Peter
<<what's the difference between that method of social co-operation, and one based on individual liberty and private property? >>

Are you seriously saying that there is no difference? Private property makes individual liberty meaningless. Private property and the competitive framework currently existing are the antithesis of co-operation.

<<Power means being able to use force to bully people into doing something whether they want to or not.>>
No it doesn't. It means being able to exclude people. The powerless have no choice but sell themselves to those who control the means of production. The power of the state protects the monopolies on land production and ideas. Without its protection the population would be unlikely to honour those laws that disenfranchise them from land, production and intellectual property. You rightists would do well to learn the reality of the symbiosis that exists between capital and the state. Without the states violent protection capitalism would fall immediately.

Stern

<<It becomes a “collective” when individuals are no longer free to come and go as they please and as we saw with people being shot and killed trying to climb to freedom over the Berlin Wall.>>

Rubbish. That is authoritarianism not collectivism. Free association is one of the cornerstones of socialism and any system that refutes it can hardly be called "collectivist".
As for your apparent misunderstanding of English. You and your friends going out for the evening is a "collective". No one is in charge. There is no "competition". Plans are decided by consensus and negotiation.
Families are another example. Lovers, sport, charities. Collectives surround us. Even companies can be considered "collectives" although they are hardly free and non authoritarian. Collectives and collectivism is what makes us human. Humans are inherently sociable beings and indeed we need other people for our mental wellbeing. There are numerous serious consequences that attend isolation and lack of human contact. Solitary confinement is punishment not something people thrive on and desire.

<<the bland, soulless, mediocrity of a system which forces uniform sameness, equally upon all>>
What! Like capitalism does?

Stern,

You appear to have missed my point, the 'flaw' in your argument is *that you don't allow for The individual INCLUDING those variations caused by nature, nurture, nature V nurture and the variations on a theme thereof.

In short no philosophy can work unless it is flexible (adaptable) to accommodate the above.

Pelican is on the money in that most of the pressures ultimately emanate from the individual not a government. It is the fact that private sector particularly large ones tend to give an asympathetic/amoral outcomes.

Specifically politics is currently flawed in that it is merely the means by which people accumulate power. Organizations' first objective as an identity is to survive.

I suggested that either version of the issue is doomed in that they ultimately cause inequity in either the spoils or the pain. This means sooner or later there is a violent realignment in the power and distribution. The more rigid the system the more violent is the response.
This is human nature in it's variant forms.

Again our systems were created in simpler times but their evolution has not kept pace with ethics etc.

This is largely because the two alternatives discussed have caused insular, disproportionate power groups to develop and dominate the system rather than the other way around.

"...The financial sector is supposedly a means to an end, it's not an end in itself"

Well put Severin. When I have a little more time I will pick up on some of those authors you have recommended on OLO - the little I have gleaned on Google invites further reading.:)

That quote sums up what is wrong with some of our economic thinking -the trap is many work from the premise that the 'theory' is a set-in-concrete life-force in and of itself.

And as examinator wrote, failed to keep pace with ethical considerations.

"This is largely because the two alternatives discussed have caused insular, disproportionate power groups to develop and dominate the system rather than the other way around."

And that is the crux of it. Nothing will change if people don't take their capitalistic blinkers off to improve what is a faulty system in its purest form. We need to be eclectic and not constrained by dogma where those disproportionate power groups get free reign.

Examinator
It is true that human motivations and action are enormously variable, and that we are strictly unable to know what makes a given person act in a given situation. However these facts provides less, not more ground for using aggression – ordering everyone around and threatening to lock them in a cage if they don’t obey – as the basis of social co-operation.

On the other hand, what we do know is that people take action so as to exchange a situation that they subjectively find less satisfactory, for one they subjectively think will be more satisfactory. This also provides no ground for aggressively ordering them around, in the name of a higher good, considering the insuperable problem the wannabe dictator faces in knowing how to produce a better outcome.

All
I have shown reason why no-one has, or could have, the knowledge they would need to have, in order to know that a coercive intervention would do anything other than misdirect resources, and cause planned chaos. I have also shown how my argument could be falsified.

For your part, you have not shown how your arguments could be verified or falsified. How could anyone have the knowledge necessary to know that government interventions produce satisfactory results *even viewed from the standpoint of the interventionists* when all the changes they make, positive and negative, are taken into account? How would or could they be taken into account?

And how could your argument be falsified: what would make you change your mind?

Thus this is not a dialogue of reason and there is no need for me, at least not in this thread, to refute your consequential arguments, all of which merely presuppose that you have, or could have knowledge that in fact you do not have, and could never possibly have.

The method you are using would render impossible any discussion using argument and counter-argument.

And even if you had established the wrongs you claim, which you haven’t, you still haven’t got to first base in justifying action *by government*.

Pelican “Disagree, the entrenched problems in capitalism was revealed by the GFC and indicate not much has changed and capitalism will inevitably fail again without appropriate regulation.”

Disagree

The cause of the GFC was the application of inappropriate (“stupid” is a better word) socialist spirited regulation designed to enforce an affirmative action principle, forced banks, under penalty of the loss of business licence, to lend to people who then walked away from their financial obligations.

As for capitalism.. it is a mercurial philosophy capable of evolving and changing with the opportunities and threats of the time.

“Regulation”, is the stock-in-trade of the collectivists, who determine that everything must be “equal”, whilst ignoring the inefficiencies and costs of their regulatory burdens and how they limit the effectiveness is inherent in capitalism.

Capitalism is not a means of equally sharing everything because capitalism does not rely on assume that equality is the overriding consideration

The “equality” demanded and aspired to by collectivists will never, ever be achieved because of -

differentials to individual interest,
differentials to individual innovation,
differentials to individual effort,
differentials to individual ability,
differentials to individual opportunity
and even differentials to individual good fortune.
Not to mention
Differentials to the nature of individual genetic composition (without even considering “nuture”).

Regarding failings.. capitalism does regulate. Not for fairness but to avoid corruption – typically the “self-regulatory” rules of the stock exchange are more severe than the laws which enshrine corporations.

So too the basic rules of banking would have avoided the GFC simply because – no banker would have freely loaned to someone on terms which allowed the borrower to walk away from the debt (the jingle-mail and “sub-primes” at the heart of the GFC).

Severin “...after deregulation began under Thatcher in the UK, under Reagan in the United States, there have been crises after crises...."

And before that deregulation there was

Stagnation -

And whilst an free-flowing rivers, which might symbolise capitalism, might be sometimes smooth and sometimes rough,

The stagnant rivers of collectivism

just "stink" and harbour disease