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!