For me it is only logical that the answer to this question is resoundingly in the affirmative. Surprisingly however, after a superficial scan, there seems to be little research on the subject. Perhaps the question is such a truism that nobody thinks the thesis needs testing?

My thesis, then, is that capitalism is a voracious machine that is busy converting everything into capital via commodity production, but that much as it needs fuel for this obsession, it also needs consumers. Government policy, from both sides, often reflects the need for a larger consumer base to maintain economic growth; thus Peter Costello encouraged Australians to have “one baby for mum one for Dad and one for the country”. The pragmatics behind this, I would argue, boil down to the need for economic growth.
Another way capitalism drives up population is by commodifying technological innovation, especially in the health sector, thus prolonging life.
I had hoped to delve into this more before I sought criticism or corroboration from OLO, but...
If capitalism does drive population growth, we’re in big trouble, no?
Whatever your conclusions on this topic, I’d also be interested to know if anybody thinks capitalism can lead ultimately to a sustainable and equitable world for all?

Sqeeers.... there are many dimensions to the impact of capitalism...and population growth may be one, but the way you put it.. you have already decided "Capitalism is EEEEEEVIL"...

You then add in a few ingredients which you think will support your case, but all I can see is you have been living far too long in the Green Left Weekly and Socialist Alternative/Resistance playgrounds to the point where you have forgotten it aint the only game in town.

CAPITALISM is essentially people participating in a free market.

It does not in any way need to, or by default exclude a degree of social well being in government hands. That is entirely between the participants of a society and the people it elects to run the show.

FREE MARKET.. means I and you can come up with a good idea and offer our widget for sale on the open market. If mine is cheaper..and seems to do the job for a reasonable time.. perhaps I will sell more.
But if you then cut your price... maybe yours will sell more.. but there are checks and balances in all this... and you should jollywell know them..because you are a consumer.

May I suggest you study the society of Ancient Israel for some excellent examples of how 'capitalism' in a theocracy can work.

Not that I'm recommending a Theocracy.. but the Israelite society was fundamentally capitalist with social well being built in.

-Year of Jubilee.. (Jewish slaves freed, debts forgiven)
-Harvest.. was required to leave an amount for the 'gleaners'.. the disadvantaged etc.

No doubt some bright spark will start raving on about stoning gays etc, but that was not an essential part of the EEEEconomic part of the social structure.

I'm focusing only on the economics here.

There is only one fatal flaw in Capitalism -"Human Nature" which translates into the attempt to gain monopoly control of commodities and manufactured goods.

Ensure Monopolies can't occur.. look after the disadvantaged (not the bludger or lazy)..and you have utopia :)

and you thought we needed Marx ? :)

“I’d also be interested to know if anybody thinks capitalism can lead ultimately to a sustainable and equitable world for all.”

Not the unfettered free market version – but with targeted regulation then yes.

“For me it is only logical that the answer to this question is resoundingly in the affirmative.”

Yes agree there is little doubt population growth is pushed to spur development which has spin-offs from a buoyant building industry to retail and other services - but the biggest furphy of all – jobs.

Economies are not about providing jobs perse, but providing goods and services. Jobs are only the means by which those services and goods are able to be produced, manufactured and/or distributed.

Left and Right dogma means we do lack the will for some lateral thinking on economics.

Remember in the 70s where experts were predicting advancements in technology and mechanisation would result in more leisure hours and a shorter working week. What happened? People are working longer due to economic rationalism and an overemphasis on profit and a push to consumerism to that end. Greed is what happened, why it took off as it did with a swing to the RW economics I don't really understand.

If we were smarter we could work less hours and share the employment around, and be able to provide the goods and services we need rather than a continual cycle of excess consumerism and working longer to buy more things we don’t really need.

Profit sharing is another area often ignored as a valid incentive because it reeks too much of socialism for some.

Again fear seems to put any discussions of this kind on the back burner.

Dear Sqeers,

You ask some tough questions.
I guess capitalism does drive population growth
to a certain extent - as without people to buy
good and services - who would pursue personal
profits? And in its ideal form, that's one of the
essential ingredients contained in capitalism -
the deliberate pursuit of personal profit as the
goal of economic activity. There's nothing unusual
about people seeking their own self-interest, but
the distinguishing feature of capitalism is that it
defines this activity as normal, morally acceptable,
and socially desirable.

The second essential ingredient is market competition
as the mechanism for determining what is produced, at
what price, and for which consumers.

Why is the pursuit of profit and an atsmosphere of
unrestricted competition so necessary for capitalism?
Under these conditions the market forces of supply and
demand will ensure the production of the best
possible products at the lowest possible price. The
profit motive will provide the incentive for
individual capitalists to produce goods and services
the public wants.

Competition will give the public the opportunity to
compare the quality of and prices of goods, so that
any producers who are inefficient or who charge
excessive prices will be put out of business. The
"invisible hand" of market forces therefore ensures
the greatest good for the entire society.

However, for the system to work, there should be ideally
a minimum of government interference in economic life.
If the government attempts to regulate the supply of,
or demand for, goods, the forces of the market will be
upset, producers will lost their incentive to produce,
and prices will be artificially distorted.

The government shoudl adopt a policy of "laissez faire,"
or leave it alone.

Having said that however, in practice though, pure
capitalism has never exited, although it was perhaps
approximated in the early phases of industrial
development. Nowdays it has been generally accepted that
Federal Governments must supervise many details of
economic activity...

cont'd...

cont'd ...

For example, the government sets minimum prices
for some commodities and puts ceilings on the
prices of others. It intervenes in international
trade and concerns itself with the balance of
payments to other countires. It protects some
natural resources and encourages the exploitation
of others. It lays down minimum wage standards,
provides for unemployments benefits, and
sometimes supervises labour-management relations.
It tries to ensure the safety of workplace and of
manufactured goods. It regulates the level of
production and consumption through its fiscal
policies. It also has the authority to safeguard
competition in the markeplace by preventing the
growth of monopolies and oligopolies that dominate
industries.

There are therefore certain drawbacks, common to
all capitalist systems. Marked social inequality,
a large and impoverished lower class, and repeated
cycles of prosperity and recession, employment and
unemployment.

No capitalist socieyt has yet found a way out of these
dilemmas.

Nevertheless, many people remain convinced
that their social and economic interests
are best served if the means
of production and distribution are privately owned.
Political parties strongly endorse free competition and
the pursuit of private profit.

These features make the US the most capitalist society
on earth, and for, those who can afford them, this
economic system has certainly delivered the goods.
(Until recently - of course). With just over 5%
of the world's population, the US accounts for over
20 percent of its output. Over two centuries ago,
Napoleon commented that China was "a sleeping giant,
and when she wakes, she will shake the world." She's
beginning to do just that. With over, 1 billion
inhabitants - over a fifth of all humanity - China is
the most populous society on earth.

Dear AGIR,
I only think "Capitalism is EEEEEEVIL" in as much as it is comparable to a virulent cancer; cancer is not evil, unless you consider the "profit motive" evil--which of course Christianity ostensibly does, does it not?

Dear Pelican and Foxy,
your observations 'sound' perfectly reasonable, but it seems to me you fail to realise that our advanced state of capitalism is not here to serve us and cannot be controlled. And Foxy, the salubrious state of affairs you describe is surely the insular perspective of a rich western point of view, blind to the realities of the global system; you would not talk of capitalism's checks and balances if you were one of the exploited masses living without such chimeras and luxuries. Nevertheless, those 'others' are part of the 'same' system. Capitalism metastises across all borders and is now fundamentally a "world system" (in Emanuel Wallerstein's sense). When I talk of capitalism's "dynamic", I mean that Capitalism "is" dynamic--as stupidly as any cancer; its raison detre is the endless, and mindless, accumulation of capital; it crosses all borders and it is not concerned with the negative health effects on its host. It is breathtakingly naive to think we have any ultimate control over the tiller, especially in light of recent events.
Capitalism has prospered for the last century mainly thanks to a permanent war economy prevailing in wealthy countries, and other measures taken to try to maintain stability, such as concessions made to the material demands of workers during the post-war economic boom, which afforded entrepreneurs the rationale that the demands of workers cost less than the interruption of production. One of the hallmarks of capitalism, as theorised by Marx, is the constant of a "standing army" that insures against workers', dissent but at the same time precipitates revolution. Marx didn't adequately figure the self-destructive tenacity of ideology, hegemony, the third way, cybernetic technology or the permanent war economy. All these have extended capitalism's termination date, but at massive environmental and ethical cost.
Unsustainable population is merely a symptom of the disease.

Capitalism is merely a way of organising ownership of productive resources.
Capitalism represents the model where resources are owned privately, managed by people with a direct responsibility for the economic performance, rather than resources and facilities collectively owned resources managed by no one with any real responsibility at all.

So, I guess if you want to know how good or bad capitalism is you have to compare it the alternatives

Quick tests –
Q1 which economic model has prevailed, USA or USSR?
Q2 were more people choosing to come west over the iron curtain or go east over the iron curtain
Q3 has capitalism damaged the great lakes of USA -
But has any damage been as bad as the complete destruction of them, the way collectivism has destroyed the Aral Sea
Q4 can people see opportunity to improve their circumstances through Capitalism
Q5 how can people ever see improvement in a system where to see personal improvement above the common poverty is not only discouraged but treated as a criminal act.
Q6 is it collectivism or capitalism which force people to be reeducated to ensure they follow its dictates?

Will capitalism lead ultimately to a sustainable and equitable world for all

No, but having looked at how it has been implemented in
USSR
China
North Korea
Zimbabwe
Cuba
Cambodia

nor will collectivism or any other economic model

simply because

Economics describe merely the methods, not the goal or purpose of human endeavour.

As one politician stated “"Whether manufactured by black, white, brown or yellow hands, a widget remains a widget - and it will be bought anywhere if the price and quality are right. The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be."

And those who think equality is imposed by any method of collective resource ownership are merely demonstrating the inadequacies of their education and a stunted philosophical development

Dear Stern,
comparing capitalism to failed alternatives the way you do is precisely the binary logic that helps to maintain its spurious legitimacy, notwithstanding that late capitalism transcends the national and ideological borders that constrained your alternatives. There is no denying the superiority of capitalism when it comes to productivity and wealth creation, only its distribution and sustainability. The view you espouse above is provincial micro-economics, a vested-interest view from within that takes no cognizance of the simple unstoppable dynamic that 'is' capitalism. As Marx put it himself, "the true barrier to capitalist production is capitalism itself", by which he alludes to its fundamental dynamic, or "inner logic"--the wage-relation by which the worker is paid less than the full value of the commodities produced, and the subsequent expansionism that must entail. Despite tinkerings and reprieves that may forestall it in the short or medium term, in a closed system capitalism is inevitably doomed to extinction. That is an economic certainty since without this tumescent growth it would cease to "be" capitalism. You insult my intelligence if you think I'm stereotypically advocating some "method of collective resource ownership". I'm prognosticating on a fatal disease. If a portion of the human race survives, it's a moot point what form of tyranny it will inherit next, especially if it retains pragmatism as an ideology.
Which brings me to the ethical crisis productive of the same system. However we care to rationalise it humans are, I would argue, "ethical beings", and we betray that ethical sensibility at a similarly dire cost. Capitalism is fundamentally unethical and impoverishes the human spirit according to the same indifferent pattern it despoils the biosphere; just as we rationalise the "material" impact of this global juggernaut, so to we demean our higher sensibility and degenerate into intellectual viciousness.
I'm sorry if I sound like some rabid preacher, but this "is" our reality.

Squeers
Your point is well taken but once you have got the dragon by the tail how do you let it go?

Sometimes radical change is not good, one oppressive or self-serving regime is often replaced with another of a different colour.

The idea that ownership of capital provides some incentive over a more 'communal' approach to organisings societies is deeply embedded.

Let's imagine a different world where the people/government own the means of production. Under capitalism 'the people' benefit through earning wages for work and access to goods and services. There are many questions to ask - would the idea of profit still remain, the returns back to the government for public services; some perhaps being shared with the workers as incentives?

Communes seem to work when there is 'will' on a smaller scale, can it work on a larger one? Would all participants in the 'commune' be equally up to doing their fair share excepting of course those who are unable due to disability.

It is good to have these discussions. We are too afraid to be creative in the West and with vested groups there is not much chance in anyone looking outside the square in Australia anytime soon.

What part does perceptions about human nature play in deciding what systems might work best? Or is is relevant if one believes it to be malleable and easily manipulated?

These questions are too big for my simple brain to process and no matter the system one might aspire to there has to be checks and balances as even in Communist or Socialist regimes (or a derivative of) there ends up some form of ruling or privileged class, often at the detriment to democracy.

Increasing the participation of people in government is where I would start in a Western democracy.

Dear Pelican,
thanks for your constructive response (one too often gets dismissed as some extremist loony lefty).
It seems I've fortuitously pre-empted your post, above.
Like everyone else, I find it nearly impossible to imagine an alternative system---imagining a world without capitalism is like a fish imagining a world without water!
I believe in democracy, but an "inclusive" one (as I've outlined elsewhere) rather than representative democracy, which too easily absolves us "individually" of our social complicity.
Our population is such that it is doubtful a transition, from capitalism to any other system, could be implemented without its concomitant decimation. Indeed a logic behind the premise that capitalism drives population growth is that no other system could sustain it, certainly not in the style that the wealthy half currently enjoys. Above all, I think we have to see the problem as global. National borders are meaningless under the current dispensation. It would be worthwhile to do a little reading on the concept of "world systems", used in historical analyses to identify global immigration and trade and their influence; the current world-system is of course unprecedented.
I have no idea of how to save the world, I'm only concerned here with getting people to face harsh realities. Any positive change to the situation has to begin with the removal of ideological blinkers.

*Economics describe merely the methods, not the goal or purpose of human endeavour.*

Stern, exactly.

Squeers makes the crucial mistake it seems, of assuming that humans
put ethics before self interest. As we see in countries where
Govts decide things for individuals, corruption and power is simply
moved to those who control the Govt and their friends.

Human self interest once again dominates.

Funny how in most of the established capitalist countries the populations are declining, only to be topped up with refugees from authoritarian regimes whose birth rates are exploding.

Shadow Minister.....hi 5 mate..exxxxactly!

SQueers.. I can see you are at least sincere in your beliefs.

The questions you need to address are:

1/ Will people WILLINGly embrace a system which opens our borders to every other member of the human race ?

2/ If they did..what would happen to our quality of life and security?

3/ Arn't you really saying "I want to rule the world... MY way" ?

You seem to be suggesting that there is an 'ideology' out there which will fix humanity and our planet.

Mate..if there was.. we would have been 'fixed' centuries ago.

As I keep saying..WE are the problem. "all have sinned" and the fix is not a new idea..but a new birth. Even that won't fix global human relations.. but it will bring about mini utopia's where Christ reigns in peoples hearts and lives.

The best you can expect is for small clusters of renewed people.. living renewed lives in a social utopia which see's them looking not just for their own self interest but..as the Good Book says:

//4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.//Phil 2:4

and.. we do. You might have seen a detective Seargent invterviewed on TV last night regarding some Ugandan Orphans in a choir... that Policeman happens to belong to our 'cult' as CJ loves to say....
In fact he was in my own congregation for a long time.. he..along with others from our fellowship..built the school rooms and dorms in Uganda at our own expense.

But the issue of looking after 'others' also. referred to in the verse above..is preceeded by this:

//1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.// Phil 2:1-3

Sahdow Minister:
<Funny how in most of the established capitalist countries the populations are declining, only to be topped up with refugees from authoritarian regimes whose birth rates are exploding.>

Dear Shadow Minister,
as I hope I've made clear above, we can't go on thinking in terms of nationalism. Late capitalism is a global phenomenon and "world systems theory" is much more appropriate; it has been used to describe the "silk road" etc, how much more appropriate then for a truly global phenomenon?
I would think that my posts above establish the case against provincialism, though please feel free to argue the point.
Declining population growth in "[E]stablished capitalist countries" is due to a culture of glut, I would suggest, best exemplified by Japanese stagflation; but that condition is inseparable from the global paradigm in which it was achieved, no?
Frankly though, SM, are you prepared to revise your views should argument prove compelling?

Dear Yabby,
as I said in the other thread:
<Dear Yabby,
We're actually close to agreement. Absolutely, it's about human nature, about "self-interest" and the "profit motive", these are the driving forces behind capitalism and why it's so successful.>

Humans defer ethics in favour of pragmatics.

Squeers, you can accuse capitalism of enabling human innovation,
thus dragging hundreds of millions out of poverty, unlike any
other system has been able to do.

If you think that we'd be better off, all being poor, well that is
your right.

Capitalism has also meant that people who can afford it and who
are not limited by Govt, can make free choices about how many
children that they have. Where they have this choice, most
have chosen smaller families, less children. It is in countries
where people don't have these options, that population growth
is a problem.

So don't blame capitalism for a rising population. Blame politics
and religion.

Yabby it is not that capitalism 'causes' high populations as some sort of unplanned natural event, it is that it encourages the desire for higher populations ie. more people = more consumers = growth.

High populations in developing worlds are due to a number of reasons such as lack of access to birth control, status of women and lack of a social security infrastructure.

It is the lack of social security or welfare that also leaves people in the dire poverty of the 3rd World.

You are missing the point. We are talking about not "what is" as the pragmatic approach you take but "what could be". Ethics and capitalism are not necessarily at odds, as a world we have just let it run rampant without some of the checks and balances and without democratic input from the populace.

Yabby, there might even be some areas you can see room for improvement.

*it is that it encourages the desire for higher populations ie. more people = more consumers = growth.*

Well that might just be the opinion of some limited capitalists,
but perhaps just lazy ones. For me know that a great product,
a great service, a great idea etc, can be transformed around the
world to other countries. Dick Smith has actually been on about this
a bit, growth of capitalism without unsustainable population growth.

*as a world we have just let it run rampant without some of the checks and balances and without democratic input from the populace.*

That really depends on the country. Most countries have a host
of rules and regulations, decided by their govts. Too much red
tape would be as large a problem, it keeps many people poor.

That is the amusing thing really. Try starting a business in much
of the third world and govt officials who take themselves and their
own welfare very seriously, will bog you down in red tape. So
many don't bother. So poor and unefficient Govt is perhaps a far
larger problem, then worries about capitalism.

Does capitalism drive population growth?

It is good question Squeers, and a very important one.

Capitalism does drive population growth inasmuch as it promulgates the spiral of constantly increasing productivity and constantly increasing markets to keep the productivity increasing. Domestic population growth is thus very strongly pushed by various sectors of the business fraternity, and population growth in countries that are our main trading partners is encouraged all the way.

But I’m not sure that capitalism is the major problem. There is afterall population growth in third world countries and in non-capitalist regimes to the same or larger extents, and very low population growth in some capitalist countries.

The major issue is surely our political shortcomings, especially the very cosy relationship between politicians and big business.

One of the absolutely fundamental duties of government is to protect our future, our environment and our quality of life, now and forever more. This is constantly compromised by the push from the business sector for growth and the inadequate political structure to resist it and do what is in the best interests of the whole community in the long term. Governments where is any pressure for expansionism have been dismally poor in this regard.

So yes there is an inherent drive for growth within capitalism, or perhaps just within human nature, or within the nature of all living things to keep pushing for expansion, that is part of the problem. But the main problem as I see it is our terribly inadequate political system and quality of governance that allows this continuous expansionist ethic to override the sustainability and commonsense ethic.

Can capitalism lead ultimately to a sustainable and equitable world for all?

Yes!

If the political will is there that can guide capitalism, then it can be done. But of course the will of the people needs to be there in order for the political will to develop. And unfortunately the minds of the masses are not likely to be galvanised until we suffer major consequences of unfettered expansionism.

Squeers, you talk about 'binary logic', but the fact is our so-called capitalist society (neo-capitalist, anyone?) is strongly influenced by government in several ways.

The government tax take is a genuine disincentive to entrepreneurs, and is heavy influence on any capitalist enterprise. For example, many non-business owners are surprised to hear that repayment of debt may be calculated as profit, and so taxed even as the business struggles to find cash for the tax bill. GST is paid even as a business is going broke. Many would-be entrepreneurs are surprised at how invasive and restrictive of growth the modern taxation environment is.

The government is also central to the development of increasing amounts of legislation, some of which can be actively costly for business to implement. The complexity of legislation is a further disincentive for would-be entrepreneurs to stay safely in the employees seat.

Thirdly, our economy adores government spending, with increasing percentages of us being on the government payroll. This point in itself disproves our self-concept of our economy being 'capitalist'. We have a mixed economy.

Finally, the high level of government employment within the population influences the culture in which we live. Every other member of my own immediate family, and coincidentally every other member of my husband's family, is paid by the government. It's not surprising, then, that our families are strongly supportive of an ongoing and ever-increasing government bureaucracy.

In these ways, I would argue that 'capitalism' is merely a concept, certainly inasmuch as 'communism' could be argued to be a concept still open to interpretation in the real world.
For better or worse, government has appointed itself as the protector of all of us, from each other, and that is very unlikely to change.

Well I did carefully proofread that last post after giving it the mandatory spell and grammar check. Then as is so often the way, upon reading it after posting, errors present themselves immediately in glaring obviosity!!

That foul missing word syndrome, that has haunted me for the whole time that I have been on this forum, has reared its ugly head yet again, not once but twice in that last post, and also previously today!! Man, I hate that mongrel Microsoft grammar checker!! (and I hate my corroding brain that reads straight over missing words without noticing their absence!!) AAAAAAARRRRGH!!

Alright, end of dummy spit ):>(

----

<<So don't blame capitalism for a rising population. Blame politics and religion.>>

Well Yabby, I think we can certainly blame politics and religion, and also capitalism to a certain extent….although capitalism really is just the means of doing what comes naturally – for each one of us to push for maximum personal gain in a dog-eat-dog world, which just follows on from one of the most basic of all ecological principles – for all creatures and all species to push as hard as they can against their limiting factors to survive, dominate and expand their numbers, completely regardless of any population peaks and crashes that may result.

The amazing thing is that, with all the bleedingly obvious problems with continuous population growth in Australia – in SEQ, Sydney, Melbourne, etc, that we haven’t adapted, or even started to adapt our political system to deal with it!!

Finally, we have a PM who seems to have some notion of sustainability and the dangers of untempered population growth. Arguably, the same thing happened in the USA with Obama, compared to his terrible predecessor, although not much has changed under his tenure in terms of sustainability (?). By crikey I hope Gillard’s initial positivity evolves into meaningful changes.

She’s got to ditch the totally corrupt political donations regime to start with. This is blatant favour-buying by big business, which horribly biases government policy.

So, it is the political regime that is most at fault, not capitalism.

*If the political will is there that can guide capitalism, then it can be done. But of course the will of the people needs to be there in order for the political will to develop. And unfortunately the minds of the masses are not likely to be galvanised until we suffer major consequences of unfettered expansionism.*

Very true Ludwig, but they say that we get the politicians that
we deserve.

Our politicians focus on one thing, ie winning the next elections
and whatever it takes to do that. For that they need a healthy
economy and the easiest way to do that is to stuff more people into
SE Australia, all needing houses and services etc. So that is
what happens.

But for that you cannot blame Capitalism, more like our human
nature of acting in our short term self interest. The politicians
want to win the next elections at virtually any cost, the punters
want to make a good quid, as easily as possible, without much
thought about the longer term.

"Real" capitalism barely exists at the top level. The world's capitalist nations all have immense private monopolies vying for **CONTROL**, and mostly they succeed.

Look at the 3 big miners in Australia. They pay LOW LOW LOW tax, and basically **CONTROL** both the industry and much of the government legislation as it applies to the industry (it's called 'company welfare'). It's all about monopoly rule, and to hell with capitalism. Woolies and Coles are similar regarding the grocery industry........ they couldn't give two hoots about capitalism; they want to RULE, and make sure the laws and regulations are in THEIR favour.

It's about **MONOPOLY** control and dominance ........ just like a communist country is under the thumb of communism, capitalism is under the thumb of monopolies. In almost all cases it's impossible for smaller, private, capitalistic companies to "effectively" compete.

No, capitalism does NOT drive population growth. Other factors drive population growth; things like poverty, lack of democracy, poverty, no birth control (religious fundamentalism), poverty, medical discoveries, poverty. But capitalism? No. Capitalism relies on a dollar return on investment; you can make that same dollar with 100,000 people as you can with 1,000,000 people, and it's done by aiming at certain markets, in certain places with certain products etc etc etc......... in other words you attempt to make the most amount of money with the smallest amount of investment ......... that's what successful capitalism is all about. I'm a big supporter of "real" capitalism.

Dear Yabby, Ludwig, floatinglili and Benq,
I think I address your points more or less above, so I won't embark upon another sermon. If you differ of course let me know and I'll try to defend my position.

Regarding your comment - comparing capitalism to failed alternatives the way you do is precisely the binary logic that helps to maintain its spurious legitimacy,
Problem, there are no alternatives which give even glimmer of “success”,
Thus, my choice of comparatives is limited to a litany of failures.
“There is no denying the superiority of capitalism when it comes to productivity and wealth creation, only its distribution and sustainability.”
No system of economic ownership can control “sustainability”.
You are addressing a different dimension by pretending that capitalism should.
If you try to make people live like 14th century village peasants they will not follow your lead, assuming you hold with notions of democracy, although the opponents of capitalism have often presumed the mantle of a despot.
Distribution is an interesting consideration
Capitalism does not seem fair because the world is an unfair place. If it were a fair place we would all be the same height, all with identical DNA and genes and no one would have physical defects.
The only type of societies which get close to such standardisation and equality were sponsored by Hitler, where he had all the defectives killed off (along with quite a few of the non-defectives)

If we work on the assumption / observation of humanity that people are free to make their own choices and they are not equally motivated by any sense of altruism or even common sense (and that has nothing to do with free market based economics and private accumulation and ownership of resources),

we will observe that some folk, the prudent and frugal will accumulate for their own desires and the indolent and wasteful will not.

Similarly those gifted with an astute and commercially attuned mind will make wise investment and others will not.

So should we penalise the frugal and astute and subsidise the indolent and wasteful? – I think not.

Better for all if we leave things in their capitalist place, rewarding the talented and leaving the lazy to the consequences of their indolence

Squeers,

Some of the main factors driving births is financial security. It has been shown that when there is adequate job and financial security, especially for women, the birth rate declines.

Many children were often seen as security in old age. Which is largely why family planning efforts are useless without beefing up the economy.

My first comment might have seemed glib, but it is based on broad global experience. I am open to other examples though.

To matters of mixed economies and government ownership
History shows us that when government, claiming to act for the common good or collective will of all, decides it will make the decisions in a commercial market several things happen
1 Monopoly control – where the government controls everything and the consumer gets screwed
2 Capital and product stagnation and decline – where government policies are driven by non-commercial imperatives
3 Denial of product innovation, exasperating the economic decline and reducing still further consumer choice and benefits (like those terrible 2 stroke cars the ordinary East Germans had to go on a waiting list to buy)
Hence the real experience that “governments will always back losers not winners”.
And the observation by one politician
“a country (in this case USSR) that produces what no one wants to buy, and whose workers receive wages that they cannot use to buy goods they want, is hardly in the best of economic health."
if you want examples of Australian government sponsorship of failures, they are just too plentiful to list.

If you want to address sustainability, stop the levels of breeding in the underdeveloped world
If you want to address unequal distribution, just stop. You would be killing the golden goose and doing more harm than good.

Benq

I thank you for your post, you have saved me from writing similar.

We do not have "capitalism"; we do have monopolies (who are busily tying up third world countries BTW - Tobacco as an example).

The drivers of an unsustainable population are monopolistic capitalism, religion, poverty and lack of education.

Like most issues that limit human endeavour, there is no single cause. It is quite demonstrably a combination of factors.

But, hey, pick on a single issue and argue away.

*just like a communist country is under the thumb of communism, capitalism is under the thumb of monopolies. In almost all cases it's impossible for smaller, private, capitalistic companies to "effectively" compete.*

Not really, Benq.

For in a communist country, you have no choice at all, not so in
our society. In some industries it is indeed harder for smaller,
private companies to compete, simply because the level of capital
requirement runs to the billions, to achieve economies of scale.
OTOH these corporations commonly also have hundreds of thousands
of shareholders directly and millions indirectly through super funds.

You harp on about Coles and Woolies, but even IGA have 1200 stores
in Australia, you are free to shop there if you wish. The reason
that Coles and Woolies dominate is because they can work on economies
of scale and lower margins, unlike smaller retailers. Again there
is no monopoly, just a few large competitors along with a host
of smaller competitors, all competing.

In mining there is no monopoly. We have around 3000 mining companies,
from tiddlers, to global operators. The billions of $ required to
operate mining ventures, needs those kinds of economies of scale
which a company like BHP can provide, a mum and dad venture cannot.

BHPs tax rate last year was around 42%, hardly low, low, low.
6.3 Billion $ in fact.

So yes indeed we have huge coporations competing, but that is
quite different to State monopolies, where citizens have no
choice at all.

Stern:
<No system of economic ownership can control “sustainability”.>
This sounds like an iron-clad law so forgive my ignorance; why?

Dear Stern,
I don't "pretend" that capitalism "should" be sustainable, the whole point is that capitalism, by definition, cannot but be unsustainable in a closed system.
Nor do I have any illusions about the world ever being a fair place according to the childish logic you employ.
"Capitalism does not seem fair because .." it is not; indeed it must seem grossly and unconscionably unfair to any moderately sensitive being who can see beyond his vanity and crude programming.
Nor is the world necessarily an oyster for "those gifted with an astute and commercially attuned mind" lol, they also require the accident of a fortunate birth, and often enough an ability to rationilise their ruthless profiteering--though that's easy in a culture that celebrates these indifferent intellects as "talented".
But there's no point my going on; you haven't said anything new, just the usual ideological mouthings.

Dear Benq and Severin,
We "do" "have capitalism", it is what allows monopolies to flourish. Nor does it matter how capitalism is regulated since it doesn't alter the fundamental (il)logic of endless growth in a closed and vulnerable system.
Anyway, thanks everyone for the comments, we'll just have to agree to disagree in the main.

Squeers

Thanks for your response. Just quickly, I don't see monopolies as a legitimate part of capitalism (free and competitive system businesses) at all - they are stagnating and closed and as such require different regulation to smaller and more diverse businesses.

Too much money is tied up at the top of the pyramid and they require huge turn over, which requires a large population of customers to support them. It is no coincidence that so often (albeit not all) many big corporations are lobbying in conjunction with the conservative side of religion - both want more: more people, more resources, more control.

As with anything there are always exceptions, I am thinking of the altruism of people like Bill Gates. However, just look at the excessive influence of the coal and iron ore moguls - they wield a great deal of power, as has been recently demonstrated. They also require large numbers of people as employees over the relative short-term. Natural resources are eventually mined out and the corporation has to move on to other countries if not other states, leaving many workers behind. While the wages may be good for while the boom is on, the pay is not so generous as to provide a safety net once the workers are unemployed.

Cont'd

Cont'd

I am not sure what the solution is, but Labor at least made inroads to collecting some of the largesse produced by the mining companies.

Another example, I'm sure has already been mentioned is the duopoly of Coles/Woolworths. And further, products that have been taken over by huge companies such as Vegemite now owned by Kraft. Following the trail of who owns what is a disturbing venture. We may think we are supporting a small local producer, when in fact that is no longer the case.

http://onthecommons.org/why-it-matters-who-owns-local-businesses

"Leave aside the tax favors, zoning deals and the rest that turn “the market” into a kind of Charlie McCarthy doll. What such people don’t grasp is that commerce isn’t just about stuff. It serves a social function as well. The mom and pop stores in Chelsea were places where people could know and be known. They provided precious human contact in the anonymity of city life. This was especially important for older people, and others for whom shopping might constitute the only social encounters in long empty days."

None of this type of control favours smaller sustainable populations.

Hey squeers, great thread. I would suggest Capitalism, like democracy, basically sucks.
It just sucks less than any alternatives so far trialled.
The problem I see is that capitalism requires discrimination at it's rotten core. A market, free or otherwise, requires 2 types of people; producers and consumers. In order to be profitable, the people who work for producers need to be paid as little as possible, in order to allow for a profit margin. Consumers, OTOH, should be as wealthy as possible, to buy the goods produced.
Clearly, in a closed system, this presents a problem; as the producers are also the consumers. Obviously the problem is easily overcome by international trade; where discriminatory rules allow us to be consumers, and workers in another country to be our producers.
How is this discriminatory? We don't expect our workers to labour for the legendary 'bowl of rice'; but we are happy to buy products from other countries, whose workers do.
This inevitably leads to another problem. If I continue to pull wads of cash out of my pocket to give to you, strangely enough you will end up with wads of cash which I no longer have.
Japan has been struggling with just this problem for about 2 decades, now, and China is already starting to consider the ramifications.
You may (or not) remember about 15-20 years ago I think, Mitsubishi Australia proudly announced they had become so 'efficient' they were exporting cars to Japan.
A strange way to look at the fact that Japan had increased it's standard of living -and cost of labour- to the point where it was cheaper to buy cars from Oz, than vice versa.
So capitalism must continually seek out new markets, and new producers, for the greatest profit lies in the greatest disparity between the wages of the producers in comparison to consumers.
Think it's only a coincidence that the largest free market economy also has the largest, most belligerent army?
For my rather more personal experience of discrimination in capitalism, you might read a blog I wrote some time back:
http://thecomensality.com/avasay/can-capitalism-survive-in-a-world-without-discrimination/feed

Dear Severin,
Adam Smith was prescient about the danger of monopolies and specifically warns against them in his "The Wealth of Nations". Lenin in his, "Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism", used the term "imperialism" to describe the phenomenon of monopoly capitalism as a fundamental development of the "highest" stage of the system, the idea being that only such concentrations of wealth had the wherewithal to establish sophisticated new markets in far flung regions (who but a corporation could drill miles into the Earth's crust, a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, to supply the fuel "we all use?"). One need only read Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and the evils of the ivory trade, or do some light reading on the history of the rubber trade in Brazil http://www.mongabay.com/10rubber.htm , to appreciate the "ethics" of these entrepreneurial projects, or the fact that the whole colonial project (the white man's burden lol) was in fact capitalism in action. Africa, a complex network of cultures, was of course carved up by the colonial powers into bite-size chunks and brutally exploited for yonks before they cleared out when the profit margins shrank from political uprisings. And the West has the hide to be morally offended by the likes of Robert Mugabe! So while I agree with you about the evil of monopolies, I'm less concerned with them pushing out the little guy (who would be just as rapacious given the chance; such is the "logic" of the system) in the dominant economic home-land, than I am about those being exploited. This cuts to the heart of the evil of abstractions like parochialism, provincialism, nationalism, and why I insist national borders are meaningless; they are in fact a crude rationale for the gross disparities that are not "God's will", but ruthlessly cultivated, husbanded and maintained. We're so busy complaining about the "ethics" of how the plunder is divided up, we completely forget how it was and is obtained.

Grim: <It [capitalism] just sucks less than any alternatives so far trialled.>
Dear Grim,
A point I did a poor job of getting across to other posters above is that the "alternatives" didn't get a fair trial. Capitalism is never going to stand aside and give another system a fair go, and it is far too well established for any other system to compete. Given the disparity, in terms of wealth, quality real estate, efficiencies, allegiances, solid-state ideology, and raw power, the bipolar stand-off that was the Cold War was actually no contest. I don't defend the evil of what these alternatives degenerated into, but I do argue that the corruption and paranoia (just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean you're not being followed) did not develop in a vacuum. Otherwise, I agree with everything you say, and I particularly like your blog (I hope some of my opponents above will read it).

I've been concerned with the ethical degeneracy incumbent upon capitalism, but mainly with the more basic, indeed Common-dog-f---, problem of the unsustainability of it all.
My first wife's cancer metastasised in the brain; by the time it was detected she had eight tumours varying in size. The scan actually showed how the brain in this closed system had slightly shifted in its axis (was traumatised) due to the invasive presence of the tumours. Why can't people see that similarly unsustainable growth and despoliation in the closed and fragile system of the biosphere, driven relentlessly by capitalism, is equally unsustainable, as well as reprehensible!
"Does capitalism drive population growth" intended to ask if unsustainable population was a byproduct of capitalism. Ironically, I suspect that only capitalism "can" (inequitably) sustain our population growth, but only in the short term and at dire collateral cost, including our moral degeneracy.

Squeers - the whole point is that capitalism, by definition, cannot but be unsustainable in a closed system..

Double negatives are difficult for most of us to grapple with Squeers.

Because if I read what you wrote it seems you are trying to say

Capitalism is sustainable in a closed system

But i do not think that is what you are saying and maybe you can explain exactly what you mean by “closed system”

Regarding - indeed it must seem grossly and unconscionably unfair to any moderately sensitive being who can see beyond his vanity and crude programming.

We are a diverse species, different folk see unfairness to different degrees, one will see a beggar in the street and want to help him, the other will choose to ignore him and the bottle of cheap alcohol beside him and suggest that if he can afford alcohol, he should start by helping himself.

Regarding - the accident of a fortunate birth, and often enough an ability to rationilise their ruthless profiteering--though that's easy in a culture that celebrates these indifferent intellects as "talented".

I would have thought you could acknowledge the real and ancient practice “noblesse oblige” contradicts your cynical statement.

The other point regarding ‘the accident of birth’. No one gets a perfect hand, everyone has something which challenges them. The point with human growth and development as individuals is to face the challenges which come with our birth and grow as a person despite them. Those who see others as being particularly blessed , gifted or born into privilege are usually projecting by their own envy and greed.

Re - you haven't said anything new, just the usual ideological mouthings.

Likewise, nothing you have said is innovative, challenging or new either.
It is but the usual mouthing of the pseudo-intellectual who feels entitled to criticise that which they just do not understand.

Grim - would suggest Capitalism, like democracy, basically sucks

Yes, but to paraphrase Churchill on the matter of democracy,

“capitalism is the worst form of ownership except all the others that have been tried.”

Squeers - is that the "alternatives" didn't get a fair trial.

Tell that to the Russians who suffered for 70 years under the yoke of oppression

The East Germans who risked machine gun fire to climb over the Berlin Wall to a better future in the West

The Hungarians and Czechoslovaks who protested when the Russians drove tanks into their cities

The Chinese who were likewise crushed under tanks

The Cambodians who were force marched into the killing fields because they were “educated” and needed to be re-educated.

Fact

Collectivism, in its practiced forms (not the airy-fairy nonsense of kindergarten stories) is unsustainable, as seem in the Aral Sea, and demonstrated by the Russian gulags, psychiatric hospitals, East Germany’s Stasi and Albania’s “internal exile” to keep people under control, not to forget the final execution of Ceausescu and his bitch wife.

I see you like quoting Lenin

Try these classic pieces of Lenin eloquence

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

And

The goal of socialism is communism.

And my favourite, which so personifies every collectivist politician

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

But if you want the real essence of the alternatives to democracy and capitalism, in their practiced state, you just have to ask Stalin

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

And that is what is wrong with every thought from anyone has who thinks they know better than libertarian capitalists,

Lenin’s lies end up with Stalin’s corruption of the election process but Lenin’s useful idiots are still pretending it will be better next time.

Collectivism has been tried again and again and has failed again and again

Better you spend your time trying to work within the imperfect libertarian capitalist system than chasing the quixotic windmills of its alternatives

Squeers

After reading the suggested titles of which I was aware, but confess to not having read, I realise I was trying to recreate a lot of work that has been done by far more knowledgeable minds than mine.

I agree that within any system - monopoly, midrange and small business that there exist those who are rapacious. My issue is that de-regulation was a huge mistake, resulting in the power imbalance we now have to contend with. I will never give up on the hope that there is a happy medium, a combination of cooperative, private and joint enterprises.

In getting back to your question, I think no matter where we are coming from in our opinions on the worth of capitalism, it is but one driving factor of increasing population.

Simple common sense tells us we cannot expand beyond the limits that is our planet and must adapt or fail.

*to appreciate the "ethics" of these entrepreneurial projects, or the fact that the whole colonial project (the white man's burden lol) was in fact capitalism in action*

Perhaps Squeers, it was just human nature in action. For if you
check out things in Africa, you will find that to this day, pygmies
are largely exploited by the Bantu, treated much as slaves and
often are not even considered human! Now I don't think that you
can go and blame that one on capitalism too.

What amuses me about critcs of capitalism, is that many seem to
be upset that somebody is "ripping them off" in the name of profit.
Yet when all those public servants look out their windows and watch
the cars going by, they have yet to realise that they are being
ripped off, as they are paying for it.

So where is the bigger rip off, in profit or in waste? What we
know about capitalism in action, is that if somebody is making too
much profit, somebody else will soon be along to compete, the
consumer wins as waste is cut, productivity is increased and our
standard of living rises.

I have yet to see too many Govt services become too efficient, my
rates bill only goes one way, that is up. Yet there are a whole
host of consumer products where we have seen massive efficiency gains
and we all benefit.

Competition seems to be the only thing which avoids human complacency.
Govts with their monopolies, unfortunately don't have any, so they
have no reason to care. Its not even their money that they are wasting.

Severin,

OT, but this is the most recent thread in the General Discussions area of the Forum to which you have posted. Just letting you know that it was I that pressed the crossed red bats on your post here: http://twitpic.com/22teaw , should it be taken down.

I had a look at your most recent posting history (http://twitpic.com/22ti0m ) in order to work out where you meant to post it, as Boazy/Polycarp/AGIR has nowhere posted to this point in this thread, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10628&page=0 , but couldn't see where it would be a seqitur.

Now I must show my ignorance. Who, or what, does (SIGWB) stand for?

Not wanting to be a stick-in-the-mud (well, maybe), I was understandably hesitant in asking that there might be a little more er, discipline, exercised under the now-more-relaxed posting limits with regard as to where you place your non-seqiturs (or maple leaves).

You couldn't possibly have been meaning to insinuate that there is any similarity in literary style between moi and AGiR, could you? Surely not! See, here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2995#70254 (For those who don't know, Severin was once Fractelle.)

Thanks for the compliment. It's nice to be well regarded, even if one is hated.



PS I knew at the time what was perceived as my advocacy against the extradition of Polanski from Switzerland got up your nose, but I didn't realize how much. My advocacy was really that of upholding the rule of law and those ancient (British?)rights that act as a safeguard against the capricious exercise of political power and executive authority, without which many stand to be severely oppressed, not just sexually exploited women and children. Good post, BTW, here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10644#175784

Pax?

My apologies to other posters for disrupting the thread, I hope not too much.

Oh joy, we have another of those 'other' libertarians here (whatever happened to Wing Ah Hume anyway? I do hope it wasn't something I said).
By 'other libertarian' of course I refer to the fact that I describe myself as a libertarian; unlike Stern who is clearly a free market libertarian, I am of the social libertarian clique.
The difference, I hear you ask? Social libertarians believe the greatest liberty is freedom from exploitation and oppression, whereas your common or garden variety free market libertarian believes liberty is the (presumably God given) right of anyone born or blessed (presumably by God) with the talent, intelligence or sheer ruthlessness to exploit and oppress other humans to their little hearts content.
In other words, the core of their intricate philosophy is “might is right”; and they firmly believe (quite sincerely, I think) that anyone who disagrees is simply consumed with jealousy.
It really doesn't appear to occur to them that others, far from being jealous of the obscenely rich, actually consider them to be morally vacuous, blood sucking parasites.
“Morally vacuous?” they query in earnest puzzlement. “What on Earth do morals have to do with anything?” After all, they can always refer back to the first and possibly greatest apologist of the free market cause, Adam Smith: “By having the freedom to become obscenely rich, we are actually helping the little people, since wealth flows down, passed as if by an invisible hand...”
You're quite right of course, Squeers, about the Russian experiment; what it demonstrated very conclusively is that a population can never escape a paradigm, or zeitgeist, in a single, or even few generations.
Neither Lenin or Stalin were communists, they were Czars; the party elites became the new nobility and the serfs as always...
It requires extreme prejudice to blame simple ratbaggery on ideology; -Christians in particular always get huffy when you mention the Borgia's, or Torqemada...
What the free market libertarians fail to appreciate in their paranoia, is that the greatest risk to private ownership by us little people isn't governments, it's the moguls.

*It really doesn't appear to occur to them that others, far from being jealous of the obscenely rich, actually consider them to be morally vacuous, blood sucking parasites.*

So let me see. For a long time the richest two blokes on the planet
were Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Gates made his money because
hundreds of millions preferred his products, to the expensive
and monopoly seeking Apple.

Buffett started selling newspapers as a kid and made his fortune
by buying companies, employing people and doing it well.

Now both have given their fortunes to charitable causes and both
will do far more for humanity then any single poster on OLO.

Perhaps Grim, you need to rethink your flawed philosophy :)

According to Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California, the wealth distribution in the U.S. A. as of 2007 is that the top 1% of households owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth. The next 19% had 50.5% of the wealth - meaning that 20% of the people owned 85% of the wealth leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary earners)
In terms of financial wealth (total net-worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share at 42.7%.

Dear Forrest Gumpp,
'tis our pleasure that you bring a little intrigue to this "humble" thread (excluding weighty contributions from Grim, myself and one or two others).
I recently proposed a new thread dedicated to an ABC frontman carried off in chains for voyeuristic exploitation of children, but Graham Young, in his wisdom, declined to air it. It's an issue that must be rigorously and fearlessly explored.

I well remember the lugubrious goings on at the demise of Fractelle (during my noviciate), and being bowed in respectful silence (figuratively) as the mourners in turn paid their doleful respects at her passing. I hardly expected reincarnation after such a heart-felt "severing"!
Squeers was but a callow youth, of course, and now looks loftily from on high at such twee conventions as mortality.
Perfectly legitimate to shapeshift---but into an AFL hooligan!.

Poirot, that sounds quite plausible, but I'm not sure what your
point is. The figures I've seen on Australia, are a little more
evened out. Something like 40% of people own shares directly
and the majority of wealth is held by those either retired or not
far off it. Per household, it adds up to several hundreds of
thousands of $. I once saw a statistic about how many Australians
actually own more then 30 million $ and its surprisingly few.

So how can we assist those who can't help but spend more then they
earn? Shut down the pokies, we Australians blow 20 billion on
gambling and its generally not the rich spending it. Shut down
Las Vegas, I'd hate to think how many billions Americans spend there
each year.

We've seen what happens with lottery winners, some plan ahead, some
have nothing left within a short time.

Americans and Australians have some of the world's lowest savings
rates. Yet the Chinese and Japanese tend to save large % of their
salaries, even at the low wages paid in China.

I guess that shows the differance in cultures. Americans and
Australians seemingly live it up today and stuff tomorrow, not
so for those in Asia, who know about hard times and have experienced
them.

Grim - Neither Lenin or Stalin were communists,

That is a classic of denial

Tell it to those who suffered under their leadership.

So “communism” under Lenin and Stalin was not “communism”

Like I wrote previously Grim,

Collectivism, in its practiced forms (not the airy-fairy nonsense of kindergarten stories)

I notice no surge by Russians or Eastern Europeans trying to install “Real Communism” in their homelands

most of them are trying to adapt and enjoy the freedoms and benefits they now have under what is something closer to capitalism, without the Stasi creeping around trying to trap them.

Regarding “far from being jealous of the obscenely rich, actually consider them to be morally vacuous, blood sucking parasites”

how petty jealousy exudes from every touch of your keyboard –

I always recall the “terror” of the French revolution was not the inspiration for revolution but a consequence of it, where small minded, envious, cruel and morally degenerate thugs took revenge on those who they considered “morally vacuous, blood sucking parasites”.

Lenin claimed such viciousness as a virtue, probably because he, like most collectivists with power, was morally corrupt when he said

“We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory”

But when the butchers had murdered all the “morally vacuous, blood sucking parasites” their blood lust turned onto anyone who happened to look at them the wrong way and they had the period of the “Great Terror”

Same thing happened in the name of “collectivism” in Russia, China and Cambodia.

One point for us all to remember,

Never ever vote for someone with so much stupid arrogance that he expresses his distain of his fellow man in terms like “morally vacuous, blood sucking parasites”.-

but Grim, says the democratic process “sucks” – so he will do the Lenin revolutionary thing... and bloody his hands before he starts

You are no different to the other butchers, Grim. You will just make yourself taller by climbing on top the bones of your victims.

I trust you get my point, Grim.

Yabby “I guess that shows the differance in cultures. Americans and
Australians seemingly live it up today and stuff tomorrow, not
so for those in Asia, who know about hard times and have experienced
them.”

Yes its called the work ethic – where one expects to work and not being pandered to and pampered simply because one happened to be born

It used to exist in UK and USA – I do think you are on to something –

The consequences of when folk become obsessed with everyone being equal and nobody actually doing anything productive

Stern:
<its called the work ethic – where one expects to work and not being pandered to and pampered simply because one happened to be born>

Dear Stern,
you reveal another facet of your ideological entrapment here in your idolatry of the "work ethic", a working class stereotype that doesn't apply to the wealthy, not even to those elitists who flatter themselves as being workaholics. The work ethic of the entrepreneur is more a monomania and is predicated precisely on a quite reasonable desire to avoid a life of hard labour. Under any dispensation one should "expect to work", to "share" the labour (I share domestic duties with my wife), including the dirty work. Under our system the spoiled rich evade it utterly while the working classes treat it as a badge of honour, which they're paid a pittance for in comparison with those who lead the high life.
The moguls love blokes like you!

Forrest Gumpp, dearest.

I did indeed post upon the wrong thread - my ire was not aimed at your dear soul.

Having much hearty laughter at your thoughts believing I was vengeful. I can agree to disagree with those worthy of respect and hold no grudges towards you.

The post was intended for the "Australian Head of State" thread, where it has been both transposed and fleshed out. It's intended recipient; AlGoreIsRich aka Boaz, Polycarp and (one presumes) God, has now received the bounty of my thoughts. As for "SIGWB", if Al Gore is rich, so is George W Bush, thus emphasising the utter futility of his latest moniker.

Squeers “Under our system the spoiled rich evade it utterly”

Maybe, but their effort is not yours to measure.

As for the rest

You sound more like Grim everyday

The same small minded envy, the mad blood lust, fraudulently demanded in the name of equality.

All the same old elements which marked Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin Mao and Pol-Pot for the evil which they were.

Just remember, it is my system of “libertarian capitalism” which allows you freedom to hold the twisted views you here espouse.

The reality of yhr sort of collectivist horror you support would see those who dare oppose your tyranny reduced to bones and fertiliser as Lenin did to the kulaks and Pol Pot did to any Cambodian who could read.

I think, on balance, tolerating those who might have an easier life than I is a better option than imposing a collectivist tyranny which would leave me with an existence not worth living.

Stern:
<You sound more like Grim everyday

The same small minded envy, the mad blood lust, fraudulently demanded in the name of equality.

All the same old elements which marked Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin Mao and Pol-Pot for the evil which they were.

Just remember, it is my system of “libertarian capitalism” which allows you freedom to hold the twisted views you here espouse.>

Dear Stern,
you appear to be losing your composure and descending into tirades, "licking the chops of your own malice" all the while, as Cassandra once observed of a foe. However satisfying that may be, I'm afraid it cannot salvage your position unless it tallies with observable facts or has the compelling virtue of logical argument.
You honour me by hoisting me to the level of Grim's intellectual attainments and ideological emancipation, but while I cannot comment on whether that savant of OLO is dragged down by those flaws of character you attribute to him, I do have some claim to being free of, or at least on my guard myself against, those base enemies of reason that tempt us all.

I am also anxious to disabuse your good self of that leap of "logic" you seem wont to take when your intuitive grasp of our state of affairs is brought into question. Specifically, my thinking does not default as a desire for that "collectivist horror" you seem so troubled by and keen to assign as my dark motive. Nor am I motivated by "the mad blood lust" you perceive. Verily, such tropes are simply the cliches and hyperbole with which you have been afrighted, and with which you arm yourself against dissenting voices of reason, counting, as you may, on lots of popular support. One sympathises with yours and your brethren's benighted condition, but one cannot allow such calumnies to pass unchallenged, and so I am obliged to observe that you already abide under a tyranny of sorts---the tyranny of deluded popular opinion.

Very good, Squeers - I liked that.

This is somewhat like watching ye olde tennis tournament. I can almost hear Stern salivating over his keyboard in response - jolly good debate from both of you. (hope I don't spoil it too much by butting in)

*The moguls love blokes like you!*

Squeers, you do seem to have a chip on your shoulder about
business. I have yet to see the politicial moguls, the religous
moguls or the academic moguls, scrubbing their own toilets at work.

Squeers, trust me, my composure is, as always under full control

but you and your buddy, Grim, are the ones using gratuitous expressions like -

the "spoiled rich" and "obscenely rich" and "morally vacuous, blood sucking parasites".

and when I consider the words of the reprehensible Lenin, followed by the actions of the reprehensible Lenin, in the name of the sort of model of economic ownership you seem to be promoting, and your ignorant criticism of the capitalist model of economic ownership -

I feel on matters of "composure" and debating technique, you have more than met your match.

The likes of the left are consistently marked by grandiose plans and no substance.

Lenin had 5 year plans
Stalin had 5 year plans
the incumbent state and federal governments wither have plans or are making plans for every situation and event known to mankind

but for all the socialist plans there is no substance.

simple example, the Victorian public transport ticketing system

A huge waste of public money, billions of dollars

and for what

nothing which actually works or comes close to the "planned" deliverables.

That simply would not have happened in a privately owned transport network

So too the Victorian Green Wedges, abandoned because they are not economically sustainable after they caused higher housing costs by reducing available land stocks.

When collectivists get hold of commercial assets and opportunities the following happens

Monopoly trading.. which screws the consumer.
Subverted economic agendas, neither open nor commercially or competetively motivated.
Stagnation of product development and investment -

in short, further screwing everyone

the left consistently fail to deliver any economic progress or benefits

the right leave the business community do what they do best, run businesses and

the politicians doing what they do best...

just talk about stuff.

your collectivist policies have produced, at best, a complete waste and at worst, mass murder.

Charles Darwin once calculated that a pair of common house flies, at their ordinary rate of reproduction, would within a year cover the earth in a layer of house flies 20 metres thick, or something to that effect.

I suppose capitalism is driving this unsustainability too?

Of course the reason it doesn’t reach that stage with flies is because large numbers of them die in each generation. Are the anti-capitalists really arguing that the fault of capitalism is that it is the cause of large numbers of people being alive and healthy who would otherwise be dead or diseased?

Anti-capitalists argued for over a century that capitalism grinds the faces of the poor, even while the living standards of the masses under capitalism rose to the highest levels in the history of the world. But wait, it gets worse. Anti-capitalists *still* argue that capitalism makes the mass of people poorer, while *simultaneously* arguing that it makes the mass of the people too rich.

And what exactly do you propose to put in its place? Obviously public ownership of the means of production is not an option, because even if it could support the same population at the same standard of living, which it can’t, it would be *more* unsustainable because it would use more resources to achieve the same result, because it would lack the necessary means of economic calculation. The only alternative is the orgy of government spending, government debt, government wars, and government jailing, regulating and taxing that we are witnessing in the western world. The idea that this is a more sustainable or desirable solution than peaceful exchange based on private property is just more criminal stupidity.

The anti-capitalists are like religious adherents. They are not interested in learning about the disproofs of their beliefs. They are like one of those plastic punching clowns with a bias at base. The more you punch them down, they more they just keep on popping up with that silly enthusiastic grin on their face.

Excellent, Peter Hume, what fun!

Much as it pains me to be a damper on such rhetorical flourish, I fear it fails to disguise an utter want of substance and a clutch of straw men you lay waste to.

To begin with (again), why must we deal in cliches, or in this case stereotypes?
Who are "anti-capitalists", and are they the same for all seasons? I hadn't realised my disenchantment with the present system was so historically monolithic.

<Are the anti-capitalists really arguing that the fault of capitalism is that it is the cause of large numbers of people being alive and healthy who would otherwise be dead or diseased?>
I don't know. Seems rather morbid! Are they?
For myself, as I've said ad nauseam, I'm concerned that capitalism's fundamental dynamic, endless growth in a closed system, is unsustainable. To me the equation seems simple enough. This internal logic is not subject to alteration without its ceasing to "be" capitalism, yet if we don't turn the growth off, thus terminating capitalism, we will rapidly complete the job we're embarked upon: exhausting resources and running out of markets to cultivate. Indeed, logic dictates that capitalism is engineering its own spectacular demise, I only demur that we should perhaps intervene "before" the thing implodes? I suppose I should be grateful that we'll go out in grand style.
continued...

<Anti-capitalists *still* argue that capitalism makes the mass of people poorer, while *simultaneously* arguing that it makes the mass of the people too rich.>
Do they? Seems silly! Can you provide references?
<And what exactly do "you" [who? Anti-capitalists?] propose to put in its place?>
Well that is a poser isn't it? I hadn't thought of that! Perhaps we should? Or do "you" (capitalists?) prefer that we crash and burn, and make it up as we go?

<peaceful exchange based on private property> sounds lovely! How do we do that?

<The anti-capitalists are like religious adherents.> I hate zealots! <They are not interested in learning about the disproofs of their beliefs.> You just can't tell some people!

...Continued
Peter Hume:
<They are like one of those plastic punching clowns with a bias at base. The more you punch them down, they more they just keep on popping up with that silly enthusiastic grin on their face.>
I love the analogy!

Now do you have any comments or counter-arguments to make about what I or anyone else has been saying, or about the realities of our unsustainable, unethical and doomed capitalist system? Why is it that one cannot criticise a rotten institution without being assigned to a ready-made belief system?
Why don't you hop off that heavy base with the bias, wipe off that ridiculous make-up, and let's have a serious refutation of the basic premises that have "actually been made" above. :-)

"CAPITALISM is essentially people participating in a free market"... well, that, and all that goes with it, is first class bollocks.

Quoting Adam Smith's ideas as describing global capitalism today is about as relevant as comparing China's brand of capitalism with Marx.

As we are changed by evolution, so too are our economic-social systems.

Agonising over whether capitalism is good or 'evil' is futile.

We are lumbered with our economic system, until it alters again, as it drives everything else, good, bad and indifferent.

Clearly we have expanded at an unsustainable exponential rate, which appear to leave us in a bad shape environmentally, and mentally too, judging by what many people seem to value in their lives today.

There are glimmers of light, within capitalism, characterised by such as Amory Lovins & Co, with their 'natural capitalism' but then if you read Sharon Beder, then all hope is lost for any decency emerging.

One only has to look at the GFC to see that some of the most irresponsible people are allowed to run our communities, coupled with the vast range and numbers of incredibly wealthy people in the world, who seem to think they are owed vast incomes, well beyond any possible needs.

Of course, there have always been such people, but like cancer, they expand far too fast these days.

Why do people feel the need to 'protect' capitalism over and above the overall environment we live in?

It's not about being 'anticapitalist' in some throwback view of the Cold War world... it should be about looking to see how the Earth can continue to spport life beyond cockroaches and gin-slingers.

I blame it all on Henry VIII and his sell off of lands post Dissolution, the beginning of landsales, and real private wealth.

Hey Yabby, I love your figures. That line about poor little Microsoft, with it's pitiful 90% share of the OS market, going in to bat against that nasty, monopolistic Apple with their dominating 7% share of the market; classic stuff. Meanwhile, poor old Linux, the 'free' open source system which frankly beats the p and pick handles out of the commercial OS's limps along with a measly 3%. Serves them right, the mongrel collectivists.
Let's look at a few more numbers. According to 'Poverty Facts and Stats', about half the world's population gets by on $2.50 a day. Meanwhile, your hero the monopoly thumping Gates at his richest claimed ownership of 101 billion dollars. He doesn't have that much now, of course, because he's a 'philanthropist', he's given 10 bil., away; leaving himself a paltry 40 bil., or so to play with (definitely envious; I've always wanted to buy Tasmania). For arguments sake, let's say this month he's worth 50 bil., a mere half the man he once was.
$2.50 per day -we'll assume these heathens will forgo their day of rest- multiplied by 365 days comes to the princely sum of $912.50 a year. At this rate, your 'average' or median human (of which there are more than 3 billion) would only have to work for fifty four million, seven hundred and ninety four thousand, five hundred and twenty one years to make as much.
If only we could get them to apply themselves, the shiftless 'collectivists'.
Perhaps, Yabby, you should think a new philosophy. I'm afraid the cow in the movie 'Babe' has stolen yours; “the way things are, is the way things are!” A distinctly bovine attitude, stimulating little rumination.
Stern, I thank you kindly for pointing out the error of my ways. I see now that describing someone (who half the world's population can only compete with by working a mere 54 million years or so) as a 'bloodsucking parasite' was wrong.

Continued:
Nice people, decent people are far more likely to use terms like “stupid arrogance”, or “butcher” or “small minded envy” and “mad bloodlust”; all for having the impudence to suggest there appears to be a slight disparity between rich and poor.
I maintain, Lenin and Stalin were every bit as much 'good communists' as The Borgias, Torquemada and yes Hitler (sorry Godwin) were all 'good Christians'.
Hey, Wing Ah Hume, welcome back. I thought we might have lost you. I love your line “The anti-capitalists are like religious adherents. They are not interested in learning about the disproofs of their beliefs.
This is wonderful stuff, coming from a laissez faire libertarian. In every 'discussion' I've ever had with one of that clique, the single outstanding characteristic of them was that anyone who weren't with 'em, were agin 'em.
That's to say: under the heading “Capitalist” we have Laissez faire Libertarian.
Anyone who isn't a Laissez faire Libertarian is automatically listed under the general headings communist or (even worse) “collectivist”, including:
Social libertarians, social democrats, social liberals, small “l” liberals, democrats, neo liberals, neo Keynesians, Keynesians, Anarchists, post anarchists, syndicalists, fascists, yes collectivists, environmentalists, feminists, my own comensalists and arguably worst of all...ideologists, yuck poo ptah.
Yes, we poor non laissez faire libertarians have always only been able to stand back and watch with awe and (yes, I admit it) raw envy at the open mindedness, imagination and tolerance exhibited by your common or garden variety classic right wing libertarian, as they strive to cope with a world of 'us' (who are right), and all them (who ain't us).
Squeers, I blush. Your eloquence surpasses me. Blue Cross, love your work. Poirot, welcome to the fraternity (egalite, liberte).
Just a tiny tip on courtesy (Stern); please don't explain my own paraphrases back to me, I find it strangely annoying. Yes, you were terribly clever to recognise the source; why weren't you clever enough to recognise what it was?

*Hey Yabby, I love your figures. That line about poor little Microsoft, with it's pitiful 90% share of the OS market, going in to bat against that nasty, monopolistic Apple with their dominating 7% share of the market; classic stuff*

Ah Grim, but you conveniently forget history. Back in 1994, when
the internet first cranked up, PCs first became more common, you
had two choices. Apple, with its high cost and monopoly powers or
MS-DOS, the most consumer unfriendly bit of software imaginable.

Along came Bill Gates with his $49.95 special of Windows 3, which
changed the world forever. At last ordinary mug consumers could
use an Apple kind of system (even with many flaws), on any PC,
made by anyone, for a fraction of the price. The Apple monopoly was
finally broken!

The reason that Bill Gates became such a rich man was consumers
did not just respond in their millions, but in their tens and
hundreds of millions. Multiply that by 49.95 and you have
megawealth. Next came Office 94. A word processor, a spreadsheet
and a database, at around half the price of those in the market.
Again consumers responded in huge numbers, so did business.

So are you going to call Bill Gates a parasite, because consumers
loved his product so much, that hundreds of millions bought it?

Think again Grim.

Google was started by a couple of university geeks. They thought
they had a great idea, went to venture capital for some finance,
the rest is histopy. No rich parents, no crookery, simply supplying
consumers with what consumers think is a good idea. The only
ones they have upset are moguls like Murdoch, who simply cannot
compete with the changing technology.

So are they parasites because they created Google from nothing?

Grim “courtesy” – whining to me about “courtesy” will get you no where.

I am still wincing over the “courtesy” shown by communist tanks when they rode into Budapest, Prague and Kabul.

Grim Squeers & Co

I notice you fellows carefully ignoring one line I made in my last post

“your collectivist policies have produced, at best, a complete waste and at worst, mass murder.”

Not one of you got anything which is going to challenge those words?

Has the cat got your tongues?

Or do you do, like most collectivists demand,

Ignore the inconvenient truth in favour of a defective but renamed/rebranded economic theory which, in your heart of hearts, you just know will not work but you want to inflict it on real people to prove yourself for the benefit of your own self-righteous ego and sense of unfulfilled envy and lust for power over others.

Like one right wing politician said

“Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.”

In short, whilst the left is grovelling around, obsessed by mere existence and “economic equality”, the right is focused more on life quality and individual liberty, without which all the economic equality in the world means nothing.

Oh and another quote from the same source

“Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.”



Finally Yabby, going back to where it started, IBM essentially gave Bill Gates and friends the “PC world” when they commissioned his DOS operating system on a non-exclusive contract for their new range of PCs. and Microsoft then went and sold the same OS to a hundred clone manufacturers, anxious to grab what was looking like an IBM monopoly.

That’s the free market for you... I just love it!

Grim

You have written two of the best posts I have read in a while.

So good, in fact, that you have stimulated the crustacean out of his burrow to rush to the defence of poor, maligned Bill Gates. Great stuff. Love the stats on the earning capacity of the 'parasitical' every-man(person).

And you too, Squeers, enjoy your arguments very much. What is it with the 'laissez-faire libertarian', that their liberty doesn't extend to others? Only those who fit within the narrow confines of unfettered capitalism and worship the almighty dollar.

I am no more anti-capitalism than I am anti-sport. However, I have the ability to assess and critique either and (quelle surprise) determine when either is profiteering at the expense of others.

What else can one expect of the "either you're with me or against me" myopic crowd?

Severin - re What else can one expect of the "either you're with me or against me" myopic crowd?

When I consider the collectivist’s mantra

"You are either with me or you will die in a collectivist re-education gulag."

I think what you snidely describe as “myopic” is a far more humane and tolerant attitude than collectivist tyranny

Like I said before

“collectivist policies have produced, at best, a complete waste and at worst, mass murder.”

I do not see what you wrote in any way challenging the veracity of that statement at all

Two part harmony1/2

Thanks Grim... I appreciate your kind words, and also share your regard for Squeers, who, as I read his scribblings here, is far from being an advocate for any form of Communist regime, who I suspect he would suspect with the same doubting questions as he puts before the maddog pro-Capitalists, and as others point out, the fuzzy Libertarians who denounce all who come without the same shaped hair shirts as their own.

My memories of Gates are that I have been unable to avoid his witless products every time I buy a computer.

True, there is Linux, a system my children use along with all the free and frequently superior software that goes with it, but I found I was unable to keep changing from work-Word to Open Office, and back, everyday so sacked the Linux from my machine and stuck with works demands, Gates-only.

I wouldn't mind using Gates if it was not so bloody terrible, and prone to attack.

Now, from another post I've stolen the 'sage' words of "Peterson" who says 'Religion has been the driving force of man-kind
from day one' and drop it in here because Squeers asked what was the driving force.

The usual cuplrits seem to have avoided this thread so far, but I wonder if there is not some content to be found in this screaming lunge of Peterson's at those who do not agree with him/her?

Perhaps, in this thread, not quite what Squeers was driving at, but certainly an element of it (more in 2/2).

Thread 2/2

It would be too churlish to pretend that no good has ever come from even the evils committed under the name of various gods, and some religions do thrive upon the prosperity gospel in various forms, even if not quite in the same form from one denomination to another.

Then there is the getting-around-the-rules of religions, like when Christians thought it was a sin to borrow or lend money, and interest....whoa.... a deadly sin!, but hey presto, that's what Jews are for, to borrow from and malign after for being Jesus killers and evil.... all very motivational for capitalisms early stages.

The wealth of endless churches-in-the-fields, monasteries, cathedrals.... just to visit them is to see abundant wealth, albeit squeezed from the bones of mortal peasants, supplemented through both Crusades and various crusades to glean from the pockets of centuries of fearful nitwits, while paying us all back, long after the builders are creators are dead, with architecture to wonder at, and music and art to absorb.

The joyous intermingling of base evil producing some good... then again, what would those peasants have done if they were not saving themselves from Satan through iniquitous taxes and unsafe working conditions?

And the artists? What would they have done without so many egotistical, self satisfied 'big nobs' to paint?

God moves in mysterious ways, indeed (just ask Runnet and AGIR).

*to rush to the defence of poor, maligned Bill Gates.*

That is hardly the case, Severin. More like setting the
record straight, for the benefit of the more ignorant
amongst you, such as yourself.

Fact is that Gates became rich, because he broke a
monopoly which enabled the PC revolution that followed.
Too many people loving a product is hardly a rip-off.

In fact the Gates Foundation donates around 800$ million$
a year for global health, which is as much as the
budget of the United Nations World Health Organisation.

So there you have it. A single individual, first enabling
the global PC revolution by breaking a monopoly and giving
people value for money, or they would not have bought his
Windows 3, then going on to help more sick, poor people
on the globe then anyone before him!

Yes, he's a Capitalist, not from the loony left of dreamers.
All this is of course commonly forgotten, when you shake
your fists with calls of "unfair".

TBC re Squeers “far from being an advocate for any form of Communist regime”

But the alternative to capitalism always ends up as the horror of “communism” by that name or any other

As dear old Vlad Lenin commented

“The Goal of socialism is communism”

And like another politician observed

"Socialists have always spent much of their time seeking new titles for their beliefs, because the old versions so quickly become outdated and discredited."

Call it socialism or communism, we are, in the end, talking about collectivism by any name.

And that politician also accurately observed

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money”

Of course the same politician also observed

“A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.”

I guess Bill Gates does not go many places by bus

But when considering that the Gates Foundation is a charity we should also remember Warren Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway, is known as much for his philanthropy as he is for his commercial astuteness.

And the problem with government – governments know how only to be mean (and the Collectivist ones wastefully incompetent) .... and are never ever philanthropic

"But the alternative to capitalism always ends up as the horror of “communism” by that name or any other"...

You live in fear Stern, in a bi-polar world that has gone, not seeing that what you think you believe in and love so dearly has also changed beyond Adam Smith's village ideals.

As I read Squeers he is not 'offering' an alternative, and certainly not the one you live in fear of.

Recall the wasted life of that old goat Santamaria, who just before he died admitted that now the Wall was down he could see that he had put too much energy into thwarting Communism, and too little into understanding the real threat of unbridled Capitalism.

Now, I know he longed for a fascist form of partnership between state, unions and religion-well, Christianity (probably not unlike what we actually live under) and raised up the peasant life to well beyond what was reasonable, all beyond my desire to assist happen, but he did get something riight before he died, and that was his well founded realisation that Capitalism was unleashed, unchained, and on the rampage via 'globalisation'.

I think it is that aspect that Squeers is pondering, the 'Capitalism unleashed' aspect.

There would be no solution, certainly not a final one, to simply revert to your worst fears in Stalinism-Leninism, but if we simply career along at the pace we are going, we may indeed reach the 'final solution' brought to us, by our abject disregard of our whereabouts.

Your mind is closed to 'other' ideas. You are trapped in a one-way street. You see only 'bad' in changing the model.

At what point will you be happy?

How can you measure what you seem to know so absolutely?

The planet is not Basil Fawlty's Morris 1100 estate car, to be flogged with a Birch tree when it doesn't work, it is more complex than that, strangely enough, and requires some more complex thinking than a night time bouncer might give it with a knee to the ideals.

We must have lived far more cooperatively in the past.

"Now do you have any comments or counter-arguments to make about what I or anyone else has been saying, or about the realities of our unsustainable, unethical and doomed capitalist system."

Yes.

1. You have assumed, but haven't established that capitalism's fundamental dynamic is endless growth in a closed system.
2. Since all living things including humans tend to seek life and reproduction, and since I presume you are defining the earth as a closed system, why would not that unsustainable tendency be a fundamental dynamic of human life under any system?
3. If any alternative system is to provide for the drive of human beings like other living things for vitality and reproduction, then why won't any alternative system be faced with all the same problems?
4. But if they are not to provide for human resource use for purposes of vitality, then what? The people who are now alive and healthy because of the products made by the dreaded capitalist will do what?

"yet if we don't turn the growth off, thus terminating capitalism, we will rapidly complete the job we're embarked upon"
5. Who is "we"?
6. How would we "turn off" the tendency of people to want to live and reproduce?
7. Assuming that you are not advocating that large numbers of people should die, and assuming that we were agreed to replace capitalism with another system, then what would that be? What reason is there to think it would be any more sustainable?

>"<Anti-capitalists *still* argue that capitalism makes the mass of people poorer, while *simultaneously* arguing that it makes the mass of the people too rich.>

>>Do they? Seems silly! Can you provide references?
Yes. You're arguing that it makes people too rich (unsustainably uses natural resources), while simultaneously arguing that it makes for "exploited masses living without such chimeras and luxuries".
So it makes the masses too poor and too rich at the same time, right?

<peaceful exchange based on private property> sounds lovely! How do we do that?
By not violating property rights.

Dear Peter Hume,

I don't "assume" anything. Capitalism "is" predicated on endless growth and we "do" live in a closed system, economically and ecologically: "From a strictly sustainable point of view, sustainable capitalism is an expanding capitalism", "Capitalism cannot stand still ... the system must expand or contract, grow or shrink, 'accumulate or die,' in Marx's words". This is not Marx talking mind you, it's from Patricia Allen's "Food for the Future": have a read, it gets better! http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LDTCmMXd2V0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA125&dq=is+capitalism+sustainable&ots=aLMnNo7FMu&sig=if1uXcl1Vfbj5Q4rm1AEiQTenag#v=onepage&q=is%20capitalism%20sustainable&f=false

It amazes me that ordinarily rational, highly intelligent people, quick to poor scorn on any kind of loose thinking or pie in the sky beliefs in anyone else, are incapable of subjecting their own ingrained and typically "convenient" prejudices to the same scrutiny.
Serious and honest thinkers do not baulk at interrogating even their long-held and cherished rationales (and brainwashing), which stand-in as ideological blocks to free and fearless thought.
Since I do give you credit for being highly intelligent, I can only conclude, judging by your list of points, that your only defence, for their manifest bias and comfortably implied injustices, is cynicism.

I do in fact cover your points above btw, so don't intend to repeat myself, especially since I'm apparently talking to a closed mind.

squeers, why wouldn't any system be faced with the same problem if it is to provide for people's wanting to live, be healthy, have families, and enjoy life?

You conclude that capitalism involves endless growth on a finite base, from your premise that capitalism involves endless growth on a finite base. When this circularity is questioned, you go straight to ad hominem argument. But perhaps you should try answering the question.

Why is such an unsustainable tendency, as you have described it, not a characteristic of life itself, rather than of capitalism? If we were to produce the same amount of food, clothing, housing, transport, and communications, by some other means, why would not that other way be equally or more unsustainable?

Are you suggesting the abolition of private property?

The problem is not that I am failing to question my underlying beliefs, it is that you are failing to answer the questions that show you are wrong.

Whether you are aware of it or not, your argument is based on Marxist theory that has been refuted a thousand times over. If you practised what you preach, you would seek to understand the theories that refute you, rather than, like a religious enthusiast, fleeing, misrepresenting and ignoring them.

Peter Hume,

You ask - "If we were to produce the same amount of food, clothing, housing and transport, and communications, by some other means, why would not that other way be equally or more unsustainable?"

The answer is that it "would" be unsustainable - the point being that capitalism as it is practiced has delivered an economic system that is ravenous. Our appetite for the glories and delights of abundance, waste and conspicuous consumption is insatiable. Moderation, unfortunately, is not a quality that humans excel at - which is a great pity, as a system like capitalism can only survive with restraint.

Sienna:
<squeers, why wouldn't any system be faced with the same problem if it is to provide for people's wanting to live, be healthy, have families, and enjoy life?>
Dear Sienna,
Do you despair then that human economy cannot abide by a budget, or is somehow exempt from the natural strictures that curtail any specie's living beyond its means. Should we not be grateful, that our intelligence affords us an insight into our inevitable fate, and act to prevent it? What is the use of those verities you describe if their realisation is purchased on dodgy credit? The answer to your question is of course economy; living sustainably has always demanded economy. Why not now? I don't suggest we go back to the dark ages, just that we realise that the quality of our lives has to be in proportion with our realistic means--and ethical. This is where our giant brains can help us, but we prefer to bury them in the sand.

PH:
<Why is such an unsustainable tendency, as you have described it, not a characteristic of life itself, rather than of capitalism>
Because we have evolved to a point (and we have plenty of sober historical precedent to caution us) where we can foresee danger and head it off, no? Would you run your household economy the way the broader economy is run?

And now you want to crowd me into the "collectivist" camp for an easy kill and ritual disembowelling, right?

Anyone who "actually reads" Marx is forced to acknowledge the incredible accuracy of his economic predictions. It does not entail that s/he fits the convenient stereotype you lot have fictionalised. I defy you to show me one argument (from the "thousands" you boast about) that cogently discredits Marx's economic theory.
Like the creationists you no doubt love to lampoon for knowing nothing about evolutionary theory, you condemn Marxist economics without knowing a jot of it, based on the self same deluded faith you ridicule in others.

Sorry, a bit rushed.
Victor Lebow. (and Annie Leonard).

TBC – me live in fear. Not at all

My life is rich, not simply in a material sense either but on many other dimensions too.

Just as I acknowledge the dangers communism I also acknowledge the dangers of leprosy but I do not fear leprosy because I ensure I do not adopt practices which expose me to it.

Condemning communism is the best way I can think to acknowledge the dangers communism and alert people to it, just like avoiding leprosy.

Actually the analogy is quite apt, after all, both are wasting diseases which diminishes life quality as well as killing people slowly.

I think if we would all be better off if you left Squeers to explain his whacko theories, rather than act as some amateur interpreter, try confining yourself to your own personal observations.

Maybe try to counter my claim that "But the alternative to capitalism always ends up as the horror of “communism” by that name or any other"...

And avoid making feeble ad hominines like “bi-polar” (which does not apply to either me or my world) and that my world is still here, rather than being “a world which has gone” … so you are wrong on both points, not that you probably have the wit to understand why.

In fact the world of today is far less “collectivist” to the one I was born into, when the horror and threat of Russian tanks and bombs was a continuing daily, China held its masses in slavery, Cambodia was a horror still to be revealed and Mugabe (another collectivist liar) had yet to be unleashed on Africa.

One thing I do know, every generation have people who suffer from the “socialist theorist” gene, exactly the same as many folk suffer dwarfism. Difference, dwarfism affects the pattern of physical growth, the “socialist theorist” gene affects the ability to perceive the world in real terms, substituting bizzaro alternatives for the process of creating wealth and trade; peoples right to an expectation of liberty and the imposition of a monolithic, overpowering state bureaucracy with endowed hubris of obscene proportions

Really Stern... are you trying to live up to your character with your post?

I assume that you interpret Squeers words, as you do with everyone else's, in order to make sense of them? If not, then you just type your fingers off to no end.

(which might be why you worry about leprosy?)

But being such a man-of-the-world I am surprised you are unfamiliar with the term 'bipolar world'.

You'll have to learn to look up phrases you do not understand, here, I've done it for you:

Bipolar World: http://eefy.editme.com/BipolarWorld
"Bipolar World" is a term used to describe a world political climate in which nations form factions built around one of two comparatively equal superpowers. Its opposite, in which one superpower stands above the others, is a Unipolar World.

You cannot type your fingers off about 'Capitalism and Communism' if you are unfamiliar with this.

As for this line, "Maybe try to counter my claim that "But the alternative to capitalism always ends up as the horror of “communism” by that name or any other"... you'd have to inform us all of the cases you are thinking of before any comment could be made.

My point is simply that while you engage in a love affair with the old era of Capitalism in its old battle against Communism, like poor deluded Bob, you seem to be missing the damage currently being wreaked by the system you support so sternly.

It seems unlikely that the world can afford to have 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians living the same style as however many billions the West is..is it about 2 billion?, and still have the Earth hold up.

So, something has to give... that could involve an evolution within Capitalism, and is more likely to be that than an entire 'new' system imposed from elsewhere, but change is afoot, of that there is little doubt, to some of us here, but clearly not to you.

There was a spin off to the bi-polar world of superpowers that saw the West use it as an accelerator to growth, so however much you fear Communism your life has 'benefited' from it...horrible to think about, eh Stern?

As for this, "the ability to perceive the world in real terms"...and you speak of 'hubris'?

I'll leave the debate about perceiving the world in 'real terms' to those who delve deeper philosophical works than me but my two-bob version is that the seeking for 'real terms' might be as much an illusion as the utopian dreams you fear.... there's an old line you might know 'where you sit is what you see'. This makes it hard to have everyone 'seeing' the same 'real terms/world' at the same time.

In fact, seeing the world is 'real terms' is not possible, but do explain what you mean, since I am unable to interpret it.

Finally, 'In fact the world of today is far less “collectivist” to the one I was born into', yes, indeed, but I was not thinking as far afield there as you were.

More the disintegration of local communities, the ones we all live in, as the rise of a distorted liberal individualism, and the urgency to flog things to keep the pyramid scheme going, has resulted in the moral panic, driven by rightwing 'thinkers' and politicians, and the smugger I'm-alright-Jack types who so loath sharing the world with others.

There are far worse community diseases than leprosy to worry about, and I wonder if we are seeing just a few emerging as a result of how we live?

*Moderation, unfortunately, is not a quality that humans excel at - which is a great pity, as a system like capitalism can only survive with restraint.*

That kind of makes my point for me Poirot, for of course it makes
no sense to blame the economic system, when some humans wanting more
and more is the reality. That's not capitalism but the human nature
of some.

IMHO its rather pointless being concerned about resources, whilst
we still haven't got to base 1 in doing something about the extra
250'000 extra humans a day, being added to the planet.

I've heard greens on OLO discussing banning air conditioners etc,
many peddle to work, but frankly all this is little more then a feelgood exercise.

Now if the global population can't even agree to get to base 1
about population and basic things like family planning, you
have buckley's chance of getting them to agree to share resources.
The law of the jungle will prevail, the fittest will survive,
nature will sort it out, as has always been the case.

Wow, a real live Marxist. I thought you were an extinct species.

Marx was certainly a charismatic and persuasive writer. But his theory is wrong and yes, I’ll happily refute it for you, but only on certain conditions.

1. Don’t ask me to do so unless you are genuinely interested in learning the reasons why his theory is demonstrably wrong; and why a socialist alternative is impossible not just in practice, but even in theory. If you are genuinely inflexibly unwilling to re-think his claims and your beliefs, then admit it and don’t waste my time. And I am genuinely willing to re-think my claims but you’ve got to do better than simply insisting that you or Marx are right. You have to prove it and refute the objections, not just argue in a circle, which is all you’ve done so far.
2. I’m not interested in putting up with ad hominem argument, mind-reading, misrepresentations, assuming bad faith, assuming what is in issue, and appeal to absent authority, which I have found from experience to be the universal fall-back tactics of all leftists when their claims are disproved or exploded, and which you have already tried in this thread. If you won’t agree to renounce dirty tricks beforehand, I won’t agree to spend my time explaining the refutations of Marx to you, okay? Three strikes and you’re out.
3. I am not going to box against shadows. You need to succinctly put the argument of Marx’s economic theory first, and I will then refute it.
4. Probably best to start a new thread.

I challenge you.

However if you don’t want to do that, you can read the one killer argument in: Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises
http://mises.org/econcalc.asp
This proves that any alternative would be *less* sustainable than capitalism because it would be incapable of economising on resources above the economic level of barter – that, is, assuming you are not advocating the deaths by starvation of large numbers of people.

Yabby, a worthy point ... "rather pointless being concerned about resources, whilst we still haven't got to base 1 in doing something about the extra 250'000 extra humans a day, being added to the planet".

Too bad about religions there, with their 'backwoods' view of procreating for the glory of gods.

And yes, on the aircons and bike riding.

Good design should see large numbers of aircons not needed, but I suspect they are a status symbol as a city 4WD is, or a log fire on the Gold Coast, and equally foolish in many circumstances.

Cycling is worth doing to keep healthier, as well as worth promoting instead of more cars, particularly in poor nations, since they are so (relatively) cheap there, even more so here.

Now, on this here, "when some humans wanting more and more is the reality. That's not capitalism but the human nature of some" you may also have a point.

But wouldn't Capitalism be shaped to be a reflection of that human nature? At least somewhat?

And that is not just 'human nature' of all but it surely has a dash of cultural-tinge to it, so the Western protestant mood requires more money all the time, whereas the Eastern peasant might seems content not to question the lot dealt, not seeking to get above his station in life (ah, the good auld days, eh? When everyone knew their place, as told from the pulpit of course).

If so, then it can surely be altered, albeit with difficulty and only via 'agreement', preferably not of the violent form or else it will not really reform at all?

All those 'piffling' activities do add up, and should they reach a 'critical mass' (thinking of those mass bike rides) then change is more easily achievable.

That doesn't add up to a communism, as feared by Stern, nor dismantle the essence of capitalism, but it would introduce curbs, and new expectations, into the mix, as has happened since Smith was creating something for market day in the village, which no longer reflects the activist Capitalism of today.

TBC re - driven by rightwing 'thinkers' and politicians, and the smugger I'm-alright-Jack types who so loath sharing the world with others.

Yawn

Imho, it is so much better to be among the

“I’m all right Jack” types

than the

“you have been more prudent and smarter and now have more than me, so Gimme, Gimme, to make us all equal” parasites

All you are doing is parroting the chant of the non-thinker

Nothing you have said comes close to challenging what I have observed being -

“collectivist policies have produced, at best, a complete waste and at worst, mass murder.”

nor

“the alternative to capitalism always ends up as the horror of “communism” by that name or any other”

The wasteful, murderous horror show of collectivism and you sound as if you want to give-it-another go….

God preserve us from the folly of the disease of the “socialist theorist” gene (yes, TBC, it is worse than leprosy) ,– although I am told it is a childhood complaint which many (but not all) grow out of
As Churchill said “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
(That’s “UK” liberal of course)

Yabby, I agree wholly with your points.

You are absolutely correct re population numbers, the driver of all demand.

In a capitalist, unregulated world, the nature of things means attrition and natural disaster tends to equalize unbridled growth, without the need for “regulation”. Problem, someone has been going around neutering the diseases which used to maintain the balance.
It might be survival of the fittest but that is a more “sustainable” outcome than the survival of all who are born, regardless of their fitness.

A smaller human population = more likely to be sustainable and with less competitive stress on the world’s resources

And of course, supply and demand, will declare that if world population continues to grow, regardless of what collectivists predict, eventually a lot of people will not be able earn enough to feed themselves and they will die off

Yabby,

Capitalism is predicated on the basis of human nature - the system is set up to take advantage of our penchant for acquisition. The two go hand in hand.

Stern,

You so charmingly observe that : "In a capitalist unregulated world, the nature of things means attrition and natural disaster tends to equalize unbridled growth without the need for "regulation". Problem, someone has been going around neutering the diseases which used to maintain balance".
That someone wouldn't be giant pharmaceutical companies, would it?

Dear Peter Hume,
I don't know what a "Marxist" is, I mean apart from the bogey-man you're so eager to invoke. I have no doctrine, of any kind, and don't believe in belief; it offends me when people refer to "my beliefs", I have no truck with them (for the sake of some of my interlocutors, I acknowledge my subscription to this reality; that is, that I suspend my disbelief).
Marx was charismatic, you say? The man lived in penury and virtual solitude for most of his life. Can you elaborate on his charisma please?
Point 1:
Yes I am genuinely eager to learn, even to be corrected; though please bear in mind that I have not spoken of alternatives, indeed I've admitted to not having one. The socialist alternative you (hysterically) allude to consists only in your presumptive imagination.
The only claim I've made is that capitalism is unsustainable and unethical. I am happy to defend these propositions. Can you please elaborate on the circularity of my argument?
Point 2: First of all I refer you to your own posts; can you defend them as anything more than inflamatory diatribe?
I apologise for my ad hominem assumptions and I confess to the prejudice of thinking you predictable (so far). Please enlighten me where I've got it wrong?
Can you define "leftist" for me? Presumably, since you appear to reason in this binary fashion, you're a "rightist"? "Three strikes and you're out" would seem to indicate so?
I agree, however, no dirty tricks(?).
Ctd...

Ctd...
Point 3:
<I am not going to box against shadows [unthinkable]. You need to succinctly put the argument of Marx’s economic theory first, and I will then refute it.>
The problem here, first of all, is that I'm not a "Marxist" (which I'm eager for you to define for me). I referred to Marx's theory of capitalism's dynamic and to Wallerstein's theory of "world systems" above. If you require me to attempt a potted version of these theories, I will have a go, and I can try to restate my overall position (though my time is precious too) though I think I've given the gist of it above.
I accept your challenge, but I concede you the advantage of starting your own thread, thereby setting the parameters; otherwise, we can continue here; whichever you prefer.
I am familiar with Mises, but shall gratefully assimilate the link you provide.
On your final point:
I am a peace-loving individual and deplore all violence (quite a claim for a human being; better change that to all "gratuitous" violence). I certainly do not "advocat[e] the deaths by starvation of large numbers of people". That is precisely what I wish to avoid.

In all seriousness, Peter Hume, it's a cold-war debate that should be had, since we must learn to think again, outside those tropes that rush in to think for us, as Orwell cautioned.

Dear TBC and Poirot,
thank you for dealing with Stern. He exasperates me!

Poirot, I do like your last point about Stern's "charming" recourse to natural attrition.
He's quite right, of course. The way we're going there's a large and abrupt correction in the pipeline!
I wonder if Stern and co will be so phlegmatic when they're on the receiving end?

I conveniently forget history, Yabby?
Apple computers hit the market in the 70's; the first computer sold complete, rather than in kit form, as apple's main competitors Tandy and Commodore did.
One of the few historical datum's you managed to get right is that Apples were high priced (although we need to compare 'apples with apples', they were one of the few and now about the only company to offer a complete hardware/software package); as a result they never achieved anything like the market dominance of Microsoft, which (being as you say, more affordable) came to dominate the market in 1986 (that's 8 years prior to the date you posit), and has never looked back -achieving in fact, a virtual monopoly for several decades that Steve Jobs can (and no doubt does) only envy.

Col Rouge, is that you? Have you been reincarnated as the arse end of a boat? I had no idea you were so fond of the nanny state.
“And the problem with government – governments know how only to be mean (and the Collectivist ones wastefully incompetent) .... and are never ever philanthropic”
No, they just supply such things as old age pension, disability pension, unemployment assistance, rent assistance, New Enterprise Encentive schemes, hardship subsidies, farm assistance, exceptional circumstances assistance... But I agree, these are not acts of charity, are they? And I'm quite confident you wouldn't describe overseas aid as 'philanthropic'...
As to your challenge:
“your collectivist policies have produced, at best, a complete waste and at worst, mass murder.”
I'll ignore for the moment the very simple fact that I'm not a collectivist, (which of course you will ignore, as I'm not a right wing libertarian, refer my previous post) in the last 3 three decades of globalisation the only country to have made serious inroads into global poverty statistics is 'Communist China'.
Speaking of which, which single country was most responsible for getting the world, and Australia in particular, through the GFC?
Hey Unca Yabby and Unca Stern, did it work? Did the Great Wall of China keep the rabbits out?

Just listening to ABC RN 'The Natuional Interest' on this very topic with Dr. Tim Jackson.

Worth a listen.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/nationalinterest/stories/2010/2949473.htm

http://www.readings.com.au/event/deakin-lectures-2010-prosperity-without-growth

Clearly just an old style commo... absolute nonsense... Stern needs to send him a stern note.

Stern, you need to let go of the past, and all your petty fears.

How do you explain your hope for calamity to wipe out your children's (here I am assuming you have some, if not, sorry I didn't ask first) future to them, or at least to the younger generation below you?

Given your confected angst over the millions done away with under Communism, I am genuinely shocked that you are so blase about 'the poor folk' who will evaporate under your ideal world, should disaster kick in as some predict.

How do you know you will be able to ride the storm?

Will your 'squillions' be worth a cracker, or will you be scrounging the shops for crackers?

*they were one of the few and now about the only company to offer a complete hardware/software package); as a result they never achieved anything like the market dominance of Microsoft, which (being as you say, more affordable) came to dominate the market in 1986*

Grim, computers became really popular when they became user friendly.
They became user friendly when they went to a graphical user interface.

Jobs got all that right, he was years ahead. There was nothing
to compete with the Apple Mac. But he was too greedy. If you wanted
a good computer, you had to accept his inflated price and were stuck
with his software, his printer, his everything. Had Jobs sold
his operating system to other manufacturers, Microsoft would have
virtually vanished, for nobody liked MS-DOS. It was user unfriendly.

Apples first so called "golden age" was between 89-91. At that
stage, he had MS over a barrel.

How many computers a year were being sold in the 80s? By 2001
it was 125 million, with now over 2 billion sold. That ease of
use made the difference to all those who wern't computer nerds.

If you do your homework you will find that MS really took off with
the advent of Windows 3. Anything before that was a toy, as were
the Commodores and Ataris and all the rest.

What Gates did was let anyone buy the closest thing to a Mac,
for the paltry price of 49.95$. That is why he made money, he
could see the value of being the standard, and making money by
sheer volume. Jobs lacked that vision.

I was one of those many people who refused to buy a computer
until they were reasonably priced, easy to use and with software
that was the same. Gates provided it, so he got my money,
along with a whole lot of others.

Providing consumers with value for money is what business is
all about.

*And yes, on the aircons and bike riding.*

TBC, I'm not sure what you mean there. So would you ban air conditioners and enforce bike riding by law?

If so, for what benefit?

If the global population is going to crash because its unsustainably
large, then if it crashes a bit earlier or a bit later, hardly
matters in the bigger scheme of things. For we clearly forgot
to address the key problem, ie population, not if resources can
be stretched out to last an extra few years or not.

*And that is not just 'human nature' of all but it surely has a dash of cultural-tinge to it, so the Western protestant mood requires more money all the time*

I'd have to disagree here, for a I know plenty of Western protestants
as you call them, who when they reach their 50s, feel that they have
enough to live the quiet life and are quite content to do so, without
wanting ever more. But I also know some business types who have that
deep hunting instinct of making a killing, just like others have when
they go to the football. Money to them is not that they want more,
its their way of keeping score. So thats a deep primordial hunting
instinct showing through.

*All those 'piffling' activities do add up*

Add up to what? They might make users feel good, but they are not
going to make a scrap of difference to the 250'000 additional people
on the planet, being added each day. Until you solve that one,
you ain't solved nothing.

Yabby, you have no fight with me over population control, so please don't try to make one.

Keep that one for the xtians and others on OLO who feel the need to keep rooting-for-gods.

As for this, "*And yes, on the aircons and bike riding.* TBC, I'm not sure what you mean there. So would you ban air conditioners and enforce bike riding by law? "

No, I was merely agreeing with you that there are calls to ban airconditioning, which is a mixed bag as far as I can see. There is no excuse to design and build a modern workaday building in Australia, for instance, with airconditioning, but I can think of many poorly designed buildings, our local hospital for instance, where to withdraw that machine would be to go back 50 years for no good result.

As for riding a bike, no, I would not 'require' it at all but I would make it easier to undertake, as I am engaged in now, so more can safely cycle for a variety of good reasons, and purposes.

I'd take a softpower approach, not a head-on assault.

And... "if it crashes a bit earlier or a bit later, hardly
matters in the bigger scheme of things", that's true, and Stern really doesn't care if the world goes to Hell in a hand basket now, and in fact, that does not really matter either, but it might be a bit sad for people who hope to populate the Earth for a while yet, on the surface and not living a Dr Who existence in underground vaults, evolving into blind moles....part 2 ahead...

Part 2

But in the scheme of things, if one does not believe there is a 'god given purpose' to life, then yes, it really does not matter whether we are here or not, today, tomorrow, the next day or hereafter.

Runner et al., might disagree, and I would prefer to see us 'keeping on', but only due to my irrational and silly attraction to my life so far, not because I think the cosmos needs humans, or that we serve any useful purpose in the non-scheme of life.

Life, after all, is but a hobby: something to do between birth and death. It serves no other useful function. Along with the entire human race.

*Keep that one for the xtians and others on OLO who feel the need to keep rooting-for-gods.*

TBC, I am not trying to convince you that it is a problem. I am
trying to convince you that whilst it is a problem, all your
peddling and frugal living, frankly won't make much difference,
when it comes to the future of humanity. Apart from making you
feel good, of course.

Now lets take Grim's philosophy. We'll go and deal with that evil
Mr Gates, confiscate 20 billion $ of his wealth and send the poorest
1 billion people a cheque for 20$ each. What would happen in the
real world? 20$ would buy them quite a bit of food each, they
would live it up, who can blame them? They'd all have sex as humans
passed puberty are genetically programmed to do, most don't have access
to family planning, so your net result would be even more poor
people to feed next year! Grim might feel better about having ripped
off that evil Mr Gates, but we have a larger problem then we started
with. So my point is, we have to separate feelgood solutions from
those which actually make a difference.

*I would not 'require' it at all but I would make it easier to undertake*

Well there we agree. Encourage people by all means, but I have a real
problem with those control freaks who want to compel people to follow
their agenda by law, no matter how nutty the concept.

I bought an LED tv this year and I admit, I really enjoy it. Now
in other ways I live quite frugally, far more frugally then I could
afford, despite being one of those "evil capitalists". My point
is, if Poirot or others can show me how humanity will survive if
I give it up tomorrow, I will take notice. So far, they have done
no such thing, other then provide feelgood solutions, whilst largely
ignoring the 250'000 extra mouths to feed on our planet, every time
the sun rises.

> I don't know what a "Marxist" is, I mean apart from the bogey-man you're so eager to invoke.

Strike one. assuming bad faith; mind-reading.

>… Marx was charismatic, you say? … Can you elaborate on his charisma please?

I said his writing is charismatic; the man himself was a curmudgeon.

I think his charisma is that, if one has *not* read the refutations of his theory, it seems at first persuasive.

>Point 1:
Yes I am genuinely eager to learn, even to be corrected; though please bear in mind that I have not spoken of alternatives, indeed I've admitted to not having one. The socialist alternative you (hysterically)

Strike two. Personal insult; suggesting psychological disorder

>allude to consists only in your presumptive imagination.

>The only claim I've made is that capitalism is unsustainable and unethical.

Well even if it is, if there’s no alternative, what is the relevance in practice?

>I am happy to defend these propositions. Can you please elaborate on the circularity of my argument?

Yes. I said you have assumed but not established that capitalism involves endless growth on a finite base. To which you replied that you haven’t assumed it; it just *is*. That is circular.

>Point 2: First of all I refer you to your own posts; can you defend them as anything more than inflamatory diatribe?

Strike three: personal insult; assuming bad faith.

> I agree, however, no dirty tricks(?).

So what happened? Unaware of doing it? Just can’t help yourself?

It’s not enough to *disagree* with my arguments; you need to be able to *refute* them.

> Please enlighten me where I've got it wrong?

Where you’ve got it wrong is
a) capitalism is keeping alive and healthy many millions of people who in traditional societies died, usually in infancy, or in socialist societies died, mostly by starvation from politically-caused famines.

(cont.)

b) If you do not or cannot propose any alternative to capitalism, then your opinion that it is unsustainable or unethical is irrelevant for all practical purposes.
c) To say that it is unethical when there is no alternative in practice, is to say that human society itself is unethical. But ethics has no other origin or purpose than in human society. So if your opinion comes to: human society is unethical but there’s no alternative, that opinion also is irrelevant for all practical purposes.
d) It is therefore also irrelevant in theory, because ethics concerns human action.
e) So far as the alleged unsustainability of capitalism comes from the tendency of human beings, like all living things, to seek vitality and reproduction, then your argument is with human life, not capitalism per se.
f) You rightly admit to having no alternative. Consistent with avoiding mass starvation, there is none.
g) Any notional alternative must either provide for the same human demands for food, clothing, shelter, transport, medicines, communications, entertainment etc., or not.
h) If it does not, ie if it contemplates large numbers of people should just die or sicken by political decision, then that is not morally superior to capitalism.
i) If it does try to provide for the same human wants, but without private ownership of the means of production, it *cannot* do so as economically as capitalism because of the economic calculation problem that Mises pointed out. It will lack the means of economic calculation, which require prices, which require markets, which require private ownership of the mean of production.
j) Therefore any alternative that does not retain the core capitalist institution of private ownership of capital will necessarily use *more* natural resources, other things being equal, and therefore be more unsustainable, in your terms.
k) It will also have to substitute the initiation of aggression rather than peaceful exchange based on private property, as the basis of social co-operation, and therefore will be more unethical.

Dear TBC,
thanks for providing those links to the work of Tim Jackson; they make me feel utterly vindicated in the stance I've adopted above. Since he elaborates the prognosis I've been making, I'm now keen to look at his idea of a cure.
On the question of "does capitalism drive climate change"; the answer could possibly be that once the capitalist culture reaches a state of unsustainable glut, population growth stabalises. This is not good enough as that concomitant state of glut and tailoring off population growth means that "vital" economic growth must go elsewhere, like raising disadvantaged populations to the same unsustainable levels. We know this to be a material impossibility, but even if it were achievable, the same problem of supply outstripping demand would inevitably apply.
Thanks again, I hope the other posters will check out the links.

Dear Peter Hume,

First apropos your three strikes:

Strike 1: It was not bad faith or mind-reading; you did cast me as a bogey-man "anti-capitalist", as well as accuse me/my thought of "criminal stupidity" and as comparable to a "religious adherent". I accept your apology.
Marx's writing is mostly tedious, apart from his manifesto a rhetorical device by definition.

Strike 2: Since I've been at pains throughout to disclaim a knee-jerk penchant for socialism, its insistent attribution to my motives does strike me as hysterical. Besides, tit for tat.
"if there’s no alternative [to unsustainable and unethical capitalism], what is the relevance in practice?"
I didn't say there was "no" alternative; I indicated that I didn't have one.
Apropos my "circularity". I have established my "theoretical" stance and provided secondary sources (as have others). Since we're talking theory it cannot be finally established. I am persuaded that the empirical, logical and corroborative evidence.

Strike three: not a "personal insult", but a reciprocal complaint relating to your own insults and bad faith.
"It’s not enough to *disagree* with my arguments; you need to be able to *refute* them." I'm not aware that you've offered any "argument" as yet? Only denial and what I "in good faith" see as "cynicism".
On your next point; if you care to read my posts above, I acknowledge that capitalism is possibly the only system capable of sustaining current levels of population, although via wretched inequities. This does not alter the fact that it's unsustainable--like making yourself as comfortable as possible on the Titanic.

b) I do not rashly make proposals for alternatives to capitalism out of consideration of the complexity of the problem, but I'm not suffering from millenarian angst. Curiously there are a great many other people who share my "opinion" and are looking at viable alternatives. I shall think it over too in my humble way.
c) Again, I don't say there is no alternative. I actually say above that "humans are fundamentally ethical beings", by which I mean that ethical considerations modify our behaviour. Why must human ethics have relevance and purpose beyond human society? Points c) and d) are in fact the same straw man (no offence).
e) I don't buy that because unlike locust swarms, humans are potentially capable of reproductive restraint, foresight, economy and husbandry--as well as empathy to go with their ethics.
f) Again, I do not say there "is" no alternative. Indeed I've no doubt there is, and that it could be based on those qualities just mentioned above.
g) Consumer demand is utterly disproportionate and unsustainable on the scale and model of growth it currently follows. "This just is". Compromises have to be made. Please see the link to the Deakin Lecture posted by TBC above.
h) Agreed; alternatives have to consider the human cost. Although the current system doesn't consider the human (and other species) cost of exploitative practices.
i) and j) I'll look at these more closely when I have the time, but at a glance, it looks like circular logic to me.
k) "peaceful exchange based on private property" is pure myth by and large. We live in a competitive system based on escalating self-interest; that is, on the "profit motive" rather than on adequate sufficiency. To the extent that peaceful exchange is carried out, it is unethical in terms of gross inequalities, exploitation and subjugation.

Yabby... I'll leave you and Grim to slog it out over the Windows chap.

My simple view is that if he has gathered up so much wealth from his ubiquious product then he charges far too much for it, so can quite easily afford to horde and dispense it at whim.

Not knowing how the US tax system works I cannot offer a meaningful comment, but like most wealthy people/corporations, I have no doubt he pays very little tax compared to the gross income.

Maybe he does, and is a striking exception, but I doubt it.

As for bike riding, indeed, my own efforts are miniscule and in isolation totally meaningless to anyone but me and the immediate situation here, I am not 'changing the world' by any stretch of the imagination.

However, there are strange benefits that come with cycling, although not to everyone of course.

Since I am not a totally dedicated cyclist, still owning and driving a car, I have found a change in my attitude to the roadway.

Cycling is a more human pace than driving, and the ease with which miles are vanquished on a bike is quite a shock. The need for a car reduces considerably. I've got a trailer for shopping at Woolies, and at the fruit/veggie shop.

Not to be 'pure' but because it's easy, and quite pleasant.

The urge to rush everywhere dissipates even in the car, a calmer life descends as a result of cycling.

Now, road rage is a booming 'industry', and is very evident on a bike, but even more so when driving the car, as really bad driving becomes even more evident once the road has been re-interpreted from the saddle.

This was an unexpected result from getting back on the bike.

Yabby 2
If more people cycled in Australia, not clad in lycra and head down, although even that helps to increase numbers, then our roads would become far safer as the very poor driving attitudes and practices melted away.

As for you being an 'evil capitalist', don't take it like that. We are all in this together, we are all, by default, 'evil capitalists', as 'guilty' of mad and endless consumption as each other.

I have a stable of bikes, all of steel, probably from WA, shipped to China, turned into steel, shipped back again, transported by trucks all over the nation-state, and flogged at horrendous mark ups in bike shops, the new fashion houses of the middle class.

Hardly a sustainable circle of virtue is it?

My German tyres are made in Indonesia, shipped to the UK, bought by me, flown to Australia.... for a mere $27 each!

Again, not sustainable but with our neo-liberal system of capitalism is was decided that Australia would not have a tyre industry (along with many others), so all are imported, for every vehicle in the land.

In fact, we don't even have a bike industry anymore, beyond a handful of cottage frame builders.

The system of capitalism that we have, as exemplified by my bike owning/riding, is not possible to keep going for ever. As Tim Jackson points out in that info I posted that clearly Squeers has read.

Now, for Sterns benefit, I didn't once hear Jackson suggesting a fall-back position of Communism, but he did suggest that change, considerable change, has to overcome the Capitalist system we currently endure, as Squeers has been suggesting.

I wonder if Squeers rides a bike too?

Dear TBC,
I do indeed ride a bicycle too; I have two very inexpensive machines and use them as much as is practical.
I was very interested, listening to the In the National Interest link you provided, in the discussion about what can only be called "commodity fetishism", and in particular the phenomenon of commodity status and competitiveness we're all seduced by. Apart from the risk to life and limb associated with cycling, the greatest disincentive is the perceived pecking order in which you find yourself: bottom feeder. Cyclists are perceptually impoverished, dis-empowered and bullied (and/or despised for being "green", that is for giving a sh!t about their ecological footprint. How hateful of them!). This perception is certainly directed at cyclists, but I think we also buy into it ourselves somewhat, since we are part of a culture that measures success according to material possessions and accoutrements. Much as we might brag that we don't care what how peers think, we are part of the same society and "do". In a sense it is not the fault of people like Col Rouge (God rest his soul. Loved your reincarnation crack, Grim! Could it be true?) that they are arrogant and completely unselfreflective about their "worth"; after all they have the material holdings deemed by consumer society as indicative of success. They may justifiably (if simplistically)regard their "success" as human beings as an "objective" assessment. And much as I tell myself that success is (or should be) measured by much less tangible matters than the car you drive, and all the other accoutrements of success, as part of the same culture I can't help but absorb to some degree my complementary "failure", taken by the same measure. It isn't so much that I am taken in by this materialist yardstick, it's that almost everyone else is, and that they do the measuring regardless of how much I assert my values.
As was alluded on ITNI, there is something patently absurd (and demeaning) about those "eccentric" individuals who do try to lead a non-materialistic, sustainable and humble lifestyle. How cock-eyed is that!

I haven't really been following this rather entertaining thread, but Squeers' last post caused me to go back and look at it.

I do believe Grim's right - welcome back Col!

Oh Yabby, Yabby Yabby. I should do my homework?
““Apples first so called "golden age" was between 89-91. At that
stage, he had MS over a barrel.”
“He” left Apple in '85. He didn't return until '97.
“What Gates did was let anyone buy the closest thing to a Mac,
for the paltry price of 49.95$”. Dam'! How did I miss that sale? Which year did IBM give away free computers with every Microsoft OS purchased?
What an heroic story; how David with a paltry 90% market share took on and defeated the monstrously monopolistic Goliath Apple, which never achieved even half that much in it's entire history.
Don't let facts get in the way of a good story, Yabby.
“Now lets take Grim's philosophy. We'll go and deal with that evil
Mr Gates, confiscate 20 billion $ of his wealth and send the poorest
1 billion people a cheque for 20$ each. What would happen in the
real world? 20$ would buy them quite a bit of food each, they
would live it up, who can blame them?”
Live it up indeed. They could probably even give their starving children the first decent meal they had had in their entire lives.
But we don't approve of giving starving children a meal, do we Yabby? At least, not while our own children aren't starving, anyway. That would only exacerbate the overpopulation problem, and we certainly wouldn't want that.
Someone recently pointed out that if the entire human race lived in a single city at the density of say New York, the city would comfortably fit on Tasmania.
So remind me again, why is keeping the population down so important we should condone starving children to death?

CJ

Have been enjoying a mostly voyeuristic approach to this thread with Squeers, TBC and Grim providing wonderful riposte to the repetitive and stereotyping form of argument presented by Hume or Stern, ie, if you criticise capitalism you must be a commie.

Grim's possible outing of Stern as the rigid pom Col Rouge - Stern has yet to declare undying love for Maggie Thatcher, now that would be the final piece of evidence for me. Of course, now I have given warning to Stern not to mention Maggie-dearest, but I am betting it is only a matter of time... the real Col Rouge will not be able to restrain himself.

Stern - you'll like this because apparently it makes me a failure. (Egad!)
I don't own or drive a car - used to but decided I preferred not to (much less stress and expense).
So I catch the bus and walk. Walking, in particular, allows me the luxury of passing physically through my environment, as opposed to being cocooned inside a moving pod. And I'm not trying to prove anything here (I do ride in cars sometimes), except that I'm pleasing myself as to how I get around.

Squeers,

I have to go out shortly, but wanted to say that I've got something by Thorstein Veblen called "Pecuniary Emulation", which I'll chase up later. He posited that envy and hunger for esteem were the driving psychological spurs to economic success.

Hey Poirot, I have Veblun's 'theory of the leisure class' where he refutes the Austrian school's premise that the market is rational, and that consumers always buy things for rational reasons.
I found his arguments far more compelling than Mises, for instance, who basically refused to consider empirical evidence; preferring the 'purity' of mathematical formulae.
Observed facts just get in the way, really.
That sound in the background is Peter Hume, choking on his chicken sandwich.

“Col Rouge, is that you? Have you been reincarnated as the arse end of a boat? I had no idea you were so fond of the nanny state.”

As far as I know, Col rouge is entitled to post as and when he/she choose.

Re
As For “No, they (governments) just supply such things as old age pension, disability pension, unemployment assistance, rent assistance, New Enterprise Encentive schemes, hardship subsidies, farm assistance, exceptional circumstances assistance... But I agree, these are not acts of charity, are they? “

Obviously, in your case they could have spent more on spelling (“Encentive” Schemes)

Actually what government does is TAX people to pay other people, on a government selectively biased basis and spend more on administration and bureaucrats than is actually delivered in value to the recipients.

The most inefficient way possible. That’s “government for you”

Just like one famous politician said
"The larger the slice taken by government, the smaller the cake available for everyone."

“Did the Great Wall of China keep the rabbits out?”
That wall is ancient and was designed to keep people out
But we will all recall, the purpose of walls, in a collectivist context, has been to keep people imprisoned into the system which abuses them and many risked and sacrificed their lives to escape it, hardly a recommendation for collectivisim.

As for you being a collectivist or not, that does not matter, you are ranting against libertarian capitalism which has produced many of the innovations which benefit most people.

I really could not care about what you believe, other than it will be some form of government control of a collectivist nature and will be inferior to what free markets and free people can produce for themselves, without the nanny state ruling their every thought and action.

And when we talk about bringing that Chinese bamboo curtain down… you can thank Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger for getting that ball rolling (two politicians not known for their “collectivist” values).

*Oh Yabby, Yabby Yabby. I should do my homework?*

Yup Grim, you should! Until 1989, Apple was in fact
a larger company then Microsoft, with a larger market
cap. They were also years ahead of anyone with their
GUI and mouse and Apple Mac. The board got rid of
Jobs because despite all this, Apple Mac sales were
so poor and he was off spending money on other ventures.

What limited Apple from becoming the standard, as MS did
some 10 years later, was their greed, as voted on by consumers.
Years later they tried to change their big mistake by
licensing Apple clones, but it was too late. Windows had
become the standard. Apple could have achieved all that,
10 years earlier. Gates basically got rich, by giving
consumers a bargain.

*Someone recently pointed out that if the entire human race lived in a single city at the density of say New York, the city would comfortably fit on Tasmania*

Which of course has absolutaly nothing to do with the growing
population being unsustainable.

*But we don't approve of giving starving children a meal, do we Yabby?*

Grim, you are free to sell your computer to save another couple
of starving babies. As we all can see, you choose not to.

My point once again is that we need solutions to the growing human
population problem, or all questions of sustainability go clean
out the window. Clearly you don't even think that there is
a problem of a growing human population.

TBC, I am sure that bike riding will catch on once again in a big
way, when oil prices rise to 200-300$. Not just bikes, but Vespas,
electric cars and so on. The market will sort it out.

* My German tyres are made in Indonesia, shipped to the UK, bought by me, flown to Australia.... for a mere $27 each!*

I have no idea why you buy your tyres in the UK.

*Again, not sustainable but with our neo-liberal system of capitalism is was decided that Australia would not have a tyre industry (along with many others), so all are imported, for every vehicle in the land.*

That is really up to the manufacturers. If they can't make them
here profitably, then it hardly makes sense to make them here.
Even with high oil costs, shipping is an incredibly efficient way
of moving cargo. People go on about food miles, but one calculation
I saw, showed that it required less energy to grow a leg of lamb
in NZ and ship it to the UK, then they could grow if for, in the UK.

There are good reasons not to make things in Australia. High tech
manufacturing has increased the cost of building and equiping a
factory to make most things. Australia is a relatively small market,
so hardly justifies all that investment. Better build one state
of the art factory and run it 24 hours a day, to produce the best
and cheapest. Then ship it to wherever.

If you can show that it pays to make tyres in Australia and that those
who invest their hard earned savings in your venture, will actually
make a profit, there is always venture capital available.

Alot of our present engineering workshops can't even find basic
skilled staff such as welders, so we would not have the labour
either.

Yabby... I buy tyres from the UK because here they cost about $65 each, plus postage.

I can get them from the UK for the 'about' $27 mark, depending on the dollar, with free postage so long as I but 'about', again the dollar dictates, $85 worth of gear.

A little discussed issue is the reason we have a lack of skilled staff here.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, Australian employers, particularly state governments, trained lots of people via apprenticeships.

Now all gone. The business are flogged off to private owners, or corporatised to make a profit, so the subsidy to industry that state governments and taxpayers made in training so many young people, has evaporated... long live profits above people.

You are correct about the single factory, most bikes are built by Giant, theirs and everyone else, apart from the really poor ones sold by K-Mart type shops.

One day we might have to find something to do here apart from digging holes, but by then it will be too late.

There's always shoe-shine work I suppose, something that's hard to export.

*Yabby... I buy tyres from the UK because here they cost about $65 each, plus postage.*

Which goes to show why we need globalisation :)

Some guy has the local agency and screws the local market for what
its worth. Give the internet a few more years and there will be
some guy in Indonesia, prepared to ship them directly to you at
a much lower cost then you pay from Britain, without all the extra
freight.

*A little discussed issue is the reason we have a lack of skilled staff here.*

TBC, so explain to me why privatised industrial economies, such as
Germany, Switzerland, USA, Japan, Korea etc, have lots more skilled
people then we do.

We still do in fact have a reasonable manufacturing industry, only
they tend not to make consumer goods, but things like specialised
mining equipment, agricultural equipment and similar. Nearly every
manufacturer I speak to say that they are short of skilled staff.
So our problem is clearly in how we train them. Many simply don't
want to be trained in the first place. In Australia working is still
optional and many survive ok without bothering.

*long live profits above people.*

So are you prepared to invest your life's savings and super into
businesses that make constant losses, so that you have nothing
left in the end?

Regarding Yabby’s post, quoting Grim

*But we don't approve of giving starving children a meal, do we Yabby?*

Grim, you are free to sell your computer to save another couple
of starving babies. As we all can see, you choose not to.”

These few lines epitomize the socialist / libertarian debate

Grim fraudulently emotionalizes his point, by introducing the random specter of starving children and further makes their starvation a collective issue by attempting to impose a responsibility upon Yabby by applying the collective “we”.

Yabby, rightly observes, Grim is free to do whatever he wants about starving children, which neatly rejects Grim’s fraudulent assumption of his responsibility.

Regarding TBC’s comments of Friday 9th July

“More the disintegration of local communities, the ones we all live in, as the rise of a distorted liberal individualism,”

And his advise of Saturday 10th July

“My German tyres are made in Indonesia, shipped to the UK, bought by me, flown to Australia.... for a mere $27 each!”

Doubtless, if he was really sincere about preventing “the disintegration of (his) local community”, he would have bought his tyres through a local tyre dealer.

Displaying once again the fundamental hypocrisy of the anti capitalists - aka the collectivists (by any name) who express the expectation

You libertarian, capitalistic individualists should do as we anti-capitalists demand and not as we do.

And if you want to know about manufacturing and the loss of skills from Australia I suggest you look at the following

1 the automation (capitalization) of manufacturing
2 the effect of economies of scale in a 22 million population
3 the negative (re reciprocating effects of tariffs and trade embargos)
4 competitive terms of employment between national economies, including employment environment legislation
5 competitive influences of EPA / general legislation

Take those factors into effect and you will see why Australia is not a place to ever consider establishing a new manufacturing plant.

Now consider the additional message which selective tax changes make when mining royalties are chery-picked and you will realize why Australia is slipping down the (competitive) list of desirable investment options.

Squeers
So far you’ve said a) you have admitted to not having an alternative; then said b) you didn’t say there is “no” alternative but indicated you didn’t have one, and c) that you’re keen to look at (someone else’s) idea of a cure, ie an alternative.

This implies, correct me if I’m wrong, that you think there might be, and hope there is, an alternative out there.

However to say that there might be an alternative but that you don’t know what it is, is not much of an advance on saying that there is no alternative, is it? In terms of defending the propositions you have undertaken to defend, I think you should come to a decision point.

I think there is no alternative (that would avoid mass starvation) for several reasons.

1.
But first:
> Since we're talking theory it cannot be finally established.

It is not true that, just because something is a proposition of theory, therefore it cannot be finally established. This is because we are able to use reason, so long as the premises are true and the logical inferences correct. For example, we can reason “Fred is mortal” without first having to wait to see whether Fred dies to see whether the proposition can be finally established, from the premises and the logical reasoning “Fred is a man. All men are mortal.”.

Similarly, if it were true that we couldn’t finally establish something because it is a proposition of theory, then there would be no way to conclude that capitalism is unsustainable. No matter how great its rate of depletion of finite resources, we would have to keep waiting for more empirical data to come in to check against the theory.

But if capitalism involves indefinite growth on a finite base, and if indefinite growth on a finite base is unsustainable, then we can logically conclude that capitalism is unsustainable, which is obviously the principle of reason you were using.

The issue is whether the premises are factually true, and the reasoning valid, and whether there is any alternative in any event.

2.
The argument from economic calculation shows by logical reasoning that any alternative system must be more unsustainable than the private ownership of the means of production – capitalism.

This is because, to be more sustainable, a system must use less resources to achieve a given result. (You may say that an alternative system should not be trying to achieve the same standard of living for the same people. But just bear with me on this point for now.)

To do this, it must have some way of knowing whether a given use of resources is more or less wasteful. Should the house be built out of pine, or hardwood, or teak, or steel, or zircon, or straw, or silver? What tools or machines should substitute for what labour?

In a system based on private ownership of the means of production, these questions are answered by comparing money prices for the different factors of production. But that is only possible because money prices provide a lowest common denominator in which all the different resources on the market can be valued.

Since prices are a market phenomenon, such economic calculation is not possible in a non-capitalist alternative system. There would be no way of knowing whether one resource use is more economical than another, other than to compare quantities directly. The builder, or governmental decision-maker would have to know the available quantity of all relevant materials in the world. The productivity of the system would be reduced to the level of barter. To achieve the same results, any alternative would require a far greater use of resources, and would therefore be far more unsustainable.

This is the rock on which attempts to replace capitalism foundered. It is is the economic reason for the mass starvations in Russia and China in the 20th century. They basically abolished economic calculation.

The only thing that would prevent this happening in a non-capitalist system, would be if the system were able to refer to prices originating in any remaining market system, just as Chinese factories used to obtain price data from American postal catalogues.

However once the alternative system is reduced to trying to mimic the action of the market, it has already lost the argument.

3.
It is true that market prices only include the values of things which can be exchanged against money and which can be used as a means to an end. Prices cannot include values that are an end in themselves, like the beauty of a waterfall, or the value of one’s grandmother.

But that is not an argument against the usefulness of economic calculation because
a) every other system will equally have the same defect that end values cannot be expressed in terms of money, and
b) those end values can be valued directly in their own right, without the use of money.

4. The problem with thinking or hoping that there might be an alternative, or that alternatives didn’t get a fair trial, is that this hope ignores the logical disproof provided by the economic calculation argument.

Anyone proposing an alternative needs to *refute* the economic calculation argument *before* proposing policies that enlarge government and reduce economic calculation even further. Otherwise we get the situation as now in Germany, where people are using coal-fired electricity to shine strong lights on solar panels so as to collect the government subsidy on solar power. *All* violations of the principles of economic calculation, and hence all government-funded attempts at sustainability, are ultimately just different versions of this irrational and wasteful behaviour. If something is not to be run at a profit, it must be run at a loss. The greens have to learn so from the failure of their schemes for pink batts, green jobs, solar subsidies and so on, just as the socialists had to learn by actually starving people to death. But such is not necessary. Unless anyone can refute the economic calculation argument, we don’t have to wait to see what latest scheme the government comes up with: we are already able to finally establish from sound theory that non-capitalist alternatives are more unsustainable than capitalist ones.

*Otherwise we get the situation as now in Germany, where people are using coal-fired electricity to shine strong lights on solar panels so as to collect the government subsidy on solar power.*

Hehe, just goes to show that Govt by good intention is simply not
going to cut it! I am always amazed at how creative people
become, when it comes to acting in their own self interest to put
a dollar in their pockets. I'd never thought of the above, but
if it pays, people will in fact dream up this kind of stuff.

Dear Peter Hume,
I've only read the first of your new posts as yet but am eager to intercalate some mild objections before I read on, especially since it's unlikely I'll be able to make a fulsome reply tonight (The Daleks "and" the Cybermen(!) are teamed up in tonight's final instalment of Doctor Who and, well, you know how I feel about saving the world! Also, my children demand my full commitment).

Though your reasoning is as always admirably syllogistic, it's nonetheless unaccountably flawed. I did indeed confess to not having an alternative to capitalism at the moment; but this present impasse need not preclude a breakthrough some time in the not too distant. In the meantime yes, rather than tempt megalomaniacal tendencies I shall shamelessly look at other's ideas.

<to say that there might be an alternative but that you don’t know what it is, is not much of an advance on saying that there is no alternative, is it?>
Very reasonably put; I should add however that my position is not quite that simple (one is obliged to be pithy in these clipped exchanges and risk being misunderstood).
In truth I have no doubt but that there are any amount of superior alternatives to the capitalist obscenity whose tentacles entwine the globe; indeed, far from not having an alternative per se, I doubt one could come up with anything more inimical, both materially and spiritually than the system that afflicts us. No, the reason for my prevarication, if I may again use cancer as my analogy (it's so apt), is that I fear a sudden change of regimen, however anodyne in essence and salubrious in its effects ordinarily, might prove devastating in the throws of the ultimate cure. It is not that capitalism is irreplaceable, it's more a case of the cancer being inoperable!

But alas, the Doctor calls..

I shall continue anon.

Peter Hume,

(Sorry, I'm not Squeers - he displays splendid eloquence , don't you agree.)

You keep adhering to the same premise for your argument, ie. that no other system (that would provide obscene levels of overabundance and waste) could do it more sustainably than capitalism. The problem with capitalism is the overabundance and waste - not whether another system could do the same thing more efficiently.

Most spifflicatingly eloquent.

"The problem with capitalism is the overabundance and waste - not whether another system could do the same thing more efficiently."

Well I can only address one issue at a time, and it took an unprecedented 3 posts at the magical limit of 350 words just to get across the point that a non-capitalist system cannot be as sustainable as capitalism *assuming* it is to attempt to satisfy the same human wants.

I am well aware that the critics of capitalism do not assume that an alternative system *should* try to satisfy the same human wants. What they want is for some people to have a lower living standard (but not so low as to deprive them of playing on the internet, having children, or using electricity), and for others to have a higher living standard.

I will show that non-capitalist systems are no more sustainable or ethically superior in that aspiration than they are if trying to achieve the same results.

I will also show that Squeers argument is unsound in other ways.

For starters, the 'overabundance and waste' obviously doesn't come from providing for human wants inefficiently. The problem is that it is so efficient at using resources that people, instead of being confined to a subsistence level of existence, can have a much higher standard of living by producing more outputs per unit of input.

*If* people wanted to live at a subsistence level, capitalism would use fewer inputs per unit of outputs to achieve that result.

It's just that the don't want to live at a subsistence level. This alleged problem is not intrinsic to capitalism: it is intrinsic to the human desire to keep satisfying more wants, even after their earlier wants are already satisfied.

Most spifflicatingly eloquent.

"The problem with capitalism is the overabundance and waste - not whether another system could do the same thing more efficiently."

Well I can only address one issue at a time, and it took an unprecedented 3 posts at the magical limit of 350 words just to get across the point that a non-capitalist system cannot be as sustainable as capitalism *assuming* it is to attempt to satisfy the same human wants.

I am well aware that the critics of capitalism do not assume that an alternative system *should* try to satisfy the same human wants. What they want is for some people to have a lower living standard (but not so low as to deprive them of playing on the internet, having children, or using electricity), and for others to have a higher living standard.

I will show that non-capitalist systems are no more sustainable or ethically superior in that aspiration than they are if trying to achieve the same results.

I will also show that Squeers argument is unsound in other ways.

For starters, the 'overabundance and waste' obviously doesn't come from providing for human wants inefficiently. The problem is that it is so efficient at using resources that people, instead of being confined to a subsistence level of existence, can have a much higher standard of living by producing more outputs per unit of input.

*If* people wanted to live at a subsistence level, capitalism would use a lot fewer inputs per unit of outputs to achieve that result.

It's just that they don't want to live at a subsistence level. This alleged problem is not intrinsic to capitalism: it is intrinsic to the human desire to keep satisfying more wants, even after their earlier wants are already satisfied.

(I once met a subsistence farmer/hunter in the Solomon Islands. The whole village only had one lantern. Only the headman had a shirt, and they used *a shell* (not a knife) to cut vegetables. The headman complained that he did not have enough money to pay the $8 a year poll tax. I asked what he wanted more money for. He said to buy kerosene, sugar and soap. I suggested that if he had them, then he would “want more, want more”. He looked at me with all sincerity and said “No.” But we know that’s not right, don’t we Squeers? Because if he had a TV, he would still want to surf the internet, wouldn’t he? )

*If* people chose to live less, to be less healthy, to have no children, to travel less, and so on, *then* there is no reason why capitalism should entail endless growth. The fact that they choose more shows that the problem is not that capitalism is driving the consumption of natural resources, but that people choose to liver longer, be more healthy, satisfy more wants etc. Capitalism enables them to do so. But the arguments of those who fear it is unsustainable are with this human tendency, rather than capitalism per se, since in the absence of this human tendency to want ever more, capitalism would not entail endless growth.

By the way, Squeers has not established that capitalism *is* unsustainable. When I pointed this out, he merely repeated his belief that "It just is" and referred to absent authority and the opinions of others. I understand he thinks it's so obvious it goes without saying. But that is not a proof and what seems to be common sense can be wrong. We are talking about something much much much more complex than whether the sun goes around the earth, and Squeers has less reason to rely on common sense than those who thought that that was self-evident.

My next attempt will be to demolish the Malthusian error of assuming that we are faced with finite resources.

Peter Hume,

It would be nice to think that humans could be capable of existing quite happily by embracing an economic model somewhere between subsistence and outrageous fortune.

("Spifflicatingly" - excellent word, What Ho!)

Peter Hume – loved the German coal- solar energy illustration.

The law of unintended consequences

Illustrating that even where people vote for a socialist leaning government, there is still a little capitalist in each one of them, eager to put personal gain in front of collective responsibility.

I see Squeers is familiar with the term “syllogistic”, doubtless because it applies to his non-existent alternatives to the capitalist system which works.

Regarding “In truth I have no doubt but that there are any amount of superior alternatives to the capitalist obscenity whose tentacles entwine the globe”

Well, Doctor Who not withstanding, you must be very ignorant on the matter if not one of these multiple “superior alternatives” can be brought to mind.

The French Model – brought about the Terror, the Great Terror and to top it all, descended Europe into sustained conflict for decades under Napoleon.

The USSR model.... revolutionary installation but could not feed its population

The Chinese model.... imposed one-child family laws because it could not feed or house its population

The North Korean Model – imprisons families to avoid their legitimate demands for food

The Mugabe model – elected but bulldozed house, raped the economy and lets people starve in the streets

And the Cuban model – ships people to USA to save prison housing

The Albanian model produced economic stagnation and left Albania 50 years behind the rest of the world and had internal exile (concentration) camps to deal with anyone who they thought might dissent.

The East German model – Stasi – say no more except – death from climbing the Berlin Wall was a preferred option to living under the East German anti-capitalist model

The Romanian experience in collectivism, installed through fraud at the ballot box and ending with the (almost public) execution of Ceausescu and his wife

The Cambodian model, killed anyone with an education was brought down by communist neighbour


lots of examples of collectivism (the most common alternative adopted to capitalism), mostly installed through violent revolution or vote rigging

Not one of them producing anything which free people would choose.

Poirot “It would be nice to think that humans could be capable of existing quite happily by embracing an economic model somewhere between subsistence and outrageous fortune.”

Yet it seems to evade us all, every time.

So, rather than ponder on what “would be nice”

I prefer to spend my time trying to work with “what is”

But I doubt you could think of a single improved solution because

The “collectivist” model has some shortcomings -
You don’t get to choose the population
You don’t get to determine other peoples motivations
You don’t get to play God

And thats why you cannot find a better alternative to the free market economics of capitalism

Like one right wing politician said “There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.”
And
“Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation.”

Conversely “anti-capitalism” is the crusade to dis-enfranchise them.

“Regulating” people, to ensure their equality

Does nothing but subordinate their individual spirit to a life of slavery.

Do please tell me when you think you have a “superior alternative” to “libertarian capitalism”

but I am not holding my breath.

In short, the smugness which eminates from the intellectualistic criticism of what works, with convoluted theories about what has been proved repeatedly to fail, is not becoming.

Very coy, Col. Now we're back to (unattributed) quotes from the odious Thatcher.

I'm just waiting for you to start ranting about "Socialism by Stealth". It can't be long now...

Once again, welcome back Col Rouge. Why the change of moniker?

Stern states:

>> The “collectivist” model has some shortcomings -

You don’t get to choose the population

You don’t get to determine other peoples motivations

You don’t get to play God >>

WOW

Thanks for the excellent definition of FASCISM.

Your "liberty" sounds a lot like servitude.

Thanks for the compliment, Poirot, though the credit goes to Peter Hume; he makes a wonderful foil!
Peter Hume:
<if capitalism involves indefinite [sic] growth on a finite base, and if indefinite [sic] growth on a finite base is unsustainable, then we can logically conclude that capitalism is unsustainable, which is obviously the principle of reason you were using.>

Dear Peter Hume,
A "vague" proposition but I take your meaning. Putting it in formal terms yes, one premise is that capitalism's inner logic is untenable.

I have to observe before I go on, that reading through the morning posts (who needs newspapers), it seems to me a part of your strategy (whether intentional or subliminal) must be to obfuscate with verbiage; otherwise, I'm bound to observe that your style, reminiscent of petty legalese, is more productive of ink than import.
However.
Your point 2: <The argument from economic calculation shows by logical reasoning that any alternative system must be more unsustainable than the private ownership of the means of production – capitalism.>
This and what follows seems, first of all, to rationalise that economy must be systemic; ergo, if sustainability is the goal to be wished for then the "mechanism" must attain the utmost in efficiency. Indeed, if "sustainability" is the goal, then any such abstract principle of economic control must needs be tantamount to a perpetual motion machine! I do not pedantically allude here to the problem of entropy, which of course must come into any calculation ultimately, but to the more immediate problem of human gremlins that would surely infiltrate any systemic approach--witness your own instance of torches shone on solar panels. In other words I would tentatively argue that human economy must be flexible, self-reflective and adaptable, hence my insistence on guiding ethics.

In any event, if you are proposing capitalism as the most efficient systemic means of regulation, a system not merely devoid of ethics but predicated on their very antithesis, this is also a demonstrable fallacy:

<...to be more sustainable, a system must use less resources to achieve a given result. To do this, it must have some way of knowing whether a given use of resources is more or less wasteful. Should the house be built out of pine, or hardwood, or teak, or steel, or zircon, or straw, or silver? What tools or machines should substitute for what labour?

In a system based on private ownership of the means of production, these questions are answered by comparing money prices for the different factors of production. But that is only possible because money prices provide a lowest common denominator in which all the different resources on the market can be valued.>

cont.

cont..

This is patent nonsense, since you don't account for the ingenuity and lengths humans will go to to exploit a breach (such as dairy farmers watering down milk). And even if you could render the system impervious to opportunism, you don't account for the insatiable bourgeois taste for luxury. What is the use of attaining wealth in a competitive system, after all, if you don't flaunt it? Thus, the utterly unsustainable phenomena, in the West, of McMansions and SUV's etc., are directly attributable to the "efficiencies" you are seeking to defend! The obscene obverse is that these "efficiencies" are also the means of impoverishing the working classes whose exploitation is fundamental to maintaining this vast disparity between rich and poor. What keeps this bipolar system going is the bourgeois phenomenon; the middle aspirational classes who maintain the status quo via their perpetual enchantment with the gilded carrot. Yet it is surely CDF that the whole world (even if its resources were infinite) cannot join the ranks of the bourgeoisie. The phenomenon has spread, more or less, across Australia (thanks largely to natural resources but it cannot last), which is why we have a labour shortage, but how can capitalism bring this prosperity to the whole globe? It cannot.
We would be hard pressed to find a system less efficient, sustainable or morally demeaning than capitalism!
But that's all I (don't)have time for now.

Severin re - Thanks for the excellent definition of FASCISM.

Well what is in a name,

I said previously "collectivism by any name"

"Fascism" is "collectivism" by a different name

Personally, I could never identify the real difference between communism and fascism (apart from a small difference in the ownership of some assets who were subordinate yet, walking in lock-step with a too powerful government bureaucracy)

and as Lenin said

the goal of socialism is communism

therefore if you are suggesting

the eventual progression and consequences of socialism is fascism

I doubt I could ever find any reason to disagree with you

Nice of you to acknowledge the damning 'end-game' of progressive labor party political philosophy

I think I will remain a libertarian capitalist, since I do not wish to control every dollar you might lay claim to and moment of your day

*What is the use of attaining wealth in a competitive system, after all, if you don't flaunt it? Thus, the utterly unsustainable phenomena, in the West, of McMansions and SUV's etc*

Not so Squeers. You will find plenty of wealthy people who don't
flaunt it, you'd often never know that they were wealthy.

Those who flaunt it, commonly do so with borrowed money,
low self esteem or other drivers perhaps?

Wealth is often a byproduct of people doing what they love
doing and are passionate about. Some people really are passionate
about running their businesses. Wealth created is simply the
way of keeping score, if they are doing it right or not.

The generation of wealth gives you the option of doing the things
you want to do, rather then the things you have to do. That
includes the option of being innovative, which is how we make
most of our progress.

SUVs can make sense from a pure safety point of view. I was
once backended by a young lady driving a lightweight Asian car.
My towball had a couple of scratches, her car had 3000$ worth
of damage.

Squeers - We would be hard pressed to find a system less efficient, sustainable or morally demeaning than capitalism!

Oh do not want to acknowledge recent history?

See the list in my post of Monday, 12 July 2010 8:03:35 AM

I see nothing more demeaning than a government which:

is appointed by revolutionaries or electorial fraud

demands control of all resources

kills any citizen who dares express objection to governmental abuses of power.

remains incapable of feeding its population.

chooses to murder those who flee its authority

All the above claims can be levied at all the "collectivist" / anti-capitalist governments I listed (except Mugabe, who was actually elected in supervised elections to abuse his electorate but was reappointed by electorial fraud).

Yabby,

"Those who flaunt it commonly do so with borrowed money, low self esteem or other drivers"perhaps."

That would be the majority then - and they are encouraged to do so so they can have it all up front. For the most part, they don't get to do what they want, so busy are they scuttling about for the rest of their lives paying off a house (that is three times larger than it needs to be) and all the other accoutrements of modern consumer society.
I must say that when my son attended school it was interesting everyday watching all the townies trying to manipulate their SUV's into the car spaces to pick up their children - which is really the only reason why they bought them - to pick up the kids and show off.
I say people would actually be better off with a little more "time" and a little less "rush".

Dear Yabby,
just because a few wealthy eccentrics make a fetish of appearing poor, and a few more are tight at fishes' a-holes, that doesn't mean the vast majority don't enjoy conspicuous consumption. In any case I'm not talking only of the mega-rich but of the bourgeoisie in general.

According to your logic on SUV's, and since sustainability doesn't seem to be a factor, maybe we should drive Sherman tanks?

Why do you continue to defend the indefensible?

Squeers
Is that your main argument, or are you keeping your good ones in reserve?

Stern… there are no local ‘tyre dealers’, or manufacturers to buy from.

Given that this brand of tyre is imported, along with every other tyre, and is not stocked in my town by anyone, are you suggesting that I have some responsibility to pay more than double to a local bike shop, effectively as an evil subsidy to keep them going?

An odd view of capitalism, given your objections to subsidies, which sound like a ‘socialist’ idea.

Besides, I see no evidence of ‘free markets’ anywhere.

Take the $35m handed over to Toyota by the ATO to produce a car that no one beyond government fleet buyers wants, the part petrol part brown/black coal powered electric Camry.

And not just this car, but Ford and Holden also get ATO monies.

Free market?

Socialist subsidies?

As with every other industry in our ‘capitalist’ world that refuses to pay its way and charge its true costs to consumers.

Even bank interest is not ‘free market’ is it?

Tax rules distort markets horribly, encouraging investment here but not there.

Really Stern and Yabby both, what you support is a system of public subsidy to all and sundry businesses… particularly when your ‘free enterprise’ fails so magnificently, as it did with the GFC, and seems about to again with the debacle in Europe.

Then there is the subsidy of bankruptcy, where thieves and incompetents alike can escape responsibility, forever.

‘Free markets’ eh?

Stern, in your posts you are fixated on your fear of communism, and seem to believe that this is the only alternative path that has ever or will ever exist, although Napolean surely was not a commo was he?

Can you not see that the system of Capitalism that you think exists, is as much a dangerous illusion, delusion maybe, as were the political systems of coercion you so fear were systems designed to improve the lot of the people they were imposed upon?

I certainly have not read anyone here calling for a reintroduction of any form of Communism.

Yabby, tow hooks always produce more dents on the hitting car.

Yabby and Stern

Just to be sure I understand you:

If the government subsidises business, in particular big business that is "free market Capitalism" - that is the system we have now.

If the government provides a financial safety-net to low income individuals for example, unemployed, infirm the aged - that is communism?

Therefore a company is not a collective?

And individual people are a collective?

And aiding rich people enables poor people. WTF! ? !. What a load of sophistry.

WTF are you people talking about? You make as much sense as Runner and his "Intelligent Design" argument.

How is providing education, health, housing for individual people communism? If people are healthy and educated does it not stand to reason that they are then in a fit state to contribute to our economy in a sustainable manner.

It is not sustainable to maintain the largesse of wealth with a few. Only a minority benefits and they are not accountable to any. As with shareholders, only those with the greatest number of shares have any influence into company policy.

Therefore while your form of capitalism requires a high number of people to sustain those in control, no efforts to limit population will by supported by multi-nationals.

PS

Stern you have no more idea of what fascism is than you do socialism. As evidenced by your own words:

>> and as Lenin said

the goal of socialism is communism

therefore if you are suggesting

the eventual progression and consequences of socialism is fascism.

I doubt I could ever find any reason to disagree with you <<

Perfect example of circular reasoning. And, as such, goes nowhere.

No 'edit' function!

Please read above statement as:

"It is not sustainable to maintain the largesse of wealth of the few by the many - that's feudalism. Only a minority benefits and they are not accountable to any. As with shareholders, only those with the greatest number of shares have any influence into company policy."

Stern.. I did forget to ask this, but also ran out of words.

Just listening to RN about the subservient capitalist machine, Google, bowing to the might of the Communist China in order to get a seat at the table in that Communist nation-state, in order to be part of 'the most successful nation on Earth' as it takes over and beats the Capitalist world.

So, what's going on Stern?

How come Capitalism has failed so utterly with its rampant consumerism, and now has to lean on Communism to get through?

How can this be 'the free market'?

Can you explain the symbiotic relationship between your Capitalism that you so adore, and the Communism that you so fear?

Something must have gone horribly wrong, I wonder what it was?

Because, as it stands at the moment, it looks as if Chinese Communism, funded, aided and abetted by western Capitalism, is actually lifting more people from 'poverty', in a shorter space of time, than Capitalism ever did.

So, while I have no desire to live in a 'Chinese' world, anymore than I want to live in a 'Texas' world, looked at objectively (well, with at least one eye closed), it seems to be not worth supporting your form of 'free markets' at all!

You and Mr Hume make much of the 'liberty' model being linked firmly to Capitalism, but there is no 'liberty' engaged in in China, is there? Yet they are making hay as fast as they can, while that Irish president O'Bama struggles as his/your model of Capitalism shrivels and dies (on taxpayer subsidies).

I don't understand.

TBC, Severin
The fact of government handouts to businesses, and that businesses scramble for them, and try to influence policy so as to get them, and that these are an unjust redistribution of wealth, means that these markets are, to that extent, not free. But that is not an argument against free markets; it's an argument against government handouts to businesses.

Peter Hume

Stern made the claim "I prefer to spend my time trying to work with “what is”".

Well. "what is" is that your precious free-trade is propped up by tax-payers (aka government)/ Therefore, for you, to be making whopping claims about its benefits for the majority is a whopping lie. It is not a separate issue, when it is very much a part of the equation.

Also, as TBC has pointed out Communism has done very well out of Capitalism. Hardly surprising when both are propped up by huge populations of people.

I can see where Stern gets his circular thinking from.

What is required is a balance, a sustainable for-all type balance. Yabby once referred to the entrepreneur being like the cave-man hunter. No cave-man worth his hide would kill more than he could eat within a reasonable time. Whereas, the Murdochs, the Packers and, yes, the Gates' pile up far more than they can ever practicably use. While they sit upon their steaming piles of wealth, people starve, sell their children, suicide or bully people even lower down the pyramid than themselves.

There is no more justification for unregulated capitalism than there is for communism. Both extremes are reprehensible.

*just because a few wealthy eccentrics make a fetish of appearing poor, and a few more are tight at fishes' a-holes*

Squeers, somebody actually wrote a book about all this, called
"The Millionaire next door" IIRC. What came out of the stats was
that it wasn't the show off with the fast car who actually had
money, but your small businessman, who had worked for 40 years and
drove a Ford or similar.

Its also something that I learned from business and investing in
companies. Those who flashed it around, were usually those who
never paid their bills and I refused to give them credit.

*I say people would actually be better off with a little more "time" and a little less "rush".*

Poirot, everyone has that choice, many do in fact take it up, its
why people like me can fool around on OLO :)

*maybe we should drive Sherman tanks?*

Squeers, for what? SUVs are quite safe. I use them as I need them
for the country, but I know of city people where safety is the
prime reason that they buy them. Not everyone wants a Volvo.

*If the government subsidises business, in particular big business that is "free market Capitalism"*

Severin, we don't have free market capitalism, we have a mix.
Govts buy off companies, as they want jobs for voters. A company
would be silly not to take their money.

*As with shareholders, only those with the greatest number of shares have any influence into company policy.*

So your single vote in a democracy is basically worthless? Those
with more shares do in fact have more say, they have more to lose.
But even with one share, I can sell it if I don't like the company's
policies, I can rally other shareholders to see my point of view. etc

Severin,

It's interesting that you raised Yabby's reference to cave-men. Thorstein Veblen links the origin of the notion of ownership in primitive communities to "booty" - something that was obtained in a successful raid, like stealing a woman or useful tools, etc.
Then, because of the communal nature of societies, the main comparison was between the new possessor of the goods and the enemy from whom the goods were taken, another communal group.
Veblen wrote: "The habit of distinguishing between the interests of the individual and those of the group to which he belongs is apparently a later growth." and "The man's prowess was still primarily the group's prowess, and the possessor of the booty felt himself to be primarily the keeper of the honour of his group."
In an evolutionary sense, possession of "booty" has now morphed into a comparison between the owner and the other members of his own group.

TBC Capitalism has failed no one.

What has happened is its purity has been debased by neo-socialists who have meddled with the regulations to drive a particularly odious social agenda.

the democrats in USA wanted to achieve social equality by forcing banks to lend to those of specific racial background, regardless of their default risk profile. This stuff is long standing and includes bit of legislation by Carter as well as Clinton.

So those, who had benefitted from “affirmative action” could also get loans because if conservative bankers did not achieve given racial lending ratios they would lose their banking licences.

However, the borrowers of dubious character had no intention of repaying debts and mortgages on houses which were subject to market forces (price goes up and down) and to make it worse, were excused liability due to the “jingle mail” laws – GWB happEned to be sat in the oval office when it hit the fan but the problem goes back to Clinton and before.

Similarly I recall the GM bailout was an essential for US Democratic politicians (left) but was resisted by the US Republicans (right).

So your claim, that capitalism needs communism is a deceit. If capitalist philosophy had been followed, from, the start

The US housing crisis would not have occurred.
The derivatives problem would not have occurred
The global financial crisis would not have occurred.

The short answer is simple,

Economically naive (stupid) social mind /socialist governments, instead of following the common sense rules of capitalism, bastardised the system with fraudulent, socialist leaning regulation and brought about the economic problems of which you speak.
Of course, the one in the biggest trouble at the moment is Greece, who cannot afford to pay the unemployable because it has run out of other-peoples money and needs more loans to stave off complete economic collapse.
Sure China is no bastion of democracy but China today is a lot better than the China of 40 years ago, when the democratically elected capitalist, Nixon made the first overture in dialogue with the Chinese Collectivist dictator, Mao

*Yabby once referred to the entrepreneur being like the cave-man hunter. No cave-man worth his hide would kill more than he could eat within a reasonable time.*

Severin you missed the point. People commonly follow their instincts
and a hunting instinct is one of them. Insincts are based on
emotions and chemical rewards. You don't decide not to have
sex, because you don't want a child. You do what feels good.

In fact my dogs regularly chase rabbits and parrots, even if they
have just had dinner. They do it because they enjoy it. Its the
same with business tycoons.

So what if they have money? They can't eat it, they can't spend it,
so they invest it, take calculated risks and create economic activity
and jobs in the process. Its those jobs, which people like you need
to survive. When Murdoch throws 100 million $ at a movie, having
no surety that it won't be a flop, many people are employed in the
process of making that movie. To take those kinds of risks, you need
substantial capital behind you, be it an individual or company.

In genetic terms its certainly paid off for Murdoch, for he's in his
70s, with a young thing on his arm, still making babies.

Stern

"What has happened is its purity has been debased by neo-socialists who have meddled with the regulations to drive a particularly odious social agenda"... this sounds the same as an apologist for Communism explaining away the failure of that system.

Same problems, same excuses.

It's always the way when a mere theory is elevated to a 'living being' status, and as you highlight above, there is no such a beast as 'pure Capitalism' today, and there never was.

Interesting that you blame the downfall of Capitalism on Blacks-Hispanics and women getting loans, and not, say, on the never lifting wages for 'the poor folk' in the USA, along with, yes, foolish decisions by greedy bankers, and greedy stock exchange types, along with irresponsible 'pension funds' required to gather massive returns, and vote seeking (probably corrupt) politicians.

This is another goodie, "Economically naive (stupid) social mind /socialist governments, instead of following the common sense rules of capitalism, bastardised the system with fraudulent, socialist leaning regulation and brought about the economic problems of which you speak"... actually, if anything, politicians try to moderate the extremes of Capitalism in return for votes, rather than in pursuit of any imagined socialist agenda.

It is, for sure, the mindless bleatings of the mob that drives a lot of policy formulation, and that is far more persuasive than any ideological claptrap from left or right of the political rainbow, or any considered thoughts for that matter.

The mob, of course, comes with many shades to the collar, from blue, to the ubiquitous garb of the banker pink shirt-white-collar types, and variations thereof.

Peter Hume,
<Well I can only address one issue at a time, and it took an unprecedented 3 posts at the magical limit of 350 words just to get across the point that a non-capitalist system cannot be as sustainable as capitalism *assuming* it is to attempt to satisfy the same human wants.>

Dear Peter Hume,
I'm gratified that I've obliged you to extend yourself to an unprecedented 3 posts, though I'm inclined to observe, as I sometimes do on undergraduate assignments, that you could cut it by half without loss of content, thereby also making it far more readable. Indeed, withal the extra padding, I believe I've demolished your laborious premises: "that a non-capitalist system cannot be as sustainable as capitalism". Capitalism, I've argued, is unsustainable, inefficient and profligate; it is not merely unsustainable, I doubt it could, or will, ever be trumped in that regard. The laboratory rat (form of capitalism) you dissect can hardly be said to be representative of the species; indeed it's a purely hypothetical beast. S your proviso, "*sssuming* it [anti-capitalisms] is to attempt to satisfy the same human wants", erroneously implies that something of the sort has been accomplished.
So yes, I have nothing to add as yet; in the interests of fair play I believe I should give you the opportunity to catch up.
Noblesse oblige.

Aha... have a look at this chaps bon mots on greed,

"I am not convinced that understanding greed, even in a limited way, as a good is a good idea. There is no doubt that, for those shaped by the habits of modern societies, acquisitiveness is assumed to be a character trait that is indispensable for continuous and limitless economic growth.

"But from such a standpoint, the idea that a lower standard of living could be considered a viable alternative to the economics driven policies of liberal democratic societies is almost unfathomable".

Check these lines out chaps.....

"But we too are a people harassed by greed just to the extent our greed leads us to engage in unsatisfying modes of work so that we may buy things that we have been harassed into believing will satisfy us.

"We complain of the increased tempo of our lives, but our frenetic lives are just reflection of the economic system that we have created.

"We know, moreover, no other way to keep the system going other than the threat of war. We tolerate the world shaped by our greed because that world in return temptingly and cunningly makes us believe that there are no alternatives to a world so constituted."

Oh indeed, the greedy are truly empty vessels who make much noise to hide their emptiness.

http://www.tinyurl.com.au/dct

As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride. During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans, we have managed to consume infinitely more than we ever produced, thanks to colonialism, crooked deals with despotic potentates and good old gunboats and grapeshot. Yes, we have lived, and still live, extravagant lifestyles far above the rest of you... my sincere thanks to all of you folks around the world working in sweatshops, or living on two bucks a day, even though you sit on vast oil deposits. ....

... It's the world's cheap labor guys like you: the black, brown and yellow folks who take it up the shorts; who make capitalism look like it actually works. So keep on humping. Remember: We've got predator drones....

....To an economist, work; the stuff that eats up at least a third of our earthly lives, is merely a "factor" called labor. Work is considered an unfortunate cost in creating added value. Added value, along with nature's resources, is the basis for all real world profits. Without labor, the money economy could not gin up on-paper wealth in its virtual economy. Somewhere, somebody's gotta do some real-world work, before bankers and investment brokers can go into their offices and pretend to work at "creating and managing wealth."

Paying the workers in society to produce real wealth costs money. Capitalists hate any sort of cost. It represents money that has somehow escaped their coffers. So when any behemoth corporation hands out thousands of pink slips on a Friday, Wall Street cheers and "the market" goes up. No ordinary mortal has ever seen "the market." But traders on the floor of 11 Wall Street, people who've deemed themselves more than mortal by virtue of their $110 Vanitas silk undershorts, assure us the market does exist. No tours of the New York Stock exchange are permitted, so we have to take their word for it...."

oooarrrr!

What a revelation.

"$110 Vanitas silk undershorts"... I suppose the silk acts as a sort of silican coating, like on a non-stick frying pan, preventing skid marks for the wearers when the dollar plunges, rises too steeply, markets crash, taxpayers revolt over constant bailing-out of failed Capitalists.

Does Peter Hume wear them, along with Stern and Yabby?

*$110 Vanitas silk undershorts*

Ah TBC, you clearly don't have a business bone in your body!

Mecedes and BMW just had to recently employ a few thousand
more workers, to keep up with new demand for their most
expensive models.

Where is demand coming from? Along with demand for Rolex
watches, Hermes 5000$ handbags and perhaps even silk
undershorts?

China!

Those well paid European workers are laughing all the
way to their banks and so are shareholders.

Yabby,
you only strengthen the argument you trifle with. China and India are the new bourgeoisie. Once Australia is one huge exhausted quarry, it will fall rapidly to third-world status. Can't be the lucky country forever. The working classes may even return home to scrape a living. When that day comes, sad to say, we won't deserve a skerrick of sympathy.

Ah Yabby... keep with the times man....

'BMW opens China factory' Friday, May 21st, 2004
http://www.testdriven.co.uk/bmw-opens-china-factory/

"In a joint venture with Brilliance China Automotive, BMW has officially opened its factory in Shenyang, north-east China.

"The company will invest 450m by 2005, and expects the factory to produce 30,000 BMW 3-Series and 5-Series models annually.

"Over the next five years, the company is planning to increase its annual sales in the Asian markets from around 93,000 units in 2003 to 150,000 by 2008."

Gawd knows what they churn out now, in 2010.

Hang on a mo'...

"BMW Brilliance second plant to make new 5-Series"
September 05, 2008,
http://autonews.gasgoo.com/auto-news/1007657/BMW-Brilliance-second-plant-to-make-new-5-Series.html

"German luxury carmaker BMW's joint venture with Brilliance China Auto, will build a second plant in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, to meet growing demand in China, and the new facility is expected to make all-new BMW 5-Series models first, xinhuanet.com said yesterday".

Eyyyooop lad, there's even more!

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aqgG2iYaOkaA

"BMW to Build New China Plant on Luxury-Car Demand (Update2)"
November 12, 2009

"Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, the world’s largest maker of luxury cars, plans to build a new China factory to meet rising demand for premium products in an economy that’s poised to surpass Japan in size.

"The 5 billion yuan ($732 million) plant will have an initial capacity of 100,000 vehicles a year by 2012, eventually rising to 300,000, BMW’s Chief Financial Officer Friedrich Eichiner said today in Beijing. Capacity at BMW’s existing plant in northeastern China’s Shenyang will more than double to 75,000 by the end of 2010, he said."

And of course, there is the South African factory too, with all those well paid 'blackfellas' driving to work in the Beemers from their luxury apartments after dropping their kids off at exclusive private schools.

It won't be too long before the Royce gets churned out in China, and then we'll really know that the West has finally lost its grip on Capitalism.

Actually, $110 for undies sounds quite cheap these days, they clearly should charge more even though they'd be sewn up in a Chinese sweat shop.

TBC, that is all old hat. You seem to know even less about modern
bizz then I thought. Of course car companies are going to build
plants in China, today its the world's biggest car market,
bigger then the US. Remember how Japanese companies went to the
US to build cars? It was not about low wages. GM, Ford etc
came here, to service our market. But where are the parts made,
the engines made, where is the engineering done, etc. If things
are booming in China for Mercedes, their workers in Stuttgart benefit,
for the above reasons. Auto companies act globally.

I watched a tv programme yesterday, about the building of those
football stadiums in South Africa. You had global workers on site,
already planning to head to the next job in Brazil. Cables and
those outside squares came from Germany, some materials came
from Mexico. As the world becomes more complex, its also becoming
more specialised. Those specialised companies can be located anywhere.

*Once Australia is one huge exhausted quarry, it will fall rapidly to third-world status.*

Squeers, so when will that be? There is an awful lot of drilling yet
to do, until we know what is beneath the top easy layers, which is
all we have focused on so far. I love these people who worry about
200 years into the future, when we can't even predict 20 years.

Nations that do run out of natural resources are forced to start
developing their mental resources. Japan, Switzerland, Germany
etc, are not doing well because of gold mining.

But whilst there is an easy quid to be made in Australia, few
will bother, so it won't happen on any grand scale for quite some time.

a Chinese follow-on story....

The ever so happy workers in China are revolting...

"The strike by 3,000 workers at the Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co Ltd factory in the city of Tianjin began late on Tuesday in a dispute over pay and benefits.

"It was latest in a wave of labour unrest to hit foreign-run companies in China, highlighting discontent among the millions of Chinese who make many of the world's products but do so for low salaries and in poor conditions."

Ah yes Peter Hume, Yabby and Stern, the aboslute MIRACLE of Capitalism is wasted on these ingrates, isn't it?

Fancy that, striking over poor pay and conditions!

If only they knew how well off they really are, lifted from poverty, and a chance to make-good with their lives.

Tsk tsk.

Yabby... you lot are all over the place.

Who was telling us that it was so cheap to ship goods around the world a few posts back?

How come they build car plants in China, when it's so cheap to ship Beemers from Germany then?

NOT THE WAGES TBC... bollocks, of course it's 'the wages'.

But this is the bit I really relish...

"Nations that do run out of natural resources are forced to start
developing their mental resources"..aha.. there yers go.

No need to ever think with a quarry underfoot is there?

Shades of 'The Lucky Country', as in, the 'ironic (intended) meaning' not the populist one the goons all fall for.

And that comes through in these posts I believe, with the unthinking support for the status quo, and the absolute terror that there might be 'something else' that is not the same, yet not the dreaded Commo scourge either.

*the aboslute MIRACLE of Capitalism is wasted on these ingrates, isn't it?*

Not really, TBC. China has come a long way, things take time.
Thirty years ago they were starving and finally saw the light.
So they converted parts of their economy to a market economy
and look what happened!

Yup, now they are striking, achieving higher wages then they
used to. Who stops those wages going even higher? That
people loving Communist Govt of course. They want even more
$ to roll into the Govt kitty and are nervous of losing their
competitive edge. So the the workers who they are meant to care
about, pay the price. Gotta love those Govt officials!

*How come they build car plants in China, when it's so cheap to ship Beemers from Germany then?*

Because TBC, there are those pesky things around called politicians
and they act in their little patch of self interest, introduce
non tariff barriers or even tariff barriers. Why do you think that
the Japanese produce cars in Europe or the USA? Try shipping products
into the EU. I used to and they play every dirty trick in the book.

So to play it safe, car makers commonly assemble cars in their
destination markets, but actual components are shipped all over the
place. It has nothing to do with the cost of freight.

*No need to ever think with a quarry underfoot is there?*

You are quite correct TBC. Without that quarry, Australia would
for once have to face the real world. Forget the double time,
holiday leave loading, long service leave, termination pay and
all the rest. In the real world that is all dreamland stuff,
but the quarries keep you in the dreamtime. Fair enough.

Not only are the Chinese lifted out of poverty, many are lifted completely away from their families in rural villages and towns and lured to the city. Thousands of children are now being raised by their grandparents in rural areas while their parents live in factory enclaves in the cities - they are lucky to see there children a couple of times a year. The urban population of China is expected to reach 700 million in the next five years, many of these are young parents who have left villages and towns now populated largely by grandparents and children.
I suppose this could be seen as a slight improvement on the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in Britain where children were brought to the cities and towns and put to work alongside (sometimes instead of) their parents.
It would seem that for the foreseeable future, rampant industrial progress is likely have a detrimental effect of the family lives and cultural and kinship ties of many Chinese.

TBC - blame the downfall of Capitalism on Blacks-Hispanics and women getting loans,

No, capitalism has not collapsed, it has merely rolled over one of the “ripples” it encounters from time to time

But this “ripple” was created by a US, socialist minded government (Democrats) empowering regulators into pushing an illegitimate cause, that of affirmative action.

i blame the issue on a too powerful and meddlesome central government, making rules and then leaving the mess for the next administration to wipe up.

Of course, in 1989 the USSR communist economy did collapse and the aftermath is still being suffered by Russians

Re -Oh indeed, the greedy are truly empty vessels who make much noise to hide their emptiness.

Seems to me the inept economics vessel; of collectivist thinking is the noisiest around these parts, the continual whine, akin to a jet engine.

Severin “I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride....

What Severin (very) small mind cannot encompass is the effect of non-trade.

Non-trade, the opposite to trade has a single effect. It impoverishes the poor more than trade.

Having something of value to sell (trade) means people can buy what they need.
Having nothing to sell (trade) means they starve.

It was a right wing politician, who said
"Whether manufactured by black, white, brown or yellow hands, a widget remains a widget - and it will be bought anywhere if the price and quality are right. The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be."

The bit to focus on is

The market is a more powerful force

Capitalist Trade
creates friendship
establishes esteem
encourages cross border investment
produces employment
creates wealth
Trade helps people eat
And Trade reduces the risk of conflict
Trade is an essential element of capitalist theory

Collectivist isolationism and protectionism, as often demanded by union controlled socialists, does the exact opposite.

the point with $110 shorts is simple.... in a free market, no one is required to buy them, they could all go to Best and Less

Poirot “Not only are the Chinese lifted out of poverty, many are lifted completely away from their families in rural villages and towns and lured to the city.”

Yes that has been what has always happened.

It has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with human expectation

In China, there are something like 200 million people drawn to the city, without the proper internal authorisation to be there (typical collectivist / communist authoritarian bureaucracy).

Same thing happened in 18th century England and Europe, except those days the communists did not exist so the notion of government permission and control to move to the city did not exist either.

But before you get pious about the Chinese being lifted away from their families, ask yourself why?

Answer – to escape the crushing poverty of Communist rural China and to establish a better future for themselves and their children oops – child (– only allowed one under communist law).

It is collectivism which has left them in poverty

Them and everyone else in countries where collectivists thought they could mess with market forces

If people are drawn away from their families, to the bright lights of capitalist cities, it is because they believe the possibility of “living” there is better than the “safety” of collectivist poverty which they leave behind. Of course, they are always free to go back.

Re - It would seem that for the foreseeable future, rampant industrial progress is likely have a detrimental effect of the family lives and cultural and kinship ties of many Chinese.

I think that is a choice which individual Chinese people should be free to make for themselves and not something decreed by their government or you.

But at least now, they have a choice, before there was no hope, no light, just grinding poverty, the jacket boot of communism and nothing else...

an crushing existence worthy of any opportunity to escape.....

Just like the East Germans who climbed the Berlin Wall

Stern

>>>... Trade is an essential element of capitalist theory

Collectivist isolationism and protectionism, as often demanded by union controlled socialists, does the exact opposite. <<<

You have not considered a single point that anyone has written here. No one, not a single poster who takes issue with your laissez-faire neo-capitalism has promoted the above ideology.

There is little point in attempting to communicate with someone, who when not ignoring everything that has been presented resorts to personal invective. I have no more argued for "non-trade" than I have given any reason to be considered "small-minded".

In short, you are a waste of time.

Yabby

You stated that TBC has no concept of modern China, AFTER he presented a post totally concerned with the multi-national opportunistic infiltration into China happening right now. While wages remain low, that is. You are not paying attention either.

Both Yabby and Stern have revealed that they are incapable of reason, cannot review their opinions in conjunction with the long-term effects of unsustainable growth.

Planet Earth is finite. And so are you and any family you may have. If you are incapable of planning for the long-term for yourselves, are you not at all concerned for the future of your grandchildren and their children? Yabby, I know this doesn't apply to you, being a genetic dead-end and all, however, Col, I mean Stern has regaled us on many occasions how he has raised his daughters to be successful little neo-capitalists.

Fiddling while Earth burns, I suspect.

That about sums it up, Severin, thanks.

I'm all for debating issues but we all have to be prepared to be open-minded, and that goes for me too of course. If the opposition can table some valid argument that renders what others have been saying doubtful, let's hear it.
Otherwise, I have better things to do than go on with a slinging match--pleasurable as that can be.

I think Peter Hume should follow up and start his own thread on his terms; terms that, let's not forget, we are all properly bpound to abide by.

Mitchell is Squeer's alter ego by the way when at UNI :-)

*You stated that TBC has no concept of modern China*

Er where did I state that, Severin?

*Planet Earth is finite*

Perhaps you have not been paying attention then. The point was
that with 250k people being added a day, we are living
unsustainably, so wether the big crunch comes a few years faster
or slower, hardly matters in the bigger scheme of things.

*Yabby, I know this doesn't apply to you, being a genetic dead-end and all,*

Or you, being a barren old spinster and all.

"If the opposition can table some valid argument that renders what others have been saying doubtful, let's hear it."

No-one in here has yet established what is in issue, namely:
1. that capitalism is unsustainable,
2. that capitalism, rather than the human tendency to want to live and reproduce, involves endless growth,
3. that resources are, for practical purposes, finite,
4. that capitalism is more unethical than any alternative
5. if the problem is the standard of living capitalism provides, in an alternative system, who would decide who lives and who dies, and how? But if it is a given that the same number of people should live, then who is to live at what living standard, and how is that to be decided, and why would that process be more ethical and sustainable than capitalism.

I understand, Squeers, that you regard the first four propositions as being so obvious that they go without saying. In that case, they should be easy to prove. But you haven't done so yet. But if you say you have, indulge us for a sec, and just say succinctly what you say those proofs are.

I would start a new post but it would probably need to be five posts to cover the above issues.

Squeers, farmers diluting milk is fraudulent and therefore illegal under capitalism. Such behaviour is no more an argument against capitalism than it is for or against any non-capitalist alternative. And it is merely laughable to suggest that farmers diluting milk disproves the general proposition that economic calculation serves the function of showing which alternative uses of the factors of production are more economical.

Poirot
“It would be nice to think that humans could be capable of existing quite happily by embracing an economic model somewhere between subsistence and outrageous fortune.”

This assumes that there is something outrageous about the existing capitalist provision for human wants. But no-one in here has established that, or even defined it.

Do we include our own living standard in what is defined as outrageous, obscene, luxurious etc? But if not, why not?

And where do we set the standard? If the acceptable standard is to be set above death and disease, how do we disentangle the products that enable people to avoid death or disease, from mere luxuries? Take soap. 500 years ago soap was a luxury item which only the rich possessed. With the rise of modern capitalism, and its characteristic of mass production for the masses, soap became commonplace. Now no doubt soap has saved lives and prevented disease through increased hygiene. So is it a necessity or a luxury?

But if it’s a necessity, how can the necessary living standard be defined to include products that are the result of modern capitalism?

Take PCs. Should people be allowed to sit at home enjoying themselves playing on PCs? Is it impermissible luxury? What about the fact that the invention of PCs has gone to helping hospitals and medics to prevent death and mitigate disease?

What about cars? Cars can be used to prevent death and mitigate disease, so does that mean they are permissible, or not, as being unnecessary luxuries? Or should they be permitted only on condition that the user can prove beforehand that they would be used to prevent death or mitigate disease?

Peter Hume... do write an article on the topic, so all your posts flow into one seamless narrative that will be read by more than the 6 or so commentators here...allowing for the fact that some readers do not post, of course.

Seems like you get about 1500-2000 words or so in an article.

Should be more than enough to outline all your major points.

Squeers might like to summon his thoughts, already outlined, into a rebuttal, again, in a single narrative.

I suggest PH goes first, since he is concerned about the 'posting' process.

(Okay well I get the message I should write an article or summat lark that, thank you.)

(cont.)
Obviously the answers are arbitrary, and could not be answered without constituting an arbitrary power to decide them on a case-by-case basis. Ethically, who should have this power of life and death? What reason is there to think that the decisions of this arbitrary power could or would produce any better overall decisions, either in practice or in ethics, than constitute the original (supposed) problem; for there is lots of reason to think that it would be characterised by arbitrary power, the initiation of force, legally privilege, corruption, waste, inefficient failures with shortages of essential goods, and overproduction in other areas, and worse outcomes for the poor and disadvantaged.

To say this, is just to say in other words, that the alternative system would be incapable of economic calculation. Human beings act on *all* their values, including ethical values, when they take action to prioritise the use of scarce resources. And thus self-ownership, private property and voluntary transactions – capitalism - is not only more sustainable than non-capitalist alternative, but more ethical as well.

Severin
“your precious free-trade is propped up by tax-payers”

If it’s propped up by tax-payers, it’s not free trade, and I’ m no more in favour of it than you are. It is mere confusion to think that, just because something is done in China, it’s “communist”, and just because it’s done in America, it’s “capitalist”.

The problem with all the critiques of capitalism in this thread is that they do not distinguish problems arising from the private ownership of the means of production, from problems arising from the public ownership of the means of production. They just lump anything they don’t like under the heading of “capitalism”, even if it is phenomenon that is caused by government policies. And for problems that are correctly identified as the result of capitalism, they don't say how any alternative is going to produce a better result, *when its downside as well as its upside* is considered.

PH

We agree on something then.

However, you then go on to talk of "the alternative" - what exactly are you referring to? The message I get from you and Yabby and his ilk, is that "the alternative" is communism. It isn't. It is true competition - which is stifled by monopolies, it is paying a liveable income to people at the coalface producing the goods. It is placing real value back into money. There is nothing to back currency any more. Hence we teeter on the brink of another GFC.

I have been arguing for a combination of private public ownership, clearly defined regulations, limits to the grasp and scope of multi-nationals and a fairer distribution of wealth than we have had since the 80's. I don't want a return to the 60's, however the percentage between the lowest paid compared to the highest has widened beyond anything that is remotely fair and equitable for the work produced.

Even if we were not facing peak natural resources and high level pollution, we still need to address the fact the unlimited growth cannot be sustained by a finite system and that includes the people at the bottom of the pecking order - they will not tolerate subsistence only level wages in the long term.

We need to make changes, deregulation has not worked. We have societal laws to ensure that people who abuse others and commit what is generally regarded as crime are held accountable and duly punished. Its not perfect but better than nothing at all. We require a business code to which all companies need to be held accountable. What we have at present is piss-weak - Wall Street is still doing very well, thanks for the bail-out. Assuming that all business leaders will act in the best interest of the majority of their workers is as demonstrably false an assumption as is assuming that big business will act responsibility within the environment from which they draw all their resources.

Yes, I'd also like to read an article by Peter Hume.

Severin -In short, you are a waste of time.

Just because you have been unable to answer once where collectivism has been anything other than a yoke upon the people who suffer it and ahs produced nothing other than at best a complete waste to at worst, mass murder;

Is no justification for you to get “snippy”

As you said “you have not argued for protectionism or non-trade,

But you have criticised the free-trade benefits of capitalism

Regarding “small-minded” that is because, I repeat, you have made no argument at all, all you have done is bleat like a sheep and whine like a jet engine.

At least, under a libertarian capitalist system, I am free to be a waste of time and you are free to bleat and whine..

Under a collectivist system the state believes it owns your and my body and organs, like a slave... hence the way China executes its so called criminals and harvests their corneas and organs for transplant.

I will only be a waste when you can tell me when and where “collectivism” by any of its non-de-plumes, has not been hallmarked by mass murder or been a complete waste itself.

Come on, put your brain to work instead of your spiteful small mindedness.

You challenged Peter Hume about the “alternative”

Your “alternative”... I bet it requires collective ownership of productive resources presently owned and managed by private individuals and corporations

If not, then what are you promoting?

I made a list of failed “alternatives to capitalism” – you have neither acknowledged or challenged that list.

Your churlishness is getting tiresome but fear not, my resolve to prevail is sustained by my belief in the superiority of libertarian capitalist values.

As a capitalist I do not need anything from you, your effort or your tax contributions, to personally flourish -

but every collectivist demands absolute control of what is owned by someone else to make their evil a fact, regardless that their ideas have repeatedly failed people in the past.

Stern - How about this line of reasoning...

Those at the apex of libertarian capitalism who drive the markets caused the GFC with their insatiable appetite for derivatives manufactured from sub-prime mortgages...but tell me if you think I've got it wrong.

Dear Peter Hume,
Only time for a bit of a rave, so hear's your chance to blow me out of the water.

1) If you care to read through my early posts above I do answer this question. One scenario by which Capitalism is economically unsustainable is the tendency of capital creation to always radiate outwards and utilise cheaper labour. The only way to prevent this "growth" is to have a vibrant manufacturing base at home and to coerce minimum labour costs, accomplished via Marx's concept of a "standing army". This coercion, however, would ultimately trigger revolution. This scenario was headed off via the concepts of welfare and consumerism; the first ostensibly guaranteed minimum standards and the second conceived quality of life as vested in material goods. With this double bounty the working classes have been kept in harness long enough for the whole population to be renewed, now oblivious that quality of life could mean anything other than material gratification. But though this new dispensation keeps money in circulation (still finding its way into entrepreneur's pockets), the new Keynesian paradigm is problematic in that consumers are endlessly ambitious and expensive.
Cont..

...Cont.
Though this is a driver of commodity production, and wealth, the costs of welfare means the only way to maintain a profit is to move offshore and continue to screw the means of production (Exploitation of China's and India's vast working classes have of course facilitated an unprecedented consumer binge in wealthy countries and enormous corporate profits, such that we are in the midst of a cultural shift we could call "blase consumerism", an affliction that renders emerging generations devoid of what amount to survival or "hunter-gather" skills and general hardiness. I've mentioned elsewhere that some children throw away the pointy end of a cornetto because it contains cheap chocolate (unthinkable when I was a kid). We will of course need those survival skills (and the ability to eat liver) when things turn sour: resources get thin or too dear to extract; manufacturing is all offshore but getting more expensive in any case as labour costs rise with the general expansion; corporations become nationionless monopolies and commodities regress into cruder, cheaper forms to meet the new demand (there's money to be made from global destitution!). Manufacturing offshore cannot possibly stay viable as labour cost go up; intellectual property rights and know-how are eroded and infringed; raw materials at home are depleted or prices are driven down due to corruption, competition, cost of extraction or outmoded by innovation, deliberate "starving" policies (aggressive capitalism) etc.
As you well know, PH, there's no "proof" of anything. A great deal more could be added to this litany of logical repercussions, that's why Marx needed over 3,000 pages. Sorry , but I don't have time for that, and you will cleave to your Panglossian beliefs in any case, that all's for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Welcome back, Col Rouge.

How's married life working out for you? Obviously no road to Damascus, but one would've hoped you'd become a little more compassionate.

Your last post could only have be written by Col Rouge in full fury at being called out on your inability to consider that there is more to life than the dollar.

No doubt we'll cross swords again. My time is valuable and you m'dear remain the same.

Poirot - Those at the apex of libertarian capitalism who drive the markets caused the GFC with their insatiable appetite for derivatives manufactured from sub-prime mortgages...but tell me if you think I've got it wrong.

If that is your take on it

On the other hand i would say the following

Buyer beware

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is

Point of interest

I previously raised the point that there were poor risk mortgagees, demanded by Democrats under their support ofr affirmative action, to use TBC phrase “Blacks-Hispanics and women” getting loans. These were the “sub-prime” which your use of the term “sub-prime” refers

The point with sub-prime is

They are a bigger risk

The pay higher rates of interest

They walked away from their financial liabilities and obligations, under the jingle-mail rules

The folk who owned these mortgage derivatives, if they did not understand what a “sub-prime” was should not have bought them in the first palce

I would further note banking institutions like Lehman brothers, a key [promoter of derivatives was one of the first casualties of the derivatives collapse

Similarly, Merrrill Lynch also went to the wind.

On another note, the business world has always been vulnerable to get-rich-quick schemers. Fact of life, happens in communist countries too, not just capitalist systems

I would note Enron was a case in point

I would also note it was the wicked capitalist George Bush who was in the Ovsal office when the sub-prime collapse, the product of Clintons stupidity, hit the fan but it was GWB who signed into statute the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation.

The role of auditor is an important one. It is the auditor who is supposed to represent the interests of share holders and creditors and check the operaton of the executive.

Arthur Andersens was the audit firm, ruined beyond recovery, by their failure of obligations with Enron

Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Andersens, those who disobey the rules of financial good-governance lose everything.

When the same happened in collectivist government, there is just another coverup

Severin
“talk of "the alternative" - what exactly are you referring to?”

I’m not talking of an alternative – Squeers and you are, but we’ve having trouble getting the details out of you.

Ultimately there are only two possibilities: private ownership of the means of production, or something else.

However full public ownership of the means of production has been demonstrated to be non-viable both in theory – by the economic calculation argument – and in practice – by the 100 million deaths under communism and socialism in the 20th century.

Thus because of the failure of full socialism, people’s hopes turn to *partial* public ownership and control. The idea is that this will “balance” the alleged defects of purely private ownership. This is the so-called “mixed economy” and “public/private partnership” model that is standard in all western democracies.

There are two main problems with this model. Firstly, the defining characteristic of fascism *is* public/private partnership. The German model of socialism - national socialism – was that legal title is left in the hands of private owners; and the state just issues rules conditioning any and every aspect of production that it feels like. That’s the system we’ve got now! The *name* doesn’t change these economic fundamentals.

Secondly, this public-direction-and-control-of-private-ownership model is what is currently displaying all the problems that people blame on “capitalism”.

Some people say the problem is “unregulated capitalism”, “unfettered”, “unbridled” “extreme” capitalism and so on.

But let’s just take a look at some of the government departments ruling over us now, which are inconsistent with the basic institutions of capitalism of individual freedom, minimum coercion, minimal taxation, sound money, private property, consensual transactions and free markets: www.australia.gov.au

And that’s only one of three layers!

I challenge anyone to even identify the names of all the departments, policies, laws and programs whose sole purpose is to override the operations of capitalism and its fundamental institutions.

You couldn’t do it! By the time you had made a comprehensive list they would have added to it!

Which are we closer to now: the libertarian ideal of a society based on “unfettered capitalism” – or government “balancing” private ownership with public direction and control, and using “public/private partnerships” for socialist purposes?

Compare with Marx’s ten commandments in the Communist Manifesto: http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html

In fact the state now controls and directs private production in far more ways than Marx even imagined. The state takes 40 percent of GDP and spends *all* of it on forcing prices to something other than they would be in a free market. Handouts to multinational corporations; permanent inflation; the Federal Reserve or RBA; the GFC; the housing bubble; cosy cartels of big corporations licensed by government and protected from competition by a thousand regulations; institutionalised unemployment; pink batts fiascos; unsustainable benefit schemes; permanent war in third world countries; and endless schemes for the expansion of government control of everything…
these are all the outcomes of the idea of governments supervising and balancing capitalism.

The problem is that the critics of capitalism keep blaming capitalism for the problems appearing under their own preferred solution.

Yet the libertarian argument against such interventions is precisely that they will produce the kinds of outcomes with which the critics of capitalism are so unhappy.

The only alternative to more freedom, is to keep approaching even closer to full-blown socialism by way of more government taxing, spending, debt, inflation, privileges for corporations, warring and arbitrary political control of everything.

Since full socialism is impossible, all alternatives to economic and social freedom eventually morph *and must morph* into some form or other of fascism, because there’s *nothing else they can be* if they are not to be full socialism on the one hand, or capitalism on the other.

But if they can, what is it that alternative?

Peter Hume... the Capitalism you long for does not exist, has never existed, and will never exist.

Nobody, apart from you and Stern, and maybe Yabby, want a world as you describe, with absolutely no rules, regulations or boundaries.

And neither would you, if it were to descend on us.

In fact, no 'capitalist' today could survive without all the handouts they get.

They would all fail, because they'd have no idea how to operate.

The other issue, which you would not want to unleash, I suspect, is that we would have to have absolute freedom of travel, everywhere, with no national boundaries at all.

And that would not be welcomed by most people, with the way we have been forced into believing in nationalism and national sovereignty.

Are you about to explode, and prepared to, those myths?

Peter Hume:
<Ultimately there are only two possibilities: private ownership of the means of production, or something else.

However full public ownership of the means of production has been demonstrated to be non-viable both in theory – by the economic calculation argument – and in practice – by the 100 million deaths under communism and socialism in the 20th century.>

Gawd, Peter Hume,
you're like an intelligent version of Stern!
Can I enquire into the logic behind your bipolar ultimatum above? The next bit of tripe is even worse; public ownership was tried and failed so that's that; let's stick with the monumental failure that is capitalism then?

Thanks TBC for the breath of sanity!

Peter Hume,
I'll make you a challenge,
you write an article on your defence of the current system (or whatever you want to call it), and I'll write one in defence of Marx. Not Marxism, mind you, or Stalinism or Maoism et al, but Marx's philosophy. We can work out time frames, terms etc too if you like.
What Ho?

Yoicks tallyho Squeers... a spiffing idea, wot?

I'm not sure though, that the Blue Team can disengage 'Marx' from their view of Gulagism and understand that 'being a Marxist' is not the same as 'supporting Stalinism'.

I think that might be the first (and quite significant) hurdle to overcome.

Pip pip - I'd like to see that too! Marx is generally poorly understood these days - particularly by his neoliberal detractors.

*and I'll write one in defence of Marx.*

Perhaps Squeers, you might like to elaborate on what Marx would
say, when he realised that Australian workers own 1.3 trillion$
worth of super, which is about the same as the value of the
ASX. In other words, workers largely own the means of production
in Australia.

Right ho - in for a penny, in for a pound...

Yabby - interesting sleight of hand.

Perhaps Marx would be equally interested in the fact that on the eve of the GFC the unregulated derivatives market had contracts valued at US$650 trillion... 40 times the size of annual GDP in the U.S... A piffling amount really, but there you go.

"Squeers, you might like to elaborate on what Marx would
say, when he realised that Australian workers own 1.3 trillion$
worth of super, which is about the same as the value of the
ASX. In other words, workers largely own the means of production
in Australia."

I suspect Marx would cry big tears as he explained to 'the wurkers' that they were being ripped-off yet again as their hard earned monies were taken off them, invested in things they had no say in, and controlled by the very people who despise them, and would do them down, while being paid far more than they are worth for 'looking after' the cash-stash.

Super was merely the means to privatise pensions, and relieve the wealthy of taxes for their profits squeezed from the workers via basement style wages.

Except for the politicians, the 'returns' are not there when the money is squandered, as it frequently is.

And there are whole swathes of Australians who have no super, or too little to be worth a cracker, and who will probably never have any.

It is yet another pyramid scheme, going well sometimes, badly other times but all as secure only until the next GFC style hash, just around the corner.

Rudd's great 'gift' of another 3% would be paid for out of wage offsets, again, or directly from wages by forced saving.

Considering all the funds invest in all the same firms, it would have been a lot cheaper to simply have a branch of the ATO do it all.

Like 'health' funds that make you sick trying to work out if they are worth anything... the illusion of 'competition', bringing nothing but untold costs, and fat wages to the drivers of the scams...all could be avoided with a properly organised health system for all, and those, like Stern and Hume who fear the masses, could pay out of their own unsubsidised pockets.

TBC, what cannot be denied, is that Australian workers own 1.3
trillion$ worth of assets, or basically Australia's means of
production.

If the democractically elected politicians, voted for by the
workers, don't comply with what most of those workers are
happy with, I suggest that they would not be in office.

In other words, workers/electors get the politicians that
they deserve.

Clearly the rest of Australia's workers are quite content
to know that they own a huge chunk of Australia's banks,
Australia's miners, Woolies, Coles and the rest.

Clearly the majority of Australia's workers don't agree with
you, or it would be an election issue. Its not.

Poirot, to understand derivatives, most of them are
little but insurance contracts. Your house might be
insured for half a million, add up the total value of
houses that your insurer insures for, it is huge.
But they know that not all houses will be destroyed
to have no value. Derivatives are much the same. If
I hedge my wheat crop, which many farmers or traders
do, it might be a currency hedge or a price hedge.
A million tonnes worth of wheat would so be worth
300 million $, but the movement would only be worth
a few % of that. So the 650 trillion is kind of
meaningless, but sounds impressive.

When are you right wing libertarians going to pull your heads out of your fundamental orifices and look around? It isn't Capitalism that's the problem; capitalism has worked well in many areas.
It's post capitalism that you should be worried about.
You have placed all your faith in a system which relies wholly, solely and completely on competition. And it works. Competition is and has been a wonderful motivator.
But what happens when the competition has been settled? What about when the race has been won?
What is the difference between the dreaded world government, and the world corporation?
For several decades, it hasn't been governments (at least, not directly) that have continually forced small farmers off the land; it has been 'free market pressure'. Just follow the trend. Within 50 to 100 years at the current rate, all farm land in Australia will be owned not by the government, but by at most 2 corporations. The concept of the family farm, of handing on to your children land in a better state than when you found it, will be history.
One of the very rare things the Col Rouge of old and I agreed on, was the irresponsibility of the Hawke/Keating government allowing the mergers of Woolworths/Safeway, and Coles/Myers . Will the libertarians now contend that a merger between Woollies and Coles could/would never happen, in the absence of government regulation? Or that such a conglomerate wouldn't go on to buy or force out the IGA franchises?
And if this did occur, and Woolworths did attain a total monopoly, would you still call it capitalism?
The totalitarian world you are so afraid of is happening right under your noses, and you can't or won't see it; because it isn't being done by socialist governments.

Yabby, you have vacillated, prevaricated and obfuscated, but you have yet to tell us which year Apple achieved anything like the 90% market share that Microsoft has enjoyed for many years.
Bill Gates, Monopoly buster. Good one, Yabby.
Col Stern, love your quote:
Just like one famous politician said "The larger the slice taken by government, the smaller the cake available for everyone."
Which famous politician, Col Stern? It looks more like you're misquoting me:
“in a finite world, with finite resources, the larger the slice one person (eg Gates) takes, the less there is for everyone else”.
Surely it shouldn't take much more intellect than an average ten year old has to see that Stern's quote doesn't make sense. Governments take a 'slice' in taxes to put back into the community; the size of the cake is unaffected. In fact, it could be argued that when governments put money into infrastructure or immigration, the result is an increase in the size of the cake. As usual, Col Stern is only looking at his slice of the cake.
About the only way to decrease the total size of the cake is to take money out; the Marcos regime fairly leaps to mind here. By taking billions out of the Philippines and placing it into Swiss and American banks, the Philipino 'cake' was made considerably smaller.
But this wasn't 'government'; this was a corrupt individual. Clearly, even being part of government isn't essential; to decrease the size of a nation's cake, you only have to be rich, and have overseas accounts.
And as for 'strawman' arguments, it would be hard to imagine a better example. I point out that there is a slight disparity in wealth between the richest and poorest, where it would take -literally- fifty four million, seven hundred and ninety four thousand, five hundred and twenty one years for the average or median human to make as much as the the richest human, the best you can come back with is “well, you can sell your computer”.
Yeah, that'll fix it.

“TBC, what cannot be denied, is that Australian workers own 1.3
trillion$ worth of assets, or basically Australia's means of
production.”
Yes it can. Aussie workers don't 'own' (have total control over) those assets until they reach retirement age. With governments all round the world going broke, and super funds being the largest cash pool, how long before they put one and one together?

From the recent drooling sprays by those of the left side of this debate I still have a couple of questions

Show me where my statement

Collectivism, by any name has only ever produced at best a waste and at worse, mass murder

Is wrong

Show me where capitalism has produced worse outcomes than collectivism

Grim - “in a finite world, with finite resources, the larger the slice one person (eg Gates) takes, the less there is for everyone else”.

Not really because

People freely purchased Microsoft products, they were not forced to and Microsoft does not exist as an absolute monopoly, supplying an essential.

What Bill Gates has is the residue of the value which he delivered to other people and which they freely bought

The same cannot be said for government taxation

In terms of national economies, even what Warren Buffet and Bill Gates own combined, is still a crumb of the total cake, whereas

In the 10 years of Blair/Brown socialism in UK the government take increased from 37% to 53% of GDP and is seen as part of the UK problem– basically all incentive to take risks and innovate have been taxed out of existence hence stagnation.

Australia was about 31.6% and reducing under liberals but about to increase through the fiddling by the insidious socialist.

Bill Gates is a self made man
Warren Buffet is a self made man,

they did not inherit their wealth

Of the millionaires in Australia 1/3 are first generation immigrants, coming here and building their wealth from nothing

Gates and Buffet and others offer a beacon of example for new generations to aspire to.

Taxing them out of existence leaves just nothing, except darkness

But that is all you ever get with collectivist policies

The darkness and misery of gulags, ignorance and poverty.

Squeers says he will defend “Marx's philosophy.”

But no one can separate the philosophy from the facts,

I gave him a list of the results of “Marxist Philosophy”... millions of dead bodies and misery... and he avoids challenging me on it

What more needs to be said?

Yabby... super is not on the horizon for most workers, it is simply stolen from their wages, without their consent, and goes, in a hit and miss manner, into a superfund that they have absolutely no control over.

If it's an industry fund it does marginally better than a private enterprise one, due to lower fees and wages for the bludgers that run them all.

Of course, far too many times we find that employers are not paying the super contributions when they should be, or at all in some cases...another 'theft' perpetrated on the owners of that money.

The system is poorly desigend, to rip workers off and benefit the managers and governments.

How many hundreds of millions sit unclaimed?

And how much of this stash goes into productive work?

Not much. Buying shares in existing companies produces nothing at all, unless you buy cheap-sell dear, which is merely gambling, with all attendant risks associated with the roulette wheel or one-armed bandit.

And anyway, what are the nett returns of this vast lump of monies?

Less than the current mortgage costs of most people, on average.

How does that work?

With all those 'clever people' investing for all they are worth they still cannot get a real return, on average, on the money for someone who has a mortgage as well as super, why so?

Grim...sadly, I really don't think Australian workers will ever put one-and-one together, with super or anything else for that matter.

I wonder how much 'education' Belly and ilk give his members on super?

It is a 'secret' business, an arcane mystery, a priestly activity, and as with all priestly activities, it carries a 'do not disturb' notice across it, and workers are happy not to look, ask, question ever, about anything.

Stern,

You said - "I gave him a list of the results of "Marxist" philosophy...millions of dead bodies and misery..."

Quote - Stern (on the future delights of post-capitalism):
"And of course, supply and demand, will declare that if world population continues to grow, regardless of what collectivists predict, eventually a lot of people will not be able to earn enough to feed themselves, and they will die off."

On the one hand (in the blue corner) you tell us that it is not the capitalist philosophy that is the problem, it's the way that humans implement it, (being the greedy, esteem seeking souls that they are). And on the other hand you won't give the same treatment to Marxist philosophy by separating it from past practice

Col Stern

>> Collectivism, by any name has only ever produced at best a waste and at worse, mass murder <<

As far as I know my local organic food collective have not murdered anyone except for the occasional aphid.

For the last effing time we are not promoting last century soviet gulag style communism. You are very slow on the uptake. Perhaps a reread of Grim's, TBC's previous posts is on order.

No one has stated that competition is bad - we have argued the reverse that true competition is being strangled out of existence by global corporates.

As Grim said so succinctly:

>>> What is the difference between the dreaded world government, and the world corporation?
For several decades, it hasn't been governments (at least, not directly) that have continually forced small farmers off the land; it has been 'free market pressure'. Just follow the trend. Within 50 to 100 years at the current rate, all farm land in Australia will be owned not by the government, but by at most 2 corporations. The concept of the family farm, of handing on to your children land in a better state than when you found it, will be history. <<<

We don't have true capitalism any more - if we ever really did.

Cont'd

Cont'd

What we have is the mother of all ponzi schemes, where anyone starting from the bottom now is highly unlikely to become a "self-made man" or woman. And I didn't say impossible just a whole lot less likely.

The fact, Col Stern, is you are unable to adjust your focus into the situation business find itself in the 21st Century as well as your continuous snide offsides to people, means you continue to be a waste of time to debate with. Just thoroughly unpleasant. You repeat yourself over and over.

At Peter Hume for all his long windedness can put an intelligent argument together, even though he has a similar myopic view of contemporary global corporatisation. He, like you is not seeing the forest for the trees.

There is no way you can describe the domination of Woolworths or Coles (for just one example) as healthy capitalism.

Instead of government collectives we have something far more dangerous, with no regulations or controls: corporate collectives. Corporations like Unilever, Exxon have swallowed many an independent enterprise. They set the prices, the wages and the quality of produce. They are why we are having so much difficulty in implementing radically new technologies such as alternative, clean energy. They are why we have mass-produced food with the resultant decline in standards.

Consider:

"Global Reach

*

Fifty-one of the world's top 100 economies are corporations.
*

Royal Dutch Shell's revenues are greater than Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product. Using this measurement, WalMart is bigger than Indonesia. General Motors is roughly the same size as Ireland, New Zealand and Hungary combined.
*

There are 63,000 transnational corporations worldwide, with 690,000 foreign affiliates.
*

Three quarters of all transnational corporations are based in North America, Western Europe and Japan.
*

Ninety-nine of the 100 largest transnational corporations are from the industrialized countries.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=37

Get of your proverbial and do some homework.

Squeers
“...tendency of capital creation to always radiate outwards and utilise cheaper labour.”

This does not prove capitalism is unsustainable, because conditions are not static. The rest that you say depends on this.

The reason you think nothing can be proved is because you keep using an illogical method which consists of concluding its own premises; even after the error has been pointed out.

Marx considered himself to be first and foremost an economist, and his theory to be a theory of economics. Yet it was the economics departments that abandoned Marx’s theory first. Its influence lingered on in departments in the humanities in which they neither knew nor cared about their own economic illiteracy.

To talk of Marxian ‘philosophy’ in the absence of his economic theory is meaningless, and would have been meaningless most of all to Marx.

Poirot
Economic phenomena are all interrelated, not in separate boxes. A derivative is, by definition, the wrong place to look for the origin of something. The function of a derivative is to hedge risk in the underlying contract. Government grants a licence to print money to its pet favourite bankers in exchange for a share of the loot. The bubble caused by this violation of property rights is the boom, which must eventually collapse in the GFC we are now witnessing. The derivatives bubble is part of people's attempt to hedge against the risk which cannot be understood in isolation from the government monopoly abuse of the money supply. No amount of regulating it will fix the problem, which is caused by regulation in the first place.

TBC
Your method consists of confusing government policies that violate property rights with “capitalism”. This is to confuse the category “A” with the category “not A” and render your thoughts on this topic a jumble of fallacies.

But perhaps you can answer this: if capitalism is unsustainable, then how is adding more government taxes, inflation, spending and bureaucracies going to make it more sustainable?

For the boneheads out there, here is the forward to Tim Jackson's report TBC alluded to earlier:

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours
is the myth of economic growth. For the last five
decades the pursuit of growth has been the single
most important policy goal across the world. The
global economy is almost five times the size it was
half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the
same rate the economy will be 80 times that size
by the year 2100.
This extraordinary ramping up of global economic
activity has no historical precedent. It’s totally at
odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite
resource base and the fragile ecology on which
we depend for survival. And it has already been
accompanied by the degradation of an estimated
60% of the world’s ecosystems.
For the most part, we avoid the stark reality
of these numbers. The default assumption is that
– financial crises aside – growth will continue
indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries, where
a better quality of life is undeniably needed, but
even for the richest nations where the cornucopia
of material wealth adds little to happiness and
is beginning to threaten the foundations of our
wellbeing.
The reasons for this collective blindness are easy
enough to find. The modern economy is structurally
reliant on economic growth for its stability. When
growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians
panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose
their jobs and sometimes their homes. A spiral of
recession looms. Questioning growth is deemed to
be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries.
But question it we must. The myth of growth
has failed us. It has failed the two billion people
who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed
the fragile ecological systems on which we depend
for survival. It has failed, spectacularly, in its own
terms, to provide economic stability and secure
people’s livelihoods.
Today we find ourselves faced with the imminent
end of the era of cheap oil,
cont..

..cont.

the prospect (beyond the
recent bubble) of steadily rising commodity prices,
the degradation of forests, lakes and soils, conflicts
over land use, water quality, fishing rights and the
momentous challenge of stabilising concentrations
of carbon in the global atmosphere. And we face
these tasks with an economy that is fundamentally
broken, in desperate need of renewal.
In these circumstances, a return to business
as usual is not an option. Prosperity for the few
founded on ecological destruction and persistent
social injustice is no foundation for a civilised society.
Economic recovery is vital. Protecting people’s jobs –
and creating new ones – is absolutely essential. But
we also stand in urgent need of a renewed sense
of shared prosperity. A commitment to fairness and
flourishing in a finite world.
Delivering these goals may seem an unfamiliar
or even incongruous task to policy in the modern
age. The role of government has been framed so
narrowly by material aims, and hollowed out by a
misguided vision of unbounded consumer freedoms.
The concept of governance itself stands in urgent
need of renewal.
But the current economic crisis presents us with
a unique opportunity to invest in change. To sweep
away the short-term thinking that has plagued
society for decades. To replace it with considered
policy capable of addressing the enormous challenge
of delivering a lasting prosperity.
For at the end of the day, prosperity goes beyond
material pleasures. It transcends material concerns.
It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health
and happiness of our families. It is present in the
strength of our relationships and our trust in the
community. It is evidenced by our satisfaction at
work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose.
It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the
life of society.
Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish
as human beings – within the ecological limits of
a finite planet. The challenge for our society is to
create the conditions under which this is possible. It
is the most urgent task of our times.

The critics of capitalism never rebut the reasonable inference that abolishing economic calculation tends to spread social and moral chaos all through the society it affects; and never show how the problems they are concerned about are necessarily the result of capitalism rather than of government.

We already know that it’s capitalism, not government, that is feeding the world’s population, because if you take away capitalism, you get mass starvation. That's “scientific” socialism's idea of an experiment.

Those who say capitalism is unsustainable, answer the question: what makes you think *increasing* the amount of government is going to make capitalism more sustainable?

And how is substituting a system based on the initiation of force and threats going to be be an ethical improvement on a system in which initiating force and threats are illegal?

But if any alternative to capitalism is not go to be based on initiating force and threats, then *how* is it going to work?

All alternatives to capitalism are just a throw-back to the belief that wealth comes from plunder and confiscation of other people’s labour. They are slave philosophies parading as piety.

It is term of description, rather than of abuse, to accuse the criminal stupidity of threatening millions of peoples lives, as the anti-capitalist Malthusian environmentalists are doing now, with policies intended to reduce private ownership of the means of production, when it has already been demonstrated, and never refuted, that any alternative involves increasing the abolition of economic calculation.

Peter Hume,

RE: Derivatives - "No amount of regulating it will fix the problem, which is caused by regulation in the first place."

So, your saying that it was the government's fault.

Robert Manne from La Trobe University wrote:

"In 1999 the derivatives industry turned its gaze to the booming US housing industry market and especially to the the market in sub-prime mortgages. Bundles of these hopeless mortgages were turned into derivatives products known as collateralised debt obligations, given AAA ratings and then insured against their failure through equally arcane derivatives known as credit default swaps."

Sounds like the market gurus knew what they were doing - huge profits were made from selling these "products". Even Greenspan admitted in the end that there should have been more regulation.

Severin “As far as I know my local organic food collective have not murdered anyone except for the occasional aphid.”

Yes but your local organic good collective does not hold sway over those of us who
choose to buy from Coles and Woolworth’s
choose not to live “minimalist” lifestyles,
choose not to recycle old plaid shirts into underpants and dog drying towels (actually those of us who have never owned a plaid shirt and are prepared to pay for silk undershorts).

“Collectives” work when every member is on first name terms and friendly with every other member.
They fail when people do not know every other member, such as the population of a small town, let alone a national population.

Lets consider the Israeli Kibbutz system....

They are dying off

Simple reason

The lifestyle they offer, whilst it appealed to idealists, drawn together by the horrors of Nazi death camps and actually worked on a small scale (but a scale larger than your little coop) but they did not appeal to the generation of children born into them

Parents found there was also a massive natural bond with their children which worked against the collectivist philosophy of sharing child rearing among the entire membership the kibbutz.

So your example fails. For the following reason

It conflicts with human nature (ie it requires people to turn their back on their individuality)

And, just as boys can play for hours with train sets,
we will all wait a long time to see a rail network which is economically viable on a stand-alone basis (ie without government subsidy).

Collectives are the play things of the idealistic and simple minded,
they are not a thing which has ever worked on a large scale or where diverse individuals can make a free choice

Capitalism allows everyone to make their own free choice

And that “freedom” is the difference between living and merely existing,

Re “We don't have true capitalism any more”

No, because governments are too big and powerful....

And it is always the right of centre politicians who try to make government smaller.

Squeers

"To replace it with considered
policy capable of addressing the enormous challenge
of delivering a lasting prosperity."

The deep structure of his argument is this: *Because* problem, *therefore* government is the solution.

But he, like you, doesn't say *how* increasing the number of police, and rules, and bureaucracies, and magistrates, and government spending, and arbitrary power, is going to fix the problem. He, like you, does not grasp the essential nature of the problem: *if* you abolish economic calculation in a given field *what* are you going to replace it with?

Trying answering the question, and no appeals to absent authority, no assuming what is in issue, no personal argumentation, no misrepresentations.

There's six billion people having babies, growing crops and trucking stuff around. *How* are you going to supply them with food if you try to centrally plan society? But if you're not going to centrally plan production, and you're not going to allow private ownership of the means of production because it's not sustainable, then *how* is policy going to solve the problem?

And that is quite apart from the fact that neither you nor Jackson has established what you are contending for, namely, that capitalism is unsustainable. You just keep going round and round in circles of assuming what is in issue, and conclude with irrational, superstitious worship of government power.

If nothing can be proved, what makes you so sure you're right, that youv'e got a right to forcibly override others freedoms and put millions at risk of starvation?

ANSWER THE QUESTIONS!

"with policies intended to reduce private ownership of the means of production"... who has argued that here?

Not Squeers, nor others.

There seems to be a difficulty here with the term 'Capitalism'.

You, PH, long for something that never existed, and never will, while others seem to be trying to deal with what does exist.

Unless I am reading you wrong, you do not seem to accept that there was trade long before the term 'capitalism' came to the fore.

And surely you do not argue that buying a share in Exxon is 'private ownership of the means of production'?

I am pretty sure that would be a re-interpretation of that phrase.

Humans seem to have an easy tendency to bully each other, in myriad ways.

Observe children in the school yard.... listen to the Carr-Greg's of the world of bullying, who insist on rules and boundaries being put in place by adults for their children.

Then observe the bullying of the child as it grows up, into adulthood, into the workplace, into banking and finance, as much as the building site and factory line.

Our human response is to create systems, rules, boundaries to try to curb excesses.

The PH world of pure capitalism sounds exactly like the post communist, post socialist, 'new' world of 'anarchy', where humans live by instinct, with no need of rules, and move into a Utopian ideal... Lenin wrote about it.

It is highly unlikely that humans will attain that highly desirable state of 'anarchy', a world without rules..apart from Runner and Algoreisrich, of course, and the Islamist bomber, all of whom will be in their version of Heaven.

The brand of 'Capitalism' you aspire to PH is about as likely as Runner's Heaven, or Lenin's 'anarchy'.

Start dealing with the humdrum world of depletion that Squeers raised all those posts ago.

Mitchell

Thank you.

I am sure that the supporters of global corporations will only get as far as

"Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours
is the myth of economic growth."

before they experience a psychological meltdown at the thought their dearest beliefs are erroneous.

Not one has addressed the issue of how continuous growth and expansion can be maintained indefinitely. Instead we are subjected to a boatload of anachronistic thinking and deliberate obfuscation.

Therefore, instead of the personal slurs I ask Peter Hume (as the most literate of the G.C's - Global Capitalists) to detail how we can continue business as usual in a finite world.

Stern... how quaint:

"And, just as boys can play for hours with train sets,
we will all wait a long time to see a rail network which is economically viable on a stand-alone basis (ie without government subsidy).

"Collectives are the play things of the idealistic and simple minded,
they are not a thing which has ever worked on a large scale or where diverse individuals can make a free choice".

Do tell me where to find a national road system, or canal system, or airline system that pays its way without public subsidies, I am sure we are all ears/eyes.

As for collectives being for the 'simple minded' I do wonder how 'simple minded' it is to be longing for the world of no rules whatsoever, as you and PH seem to.

Literally, that would be a very simple world. But without some collectivist action, nothing would get done.

How would you move a Kenworth of goods from Cairns to Perth if you had to lay your own road all the way?

Or rid yourself of rubbish if you had to dig your own tip/recycle plant?

Come, come, the pair of you... try dealing with the reality of living in a community.

I am sure even small coops have their own politics that ensure they are as complex as any other social organisation, big or small. they are not, in my experience, simple minded organisms.

"Capitalism allows everyone to make their own free choice"... now that sounds very much like a reference to original sin, another failed notion

*you have yet to tell us which year Apple achieved anything like the 90% market share that Microsoft has enjoyed for many years*

Ok Grim, I will go through it once again for you, with even more
detail.

In the 70s/80s, Apple was a far larger company then Microsoft ever
was. By 1984 had already released the Apple Mac, with its GUI
and mouse, which was a revolution in PCs that we still use today.
It took Gates 10 years to catch up. Apple could have become the
global standard for PCs, they chose not to, but prefered screwing
consumers with high prices, which most consumers refused.

Gates was asked by IBM, then the dominant computer manufacturer,
to come up with an operating system for their new PCs. He
leased then bought the rights to 86-DOS for 75k$, turned 86-DOS
into MS-DOS, charged IBM a one time fee of 50K$ for the rights to
use MS-DOS, then sold MS-DOS to anyone else wanting to make
computers, who was using the Intel 8086 chips.

Gates was basically a minnow selling an operating system which
was crappy, as anyone who has used it knows. But it was about
all that was available, better then nothing. The one company
who held the monopoly on a great operating system was Apple,
already in 1984. But to buy their operating system, you had to
buy everything Apple at hugely inflated prices.

MS DOS caught on, as there was nothing else on the market bar
Apple. Consumers largely refused Apples blackmailing, so business
stuck largely with IBM, home users with IBM clones.

Gates could see the potential of the GUI and mouse, started developing
Windows 1 in 1985, but Windows 1 and 2 were essentially not much
chop. Windows 3, released in the early 90s, was finally comparable
with the Apple Mac. Gates sold Windows 3 for 49.95 a copy, consumers
loved it at bought many millions, the Apple mononpoly was finally
broken!

Mitchell/Squeers,

Thank you for posting that passage by Tim Jackson - imagine....

Stern,

If nothing else, please read the last two paragraphs of the above passage, let it rest lightly on your mind and allow it to permeate. In doing so, your idea of the needs of humanity will be enhanced.

*Aussie workers don't 'own' (have total control over) those assets until they reach retirement age*

Yes they do, they just can't spend the money, apart from
circumstances of extreme hardship. Workers can change funds, start
their own fund, combine with other workers to start a new fund,
if they please. That money is held in their name, nobody else.
Some people prefer to invest in ethical funds or green funds,
that is all possible.

*Yabby... super is not on the horizon for most workers, it is simply stolen from their wages, without their consent, and goes, in a hit and miss manner, into a superfund that they have absolutely no control over.*

TBC, 1.3 trillion $ is serious money, not to be sneezed at, owned
by workers, paid for mostly by employers on their behalf. Workers
are free to choose their fund. In cases of extreme hardship, they
can even cash in the money early.

So my point stands. Australian workers own most the Australia's
means of production. That money is in workers names, nobody else.

*Buying shares in existing companies produces nothing at all*

Not so Grim. Buy BHP shares and their dividends will stay in Australia
and are paid into your account. If a company needs money, like
during the GFC, they issue rights issues, which provides them with
working capital. If you think that working capital is not important
in business, you don't know much about business. Banks for one, need
Tier 1 Capital. Rights issues is one way of raising that money.

*It is a 'secret' business, an arcane mystery, a priestly activity,*

Not so, TBC. It sounds like you simply don't understand it and
because you don't understand it, you claim it is secret.

Poirot “On the one hand (in the blue corner) you tell us that it is not the capitalist philosophy that is the problem, it's the way that humans implement it, (being the greedy, esteem seeking souls that they are). And on the other hand you won't give the same treatment to Marxist philosophy by separating it from past practice”

Oh wrong (nothing new in Poirot getting it wrong)

Difference

Capitalism assumes all people are primarily responsible for themselves and their children

Thus

Those who cannot feed themselves should not be breeding like rabbits.

Nature determines who will die off.

Capitalists do not pretend to play God or decide who will live or who will die, they leave that to nature, fate and basically, what amounts to survival of the fittest. Where the strong and capable get to populate the world (too bad for the meek... they were never going to inherit it anyway)

However, collectivists are more selective

Collectivists consciously decided who they will allow to live or die – hence, Robespierre’s Terrors Lenin’s Kulaks, Stalin’s Gulags, Chinas Prisons, East Germany’s Stasi, Cambodia’s Killing Fields

Not survival of the fittest but

survival of the cowered and oppressed, along with the self-appointed collectivist masters (those who are completely ruthless and capable of crawling over the bodies of their victims to get to the top of the heap – like Stalin and Pol Pot) and death to anyone who dares think or speak out against the collectivists.

TBC “ Do tell me where to find a national road system, or canal system, or airline system that pays its way without public subsidies, I am sure we are all ears/eyes.”

Virgin Blue, Delta

In fact, the UK canal and railway networks were both created with private capital.

As for capitalism.. capitalism has never denied the need for government

However, the sort of government which builds roads and erects street lights is a different beast to the one which decides how many children you will be allowed, what you are allowed to see on the internet or where you will be allowed to live.

"Workers are free to choose their fund"... sort of.

But only within the compulsion of being forced into super in the first place, and then having the reality of it all being reduced to nothing when the next GFC hits, and then being told that it was always buyer beware, so they only have themselves to blame for losing it all just as they were about to retire.

You can run your own fund, but for most people on 'ordinary' wages it is not worth the effort.

I have a relative, a worker, who runs his own fund. It consumes his life as he winces over 'movements' all the time....which is why most really don't pay too much attention to it... too busy working and getting on with the more interesting aspects of their lives.

But adopting a 'hunter gatherer' approach to super is fine, if you have the time and inclination for that.

'Owning' the money is something of an illusion.

"paid for mostly by employers on their behalf"... hang on... the 9% super was always 'owned' by employees. It was turned into privatised pensions through a swap, wage off-sets for super.It is not a 'gift' from happy employers.

And where it is more than 9%, that would have been a negotiated outcome too. If you are going to misrepresent the employers 'generosity' in this way, you'd have to be saying that employers pay the income tax for their employees too... true, but not true too.

*There is no way you can describe the domination of Woolworths or Coles (for just one example) as healthy capitalism*

Not so Severin, for of course especially since their new ownership,
Coles and Woolies compete fiercely not only between each other,
but with IGA, Costco, Aldi and a host of meat, vegie and other
speciality stores.

In fact our market is very nearly overserviced with retail, any
more new players could push grocery prices up, not down, for
the following reason:

Lets take Coles. They have net earnings of 3c in the Dollar. But
they have high fixed costs. Rent, wages, electricity and many
other fixed costs are there with more or less turnover and they
absorb around 20c in the Dollar. The average spend per customer at
Coles is 50$. If they could push that up to 60$, overheads would be
spread across more goods, they can afford to drop their prices to
compete. If turnover decreases, overheads stay the same, costs
per unit increases, they can either increase prices or make a loss,
at which point they will shut the store.

BTW, you have this bee in your bonnet about increasing GDP in a
finite world. Much economic activity is about services not goods.
You could tomorrow start a doggie walking service, a call girl
service or a cleaning service. You would be adding GDP and not
really wearing out the planet.

Stern,

Being labelled "wrong" by your one-dimensional self is something I shall wear as a badge of honour.

You wrote: "Capitalism has never denied the need for government."
How very accommodating of it.
I've just been reading Krishan Kumar's "Prophecy and Progress".
He wrote: - "...When we engage in contempory debates about the "free market" verses the planned (ie, politicised) economy, we are posing an opposition that is historically and sociologically unreal, and which is based on an illusion fostered by a too schematic view of nineteenth-century European history. For it is wrong to see these two principles as equal, sociological "universals". The sociological norm across time and space is overwhelmingly "politics in command". It is the "free market" principle that is the anomaly, and the fact that it is not immediately apparent is due to an historical accident which placed the "free market" at the centre of the original process of European industrialization....There took place a separation of economic and political realms that was "highly eccentric", historically and sociologically speaking; and which gave rise to the unprecedented and erroneous belief in a "natural" economy based on the operations of the untrammelled market...So the miracle occurred - a society in which, for once, wealth was mightier than the sword.

Notice that none of the critics of capitalism have yet established:
1. that capitalism is unsustainable – they think it’s good enough to refer to people who assume it is
2. that capitalism drives population growth – rather than the other way around
3. that resources are, for practical purposes, finite – or why it’s okay to assume Malthus and Ehrlich were right, when they were wrong
4. how adding more taxes, regulations, spending, bureaucracies, police, penalties, magistrates and prisons is going to make capitalism more sustainable
5. how any alternative is going to avoid abolishing economic calculation in the affected field, apart from that made possible by the remaining capitalism
6. how increasing the abolition of economic calculation is going to make capitalism more sustainable
7. how any alternative to capitalism is going to distinguish products that are permissible from those that are not
8. how the regulating authority is going to know all the values that all the people who are subject to it, are trying to achieve by their economic activity?
9. Given that it cannot know that, how the regulating authority is going to avoid critical shortages and surpluses in the all the wrong places – the characteristic of central planning?
10. How is replacing a system based on force and threats ethically better than one not based on force and threats?
11. Why the same problems that beset all attempts to centrally plan society is not going to affect you in any attempt to replace capitalism with government regulation?

There are food shortages now, while the most productive countries in the western world - influenced by your ideological fellow-travellers - are shutting down food production on an unprecedented scale. And you guys still don’t get it, do you?

To persist as if the principles of reason don’t apply to you, as if these things were all just a matter of opinion, as if we can make up any reality we want so long as we give enough arbitrary power to government, is intellectually and morally disgraceful.

It is bad enough being educated but completely ignorant of the refutations of your Marxist balderdash. But even after it is explained to you, you persist in beliefs that are every bit as irrational and superstitious as religious creation myths, only this time the object of reverence is government, rather than the church or God.

If your arguments, or rather assumptions were correct, socialism would have been a wonderful success. Doesn't your curiosity, or humility, prompt you to wonder what if you are wrong?

A complete demolition of all the arguments offered by all the critics of capitalism in this thread is here: http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php&title=1060

Good grief, Herr Mises! Is that the best you can do! He's a 40 years dead fundamentalist who believed, among other things that economic truths are derived from self-evident axioms and cannot be empirically tested [you just have to believe, man]. He elaborated his view in his magnum opus, "Human Action", though he failed to persuade many economists outside the Austrian school he headed. Mises was also a strong proponent of laissez-faire [what a coincidence]; he advocated that the government not intervene anywhere in the economy [go on eh?]. Interestingly, though, even Mises made exceptions to this dogmatic view. For example, he believed military conscription was justified in wartime. He once famously yelled at a conference gathering, "ah, you're all a bunch of socialists!" An earlier incarnation Col/Stern/PH ?

This is ripping fun, Peter Hume,

Capitalism is the anomaly - it is not the normal state of affairs - and eventually as needs must it will be usurped.

Kumar wrote about something termed "dialectical progression": "Basically it recognises that novel and creative developments almost never arise from the further exploitation of existing practices. So it is in nature - so it is in society. The attitudes and institutions that dominate a society at any particular time are the result of a successful adaptation...The environment inevitably changes...when this happens, the currently dominant mode is the least capable of adapting to the new situation, having perfected itself, and exhausted itself in adapting to the old."

*Capitalism is the anomaly - it is not the normal state of affairs*

Not really Poirot. In nature, every creature needs to make a living
somehow. The last time I read up on tribes like the Kung "bushmen"
in SW Africa, women were swopping meat for a bit of sex. The free
market has been around since we existed, even chimps swap one thing
for another.

*But only within the compulsion of being forced into super in the first place*

Well fair enough TBC, some people really are too silly to think of the
future and their old age, how it will be provided for. Simply increasing taxpayers to pay for it, is hardly sustainable. The
present model is quite sustainable.

*and then having the reality of it all being reduced to nothing when the next GFC hits*

Whose super was reduced to nothing? If you think that BHP, the
banks, Woolies and all the rest will be vanished, that is your
right, but it is hardly rational. Those 1.3 trillion $ in assets
are hardly nothing.

*You can run your own fund, but for most people on 'ordinary' wages it is not worth the effort.*

Well there you have it. Most people simply can't be bothered, despite
all that money being in their name and there for their retirement.

*It was turned into privatised pensions through a swap, wage off-sets for super.It is not a 'gift' from happy employers.*

That was 25 years ago and applied only to some workers. Since then
wages have increased by around 20% above inflation, so workers
caught up. The levy is still paid by employers by force of Govt.

None of this however changes the basic fact that today, Australian
workers largely own the means of production, which would make
old Marx turn in his grave.

Poirot instead of citing academic authors channelling Marx, I challenge you to answer the questions or have the intellectual honesty to admit that you can't?

Come, come Yabby...."None of this however changes the basic fact that today, Australian workers largely own the means of production, which would make old Marx turn in his grave".. and they also own vast tracts of Australia, including all the mineral wealth, apart from the wide-brown bits bits excised for you and PH...and AGIR, but that makes them no better off either.

"Simply increasing taxpayers to pay for it, is hardly sustainable".. but super is another form of taxation, private taxation, being a compulsory 'benefit' with no escape.

"Most people simply can't be bothered" is a reflection of the problems involved with being engaged in the arcane mysteries of 'wealth creation', as in getting something for nothing, that is not a feature of the workers lives, here or anywhere else I'd wager.

"... the basic fact that today, Australian workers largely own the means of production, which would make old Marx turn in his grave".. someone, it could have been me but I think it was someone else, has already pointed out that without the direct control of the money or investment, there is no real ownership of it.

The workers at Woolies no more 'own' it than they 'own' Coles or Myers, or BHP or any other company.

True, their wages have been taken from them, lent at bargain basement rates, and remain at high risk throughout, but there is no control by the woman at the till, or the man stacking shelves, and certainly no sense of 'ownership' by them, or would the CEO of Woolies wish that either.

"Since then wages have increased by around 20% above inflation, so workers caught up. The levy is still paid by employers by force of Govt".. indeed, we agree on something at last, but since the first wage offsets by workers to glean back their 3% 'first tranche' as Keating might call it, employers have factored the costs into production, so pay none of it, as always, with the costs borne by the customers, frequently the same workers... and so The Joke continues, as ever.

*and they also own vast tracts of Australia, including all the mineral wealth*

Not so TBC, the states own mineral wealth. Check your constitution.

*but super is another form of taxation, private taxation, being a compulsory 'benefit' with no escape.*

Not so TBC, for super does not go to the Govt, it goes to private
individuals. It is a sensible way of provisioning for old age,
for as we know, Aussies would rather blow 20 billion on gambling,
then worry about the future. Some people simply can't help themselves.
It takes Govt regulation for them to do so and see reason. For they
have to live somehow, once they retire. Plenty of Grey Nomads who
travel around Australia with their 4wds and caravans, benefit from
the super story. You are just very cynical it seems, despite the
overwhelming evidence.

*has already pointed out that without the direct control of the money or investment, there is no real ownership of it.*

Workers do in fact control their own super. It is invested where
they choose to invest it, in their name.Yes they can't spend it,
its for retirement, not for peeing it against the wall now and then
falling back on taxpayers for a living. Fair enough.

*True, their wages have been taken from them, lent at bargain basement rates, and remain at high risk throughout*

TBC, there are no bargain basement rates. If companies make good
profits, workers benefit from higher dividend payments. If companies
are doing it tough, so do their owners, the workers.

*employers have factored the costs into production, so pay none of it, as always, with the costs borne by the customers *

Not so TBC. Farmers for instance are compensated by nobody, for
Australian super costs. Export markets don't allow for super.
So farmers and other exporters wear the full cost. But what it comes
down to is this. Either it pays to produce something or it does
not. If it does not, we'll forget the idea or go offshore, where
these costs don't apply.