Aneurysms grow much faster than the surrounding blood vessels, but that doesn't make them good. It makes them bad. It may be the extreme growth that capitalism enables and encourages that is the reason it is a failure. It makes us focus on growth above all else. But why is growth in and of itself a good thing? Why isn't stability better? Growth is risky. Financial analysts focused on the long term are looking for slow stable compounding growth. Long term investors know that rocketing growth is unsustainable and is not the goal.
I would be very interested in having you explain that further, because it makes no sense to me at all.
Capitalism is bad because it lets us grow too quickly? I don't understand. Are you talking about market bubbles? Like that have been going on for four hundred years or more? If so, that's called a feedback loop: the system overgrows and then contracts. When you make a mistake and correct it, there's some adjustment involved. Surely that's better than no adjustment at all, right? I mean, to have everything perfectly valued would only happen in a fantasy world.
Aneurysms are made possible through a weakness in the blood vessel. Meteoric growth in a capitalist economy, as the post I was originally responding to mentions, is the result of a weakness in human psychology -- greed.
I do not believe judging a phenomenon as a success due to an effect of a weakness is rationally sound.
I would say capitalism is not as good an economic system as one that enables steady, predictable co-existence of human society and synergy with the earth above meteoric, unsustainable growth, which on the downside causes pain, suffering, misery, death and perhaps the decimation of spaceship earth.
Meteoric growth in a capitalist economy is just as much about need as it is greed. The beauty of capitalism and markets is that they only provide signals and incentives - reacting to those incentives which are a direct reflection of immediate need/want can come as a result of altruism or greed but in the end, the result is implicit cooperation.
Besides, the one driver of commerce and every little transaction isn't and can't be greed anyway - it's trust. It is silly to blame this recent bubble on capitalism and markets when it was just as much driven if not started by state actors. As for the rest - "unsustainable growth, which on the downside causes pain, suffering, misery, death and perhaps the decimation of spaceship earth" - bullocks.
Capitalism and markets have resulted in less pain, suffering, misery, and death than any of the alternatives. Indeed it has been a central driver in alleviating many of these problems by ensuring need is reflected in the incentives. Growth in the longer run means innovation and that more needs are being met and more suffering is being averted - and that, at least to me, is a good thing.
"more needs are being met and more suffering is being averted"
If by suffering you mean the feeling of inferiority someone gets when they don't have leather seats in their caddy and a 12v 2litre engine, don't have the latest iPhone, can't cross the world in 20 hours.
Capitalism magnifies inequality as those with money get richer and those without toil to that end.
That view seems rather inconsistent with history. People in markets that are more free (there really isn't any market we can define as being "free" as yet though countries like HK and the US are closest) find that their people get wealthier at all segments than those that don't. Yes there may be greater inequality but you have to ask yourself if we should make sure that we avoid "the feeling of inferiority" by banning leather seats, 12v 2litre engines or the latest iPhone or by making it unaffordable for everyone.
To varying degrees, societies make a value choice (whether implicitly or explicitly): that people to live unequal but wealthier or equally poorer. There really isn't much of a middle ground - or at least not that yet exists. I find it curious that those of a certain ideological persuasion focus more on the inequality rather than income mobility which is, what at least I believe to be more important and why many of us here seek to create and build our own businesses.
Right. The implicit cooperation. The implicit cooperation by the wealthy few that ultimately best serves the moguls' already grotesquely large fortune.
Just because I sell you an apple for a dollar doesn't make me an evil mogul and you an oppressed worker.
As an aside, we should really teach Marx better in modern schools. We teach the brilliance of his insights without then following it up with the many ways he was mistaken. I think sometimes Marx is being taught by the Humanities department and not Economics professors.
Surely you can't believe the planet itself is going to explode or something, can you? I mean, what you're really saying is that more growth will make the planet into a state that you find offensive and hard to live with -- dirty skies, polluted water, etc.
If that's the case then I'm with you. Glad to talk about how clean we want to make things and what kind of rules we want to put on ourselves so the world meets our ascetic approval. (offline, of course)
I don't think you believe the planet itself is going to be destroyed. Life will continue, right? It'll just get ugly and uninhabitable for poor people -- which is not an acceptable option, by the way, but it's not destruction.
Or are you somewhere in the middle, thinking that somehow the planet will manage to kill just us and the rest of the ecosystem (or what's left of it) will continue?
When you use words like that, you really still need to explain yourself some more. I'm just grasping at straws here.
Sure. Pick some stasis period before modern capitalism. No central heating. Periodic starvation. No health care. Very low literacy. No universal education. Forty percent murder rate for males. Slavery. No Internet!! I sure want to be there.
correlation does not imply causation. There's no reason to believe these advancements were the result of capitalism. Your tone indicates as much.
What about the stone age, bronze age, iron age... gun powder, the wheel... Fire!
These inventions may have had a much greater impact on human well-being than anything you mentioned and all were way before the promotion of capitalism.
Most people in the world don't have central heating, almost one billion is starving (a global food crisis was there before the financial crisis and still goes on), only a few nations guarantee health care, capitalist nations like the US don't. Globally the literacy is very poor and education rudimentary. There are more slaves now in the world than in any other periods of history.
Capitalist countries like the US, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa are the most crime ridden in the world. In the US alone more than a million people is in prison. People live in gated communities to protect themselves. Due to the digital divide only a small part of the world population has Internet access.
> Most people in the world don't have central heating, almost one billion is starving (a global food crisis was there before the financial crisis and still goes on), only a few nations guarantee health care, capitalist nations like the US don't.
Surely, a greater portion of the population has access to food and medicine than at almost any other point in history. Communism has scored some massive failures when it comes to feeding people (5 year plans, etc. etc...)
> Globally the literacy is very poor and education rudimentary.
Surely, the world literacy rate is higher than at almost any point in history.
> There are more slaves now in the world than in any other periods of history.
As a percentage?
> Capitalist countries like the US, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa are the most crime ridden in the world.
I believe this point to be accurate and relevant, although the high US crime rate is probably also related to our common law system.
> Due to the digital divide only a small part of the world population has Internet access.
But still far more than at almost any point in history! The internet is a great sticking point in debates about government investment. I don't think it would exist without capitalism, but I gather that it was greatly accelerated by government R&D money.
