In a dictatorship its all the same....
How does what you say in the paragraph above negate what I have said?
It negates the idea that the fact that the USSR was a dictatorship is relevant to labeling its economic system.
Do you consider the losses that individuals, companies and gov't suffer during a recession to be great examples of the capitalist economy's efficiencies?
Unless you can point to a system where no one loses money but that can still generate the wealth that capitalism does or more then I would say that they are not signs of its inefficancy.
An engine can never be 100% efficent. You can take an engine that has 60% efficancy and point to the 40% of losses and say that it means it is inefficent, but actually an engine that ran at 60% efficancy would be amazing and if our car engines couls use the energy from the gasoline they burn that effciently they could boost gas mileage and power at the same time.
I am unclear why you are afraid that they're might be something better out there that may exist now but is not well known, or one that has yet to be invented.
It seems to me that you either have a free market or you have a market subject to external (probably government) control. I imagine its possible that a more efficent way to have government organize the economy can be found but I don't think a command and control economy can ever be as efficent as a free market system. Most things that could be applied to a command and control economy to make it more efficent could also be used in a free market economy. Command and control can only work better if the desired output is simple. In a developed modern economy with millions or billions of people the desired output is complex and shifting.
That's assuming there is nothing better. I don't believe that.....and I hope you don't either.
There will always be something better then the specifics of what we actually have, but a free market will always be more efficent for more purposes in a complex economy then a command and control one. And you only have those two options. Either the economy is free, or it is controled by something or someone. The details can change so much that the economy looks world apart from what it used to be but it will still be either free or command and control.
Capitalism encourages profit. When profit is the mantra of the entrepreneurial world, people get exploited.
How? More specifically how is this inevitable? The only argument that I have ever seen that profit equals exploitation was the Marxist one, and I reject that. I would be interested to see if you have a new justification for the idea. Note you are not saying that desire for profit can motivate people to exploit others but the when we aim for profit people do get exploited. Do you really mean that?
If that's true, we may be limited to Earth and her existing resources.
You yourself mention the astroids which could be a good source of resources. The most important resource limit is that of energy and we are not limited to the energy of the earth we can collect energy from the sun, but even ignoring this we have barely begun to tap the energy available on the earth. We have taped a lot of the energy that is cheaply available with current technology and techniques but we can and have improved the technology and techniques. The only absolute limit of energy from the earth is the energy that could be obatained by turning the earth into energy with 100% efficancy. A more realalistic limit is the energy that could be obtained by the combination of collecting a big portion of the solar energy that hits the earth and fusing hydrogen at a rate that uses up 10% of the ocean over say the time from now until the sun goes nova.
Corps. are a byproduct of capitalism. Their fortunes are intertwined.
Capitalism is more then the corporations. They exist because in a free market they have been found to be a relatively efficent way to allocate resouces for production. In fact corporations often work to restrict real capitalism by lobbying for restrictions that benefit them and give them an unfair advantage. Should some other idea come along that worked better (not that I can think of any) then that new thing would take over the place of corporations. Capitalism is just the idea of allowing people to act freely in terms of economic life, and the theory that describes how they act given this freedom. In any case Corporations do not equal evil. Mohammed Atta was a passanger on the airplane that became a deadly missile. He bought a ticket. Passangers are more closely connected to our system of air travel then corporations are to capitalism. So are passengers bad because Mohammed Atta was evil? Is air travel bad because passengers are bad. That is the type of argument you seek to make against capitalism and it does not hold water.
In fact, Russia was poor because it place its priorities in things that garnered it prestige and power, and because it siphoned its wealth off to the oligarchs, and consequently, its people were starving and given no real incentive to work harder.
The wealth that went to the oligarchs and the military hurt but the biggest problem was how the wealth that went to things for the people was wasted. Many of their industries where value subtractors even ignoreing the graft. The goods they produced where worth less then the input, because there was no capitalist incentive to produce what people actually want, or price signals to even know what people really want in a timely fashion.
Tim, I was speculating based upon the question you asked. I am not going try to defend it especially when anything non capitalistic automatically gets your ding.
There is a free economy, or a government run economy. Any third way is really just different proportions of one or the other. You haven't presented anything really different for me to even consider but then I don't think there is anything really different so I can hardly blame you. Command and control economies almost automatically get my ding but if you can point to one that you think worked well I will look in to it with a decently open mind.
Tim |
