and socialized in this country.

Nice try though.

Actually it wasn't a nice try, because your assumption that all millennials are materialistic spend-thrifts is off base as well.

>Actually it wasn't a nice try, because your assumption that
>all millennials are materialistic spend-thrifts is off base as
>well.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-17/millennials-are-developing-parents-taste-for-jaguars-cadillacs

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/college-grads-buried-student-loan-072616080.html

"Interestingly, despite sometimes burdensome loan payments, an large number of millennials are unwilling to prioritize student loan repayment over spending on luxury and quality-of-life items.

For example, when asked what they’d be willing to give up in exchange for lower student loan payments, this is what the survey revealed:

Less than half (45 percent) were willing to cut what they spend on eating out.
Just 46 percent said they’d cut their entertainment and social event expenses.
A mere 40 percent were willing to limit their housing expenses (rent or mortgage).
Only half of millennials were willing to slash their spending on clothes, shoes and accessories.

“They are very committed to living their life the way they want to live their life, and as frustrated as they are by student loans, they are not willing to make those lifestyle tradeoffs,” said Brendan Coughlin, president of consumer lending for Citizens Bank."

there's article after article of shit like this: Millennials buy luxury items whether they can really afford them or not.

>http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-17/millennials-are-developing-parents-taste-for-jaguars-cadillacs

That article's title is really misleading. How the fuck is 8.6% indicative of the cohort as a whole?

Do you honestly know a lot of millennials riding around in Jaguars?

>https://finance.yahoo.com/news/college-grads-buried-student-loan-072616080.html

You know what's funny about this? If you click on the link to the Business Wire article that Yahoo uses as a source, they frame the conversation entirely differently to talk about how Millennials are looking for ways to deal with their debt, and they frame that list of expenses in terms of what percentages of millennials ARE willing to adjust their quality of life. The person writing for Yahoo just flips it and throws it into a negative light, however no mention is made of how much they're ACTUALLY SPENDING on quality of life items.

Does that Yahoo article actually mention what percentage of their income millennials are spending on quality of life or luxury items? NOPE! Does it say how millennials are spending on these items compared to other generations? NOPE! Americans in general are debt ridden, and baby boomers are heading towards a retirement catastrophe but I don't see you castigating them for their spending/saving habits, or comparing them to economically driven immigrants.


So Gen Y already spends 20% of their income on student loan debt, but you don't actually tell us how much their spending on their quality of life, only that roughly half have adjusted those expenses, half don't, but you don't know how that compares to other Americans who were also socialized in our consumerist economy.

Sorry, I'm still not convinced. And once again, that luxury car article was fucking click-bait.

Only that despite being a quarter of the population, we're only 8.7% of luxury car buyers. That article is even shittier than I originally thought lmao. This is what I get for entertaining this crap at 4 in the morning.

their parents were at the same age!

http://www.lifehealthpro.com/2015/07/29/millennials-vs-boomers-vs-gen-xers-how-they-stack

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..." -The Bard

Millennials believe they they should be able to have everything they want regardless of how deeply in debt they are.

---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

can get better financing from financial institutions than most citizens can

others come with the specific intent of doing work that citizens were raised & schooled to not have to do

they dont have the expectations (or student loan debt) that citizens have been led to believe are realistic

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..." -The Bard

my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

go sit in your office & stfu, real men out here doing real blue collar work & not that pussy ass paper shuffling youre so proud of

________________________________________________________________
whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Because he can't see beyond the 20th century.

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..." -The Bard

Capitalism has existed for less than 0.1% of human history. For most of the existence of our species, we did not hold private property in land. Wage labor, private real estate markets, corporations, and stock exchanges are all recent inventions. Yes, human beings have always traded in markets, but that isn't the same thing as capitalism, which is based on the drive to maximize profit through privately owned commodity production. History is full of working alternatives to that system, some oppressive and some benign.

The fact that the particular alternative to capitalism developed in the USSR was despotic and inefficient does not mean that no other alternatives will work, or that capitalism will last forever.

It more likely that future generations will look at capitalism the way we look at slavery--as a flawed way of arranging society that does not have to exist. (Of course, slavery helped give rise to capitalism, but they're not the same thing.) Defenders of slavery also said that it was natural, that there would always be hierarchies, that critics were naive or jealous, and that the alternatives were all more dangerous. But they were wrong.

In the long run, a system that incentives maximum greed and infinite growth isn't compatible with survival on a finite planet.

****************
TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

He been done drank the kool-aid.

--

"You can't beat white people. You can only knock them out."

my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

after we take ALL your shit & give it to the poor

________________________________________________________________
whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

Do I get to choose which person's shit I get to hold now?


---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

________________________________________________________________
whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

---------------------------

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out?
Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?
They don't want to call for peace then.

We were gonna have to pool our resources so the most of us could survive

________________________________________________________________
whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

jk!!! you arent a murderous tyrant!

i commit genocide on blunts


BUT on some real shit Pol Pot's regime was a direct result of the US involvement in Vietnam & it was ultimately Vietnamese forces that brought him down

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

The problem with the Soviet model was that it was undemocratic, and gave control to a bureaucratic elite. But the problem with our model is that it is pseudo-democratic, and gives control to a plutocratic elite. We can choose between a handful of elite (or elite-funded) candidates every few years, but our economy is controlled by a small minority of the population. That ensures that most important decisions will be outside of democratic control. Also, it is morally unacceptable that we allow people to go without water, shelter, and basic medical treatment. That would have struck our ancestors a millennium ago as barbaric. Finally, the way we value goods does not account for environmental externalities, which makes it pay to degrade the biosphere we leave to future generations.

There is no one solution, but there are many alternatives that have been and are being developed. For production, we need to expand economic decision-making power to include workers and community stakeholders. Instead of relying on corporations that contract with sweatshops in Bangladesh and poison the Niger Delta (etc.), we need more worker and consumer cooperatives. See Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice (Penn State Press, 2014). Also see www.cooperationjackson.org. There is a huge literature on this. See some of the links here:

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy

We need to provide a universal basic income, and grant all citizens the right to basic amenities (water, shelter, healthcare). No just economic system should have homeless people, or people going without water.

On the environment, we need to prevent excessive private exploitation by establishing common property systems. Garrett Hardin was empirically wrong as well as racist and ignorant of how commons are managed. See Elinor Ostrom's Nobel prize-winning research on successful management of common fisheries, forests, grazing lands, etc. We have many successful, non-capitalist models of resource use driven by need rather than greed.

We should also make planning more democratic. Participatory budgeting has been highly successful in Brazil, for example. Germany's community-owned utilities work better than many in the U.S.

We need to reverse the privatization of democracy. We need public funding of elections, an end to the electoral college, proportional representation to enable more political parties, and instant run-off voting.

Etc., etc. There are countless alternatives to capitalism. We see some of them developing at the margins now, but the center cannot hold forever.

I don't make that assumption.

I assume that man is innately drawn to autocracy or the rule of the strong. It's why monarchies are the oldest and most prevalent historical form of government. It's easier to rule and live under the rule of absolute law.

That's why capitalism is so important. It disincentivizes autocracy. Free markets allow for the free flow of goods as well as the free flow of thought in a competing marketplace of things as well as ideas.

But, like I said before, with any system of resource distribution, you're going to have elites and you're going to have those who go without. At least capitalism seeks to open the channel of progress to those at the bottom and social mobility is one of the keys to the stability of the state. The government can either allow them to dream of better days or show them the nightmare of insurgency, capitalism provides the former, centrally planned economies are often driven by the latter.





my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

>That's why capitalism is so important. It disincentivizes
>autocracy. Free markets allow for the free flow of goods as
>well as the free flow of thought in a competing marketplace

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

Historically, as societies grow a middle class and relative prosperity becomes the norm, there's a balance between government and enterprise that keeps the peace.

Or, more simply stated, as long as you have a middle class that can look up and aspire while also look down and avoid, you have a motivated workforce that keeps the balance and not a constant, simmering feud between the haves and have nots.

Without a middle class in a free society, you have the economic balance of a third world nation and the same tenuous political stability. It's therefore imperative for a capitalistic society to have a robust middle class that isn't oppressed in the workplace or by the government. A middle class that is able to own property and become invested in their community and country. Otherwise, what do you have?

But you said, "nope" so I'm just gonna assume you're not that smart.


my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

>Historically, as societies grow a middle class and relative
>prosperity becomes the norm, there's a balance between
>government and enterprise that keeps the peace.

and eventually the elite get greedy & the system changes

>Or, more simply stated, as long as you have a middle class
>that can look up and aspire while also look down and avoid,
>you have a motivated workforce that keeps the balance and not
>a constant, simmering feud between the haves and have nots.

this, as stated, is absolutely true, but what happens when the expectations of many in the "middle class" are eroded?

>Without a middle class in a free society, you have the
>economic balance of a third world nation and the same tenuous
>political stability. It's therefore imperative for a
>capitalistic society to have a robust middle class that isn't
>oppressed in the workplace or by the government.

and the steady erosion of this, due to the greed of "rulers" is a harbringer

A middle
>class that is able to own property and become invested in
>their community and country. Otherwise, what do you have?

you are part of a growing minority, home ownership is feasable but more & more folks are renting & more & more owners are not selling

>But you said, "nope" so I'm just gonna assume you're not that
>smart.

making an ass outta u not me

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

While current economic conditions aren't optimal, they're also not abysmal or as apocalyptic as you think they are.

We have endured far worse times and we bounced back. Again, the Gilded Age is probably the most apt comparison for the United States. The point is, the pendulum swings between right and left but it always finds its center.

Even those elites you malign as some kind of boogeymen can see and sense when the scales go out of balance and will sacrifice some of their largess and prosperity for the sake of tranquility. They know that a hungry man is an angry man and that their grasp on wealth and power is tenuous, so they'll relent and progressive reforms will take hold.

Of course, they'll never be progressive enough for some because they oppose the idea of wealth and capital distribution by the elites in the private sector and would seek to have resources allocated through some other means. As a black person, it's precisely that alternative that scares me because it doesn't afford any protections to minorities or offer disproportionate remedies based on disproportionate need.

Nah.

I'd rather be in a society where I can have and earn based on my efforts and be compensated for my work at a level commensurate to its quality. Anything less is asking for state sanctioned discrimination.





my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

soon come

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

________________________________________________________________
whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

They also pointed out that it was ancient, and sanctioned by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Slaves themselves pointed out that society can and must evolve.

Capitalism isn't hard-wired in us--it's too recent for that. Anthropology shows that humans can live in all types of property and economic systems. There are lots of good reasons to think we can do better than a system based on ceaseless growth and the blind pursuit of profit.

Human nature exists, but it accommodates far more possibilities than we think when we assume our social status quo is "natural".

I'd posit that, while profit is a key motivating factor, there are other goals from a capitalistic system like innovation and efficiency.

Fact is, there are some real reforms that need to be made to the economies of most Western democracies, we're living through a neo-Gilded Age and some serious thought needs to be given to redistribution in our tax code as well as in our overall fiscal policy. But that's not to say that capitalism is broken, if anything, it's a testament to its durability. The fact that we've survived panics and depressions and evolved the system to adapt to new labor dynamics and new demands on businesses and capital.

It's my opinion that Reagan's economic policies and hyper-capitalism are due for a reckoning but not condemnation to the refuse bin. We need to be smarter about how we use and view capital in this new era in a manner that's smarter and more inclusive without being wantonly irresponsible in its aims to right the ship.

Making money, accruing wealth, investing capital in private enterprise, and operating in a free market are all good things. They've been abused, but that doesn't mean they can't be fixed. I disagree with the notion that the fact that capitalism is flawed means capitalism has failed. It hasn't. But some of its proponents aren't holding up their end of the bargain.



my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

cheat in order to correct itself, and in fact those cheats are only correcting the fact that it's been cheating itself. By example the Panama Papers as the tip of an iceberg, or Puerto Rico as an exploited carcass. While one can pretend that these are just some of the things the problems that need to be solved in the evolving system of capitalism, for many of those who benefit the most they are almost a defining feature which has allowed their success.

Eight years ago we were in an insane financial crisis which should have warranted appraisal so as to correct the mistakes that allowed things to get so bad. Instead we cheated our way around it.

Do you not find anything problematic with that?

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

People are always going to find ways to get more than they earned or to hoard resources for their own benefit. Saying that you have to cheat in order to be a capitalist is painting with a pretty broad brush.

I mean, you can look at Venezuela and see how they jooked the books in order to make their socialist system work and we see how that all turned out. At least free markets offer a veneer of transparency.



my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

2 I never said this

>Saying
>that you have to cheat in order to be a capitalist is painting
>with a pretty broad brush.

What I said is that for those who benefit most the cheats are a feature not a problem.

>I mean, you can look at Venezuela and see how they jooked the
>books in order to make their socialist system work and we see
>how that all turned out. At least free markets offer a veneer
>of transparency.

3 Rather than deflecting with but socialism does it too can you address the the capitalism examples I raised. Specifically the US one and how it plays into your idea that capitalism is ___. (Not even sure what goes there other than you're getting yours so everyone else is bitchmade and doing it wrong)



█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"Not even sure what goes there other than you're getting yours so everyone else is bitchmade and doing it wrong"

Basically. Stop complaining about the system. If you're gonna play the game, play the game. If you're not but you're gonna reap the benefits of the game, then chill with all the criticisms of the system.

Like I said to start this, all this anti-capitalist talk is fueled by people who don't like the fact that working and earning money is hard. I'm not trying to say that we should all be out here bootstrapping and living some fake ass American Dream, but I am saying that folks need to be pragmatic about their expectations and grateful for their opportunities. It could be worse, it can get worse, so either you get with the program or you find someplace else to go.


my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

and how it works as far as how wealth is generated & compensation is distributed

and on top of that you got the utter gall to tell people that dont fit well in your precious system to keep quiet about it like so many peasants

you a real piece of shit my man

________________________________________________________________
whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

i know for a fact that not only am i better than you, im more of a man than youll ever be & no amount of your precious god money will change that

________________________________________________________________
whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

Sure, you can be an ethical textile manufacturer who pays fair wages, uses less polluting production methods, and pays your share of taxes. But you'll be driven out of business by more cost-effective competitors who contract with dangerous sweatshops in Bangladesh, dump their chemicals directly into the nearest river, and dodge taxes. Ethical behavior usually results in lower profits and competitive disadvantage in a capitalist system.

True, you can address some of this through unions, regulations and protectionism. But because they lower profits, capitalists will always seek to break unions, and lobby to overturn regulations and protectionist policies (unless they benefit from them directly). The neoliberal revolution under Reagan and Thatcher was exactly this: an effort by capital to restore profit rates that had been squeezed by earlier efforts to tame capitalism. Capitalists will always push for a high-profit, low-wage, low-regulation environment, and they will relocate wherever necessary to find it.

The ownership structure of corporations ensures that they will behave in this way. We don't need to abolish markets, but we need to both restrict them and radically change the structures that operate within them.

I mean, yeah, it's feasible and profitable to cut corners on the front end, but there's always a cost to your business somewhere when you do that.

So yeah, you can contract out production of your garments to a factory in Bangladesh and you can look the other way when they use sweatshop labor, but once your product goes to market and consumers are able to gauge its relative quality compared to another producer who went with a better facility, you'll only be able to make margins on volume. Volume produced goods depress prices and you wind up with similar profits as you would have if you'd sold fewer goods at a higher price.

In any system there are incentives to cheat or to not play by the rules and yes, there are bad actors in capitalism. But what you see over time is that producing a superior product is its own benefit.

You're making claims against capitalism based on negative assumptions rather than looking at the iterative benefits of the system.



my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

>So yeah, you can contract out production of your garments to a
>factory in Bangladesh and you can look the other way when they
>use sweatshop labor, but once your product goes to market and
>consumers are able to gauge its relative quality compared to
>another producer who went with a better facility, you'll only
>be able to make margins on volume. Volume produced goods
>depress prices and you wind up with similar profits as you
>would have if you'd sold fewer goods at a higher price.

For instance, Fast fashion has been absolute destroying traditional clothing retailers including higher tier (luxury brands are their own animal). It's ability to create/sell by volume is literally what makes China a world power.

Sears and JC Penny caught the brunt of the Old Navy/H&M model before any higher end retailers got hit.

And the fact is, it's not about quality as much as it is about design.


my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

Let me sport my Air Hyperbole 2010s in peace. (c) ansomble

Building repetoires (c) spm since 1983

They would have been driven out of business by more ethical competitors. But the reverse happens: the behavior these firms engage in has made them crush competitors, and become among the most profitable enterprises in history. At every step of the way, ruthlessness has yielded greater market share and political lobbying power. Also, this isn't new. If you read Ida Tarbell's history of Standard Oil (an ancestor of Exxon), it's a story of more ethical oil producers getting continuously undercut and outsold by Rockefeller. Treating workers, communities, and the environment better might work in niche markets, but in most industries you won't become one of the big dogs that way.

Business ethics is mostly public relations. Whether we look at banking, retail, oil, diamonds, or weapons manufacturing, we see the behaviors I described rise to the top. Not because these industries are run by uniquely evil people, but because the system they operate in is flawed.

You can do it with or without scruples. It's really a matter of how well you can sleep knowing you did it the way you did.



my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

...and a lot of their organic produce is picked by highly exploited farm workers. It also promotes the illusion that we can make someone like John Mackey super-rich while achieving sustainability. We need the kind of cooperatives Jessica Nembhard writes about, not Whole Foods.

>I'd posit that, while profit is a key motivating factor,
>there are other goals from a capitalistic system like
>innovation and efficiency.

How are those uniquely capitalist traits?

The height of communism (the USSR during the 70s and 80s) matched the height of capitalism (the same period in the US) for innovation and efficiency. If anything, it was better at the efficiency. It reached plenty of innovations (first person in space, first person orbiting the Earth, for example) before the US.

Where it fell down was that it wasn't really communist at all. There were elites, there were market forces, there were cabals, there were tyrants, dictators and genocides. It's difficult to really argue that communism has ever really got a fair shake, but I think it's probably about as effective at balancing society as "pure" capitalism - not very.

For me, the answer lies in socially accountable capitalism. Capitalism is a great base model. Profit is a great incentive, possibly the best incentive humankind knows, but it needs checks and balances. If people are lucky enough to get "too" rich, then their excess needs redistributing to the collective through taxation and public spending. If people are unlucky enough to get "too poor" then their wealth needs bolstering through taxation and public spending. Only then can you have a society which encompasses Larry Page and the lady that cleaned your office toilet this morning and doesn't erupt into riotous violence every few years.

_______________________________

))<>((
forever.

The height of communism (the USSR during the 70s and 80s) matched the height of capitalism (the same period in the US) for innovation and efficiency. If anything, it was better at the efficiency. It reached plenty of innovations (first person in space, first person orbiting the Earth, for example) before the US.

Where it fell down was that it wasn't really communist at all. There were elites, there were market forces, there were cabals, there were tyrants, dictators and genocides. It's difficult to really argue that communism has ever really got a fair shake, but I think it's probably about as effective at balancing society as "pure" capitalism - not very.

^^^You are very wrong here.

The Soviets were terrible at producing goods because most centrally planned economies are terrible at producing goods. I wish I could find the article, but there was an absurd number of Russians killed by exploding Soviet television sets. And while you talk about the space program, the Soviets killed a whole lotta people you never heard about rushing to get to space (Google that shit, there's video of one guy cursing the whole goddamn country as he's crashing to the ground). Oh, and while you're Googling that, look up Aeroflot's safety records, they're abysmal.

There's a reason why, after the fall of communism, there was no pent up demand in the west for Russian made products outside of vodka and caviar. Because the stuff they made sucked.


For me, the answer lies in socially accountable capitalism. Capitalism is a great base model. Profit is a great incentive, possibly the best incentive humankind knows, but it needs checks and balances. If people are lucky enough to get "too" rich, then their excess needs redistributing to the collective through taxation and public spending. If people are unlucky enough to get "too poor" then their wealth needs bolstering through taxation and public spending. Only then can you have a society which encompasses Larry Page and the lady that cleaned your office toilet this morning and doesn't erupt into riotous violence every few years.

^^^I can agree with this.

I just don't like the use of "too rich" as if to connote some kind of cap on wealth. People should be allowed to accrue whatever they've earned, but I agree that to whom much is given much should be taxed. That's not my beef.

My beef is when people just want to chuck capitalism to the side as if it's some kind of unique evil just because it's not fair to them.



my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

>The Soviets were terrible at producing goods because most
>centrally planned economies are terrible at producing goods.
>I wish I could find the article, but there was an absurd
>number of Russians killed by exploding Soviet television sets.
> And while you talk about the space program, the Soviets
>killed a whole lotta people you never heard about rushing to
>get to space (Google that shit, there's video of one guy
>cursing the whole goddamn country as he's crashing to the
>ground). Oh, and while you're Googling that, look up
>Aeroflot's safety records, they're abysmal.

And if you compare these records to the records of experiments in "pure" capitalism in South America, they make for familiar reading. When you implement idealism it either needs absolutely purity (Sorry, Rand, it's practically impossible) *or* proper checks and balances. Soviet Communism had too few checks and balances - people died in HUGE numbers, poverty was more widespread than any genuine communist would accept and yes, their products were sub-standard... but the same is true of Capitalism in Venezuela or Argentina. Ford Motor Company might have been making thousands of cars and healthy profits, but the lack of checks and balances meant they had actual torture chambers in their factories that union leaders ended up in and all the economies that the Chicago School experimented with capitalist purity in eventually crumbled.

Pure idealism in any form is a bad thing.


>
>There's a reason why, after the fall of communism, there was
>no pent up demand in the west for Russian made products
>outside of vodka and caviar. Because the stuff they made
>sucked.
>

Yep, true... but again, it wasn't true communism. China makes plenty of desirable products (and yes, it's probably because they're starting to add checks and balances to their communism through globalised capitalism)

>
>For me, the answer lies in socially accountable capitalism.
>Capitalism is a great base model. Profit is a great incentive,
>possibly the best incentive humankind knows, but it needs
>checks and balances. If people are lucky enough to get "too"
>rich, then their excess needs redistributing to the collective
>through taxation and public spending. If people are unlucky
>enough to get "too poor" then their wealth needs bolstering
>through taxation and public spending. Only then can you have a
>society which encompasses Larry Page and the lady that cleaned
>your office toilet this morning and doesn't erupt into riotous
>violence every few years.
>
>^^^I can agree with this.
>
>I just don't like the use of "too rich" as if to connote some
>kind of cap on wealth. People should be allowed to accrue
>whatever they've earned, but I agree that to whom much is
>given much should be taxed. That's not my beef.
>
>My beef is when people just want to chuck capitalism to the
>side as if it's some kind of unique evil just because it's not
>fair to them.
>

Chucking capitalism in the fire would be rash, absolutely I agree - but so would chucking communism or socialism in the fire. The only answer is the tiny sliver of the Venn Diagram of global economics that they all share. That's the sweet spot where the most people are experiencing the most benefit.

_______________________________

))<>((
forever.

Let me sport my Air Hyperbole 2010s in peace. (c) ansomble

Building repetoires (c) spm since 1983

>Where it fell down was that it wasn't really communist at all.
>There were elites, there were market forces, there were
>cabals, there were tyrants, dictators and genocides. It's
>difficult to really argue that communism has ever really got a
>fair shake

Stalinsim =/= communism.

--

"You can't beat white people. You can only knock them out."

You can't exist in a world of global trade and have a system that is based on the collective good of the people.


my avy: Deep in your heart, you know he's right: http://coreyrichardsonneedsajob.com/
my hustle: http://SupaSoulSounds.com

*RIP: John T. "220v" Richardson, Blessing Benson, and Dilla*

have consistently produced under the likes of Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, etc.

Rest In Peace, Bad News Brown

I commend you. Thats an important skill.

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE

Death of Neoliberalism would be a better explanation.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

on their head or hand? Seeing as how everything is in place for such a system to exist -- I'll stick with capitalism thank you very much.

______________________________________

Everything looks like Oprah kissing Harvey Weinstein these days

a world beyond the here and now?

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..." -The Bard

Corruption and greed are no different than any other addiction in that one must hit rock bottom before they can want change.

______________________________________

Everything looks like Oprah kissing Harvey Weinstein these days

how many folks here carry a chip on them voluntarily on a day to day basis so they can buy shit?

i one read someone who said "technology is not civilization"




Marxism is very flawed but ownership of the means of production is a bitch