[americandream]

@Quinny

Lets not forget that capitalism rose out of European feudalism's own resourcing crisis, namely land. Yet who, a mere century before the Enlightenment, in an Europe deep in the thrall of religious paranoia, would have anticipated the rise of humanism and the new radical and bourgeoisie spirit of meritocracy (which the US Constitution contemplated in the drafting). That would have been unheard of during the divine rule of royalty. Yet these changes threw us into the most momentous centuries which have shaken the entire human culture and brought us together in ways that we are still barely able to cope with. I do not mean to sound like some unmitigated optimist. My point simply is that capitalisms's crisis will trigger social and economic shifts we cannot even conceive of.

However, given the fact that the world will largely have been stripped of its wealth base and its natural resources, there simply will not be the room for any order which offers the potential for some form of value appropriation. Consequently, we may find ourselves going full circle back to those times when we were deliberately collectivist as a consequence of the material limits we encountered.

There is nothing innately evil or good in man. We simply adapt as appropriate. We do not have the capacity for endless trauma however, so what emerges out of the ashes will be some resolution of the crisis and any dislocation. There is always the risk we will slide into a long spiral to deep barbarism but I suspect that will be largely a matter of species suicide hard on the heels of climate collapse. Barring that, I am convinced that post capitalism will witness some reversion to a form of communism.

.

[prajeshbhat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'I')f there is real growth.. why is the interest rate on deposits zero or negative?

[Oakley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'I')'m just sick and tired of this whole free market jive, where they imply that free means fair, until you push them.

Then they say, "whoever said the world was fair." Well, actually they did in their descriptions of the economics of Capitalism.

There is nothing free or fair about it. Capitalism is extortion, and protection, and blackmail, and rigged gaming tables.

[prajeshbhat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oakley', 'T')o my mind freedom is the answer, and that includes freedom in economic matters as well as freedom in other aspects of life. Freedom in economic matters means that government's only roll in the economy is to punish those who commit acts of aggression against others, examples being fraud, collusion to rig the markets, and theft.

[Oakley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('prajeshbhat', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oakley', 'T')o my mind freedom is the answer, and that includes freedom in economic matters as well as freedom in other aspects of life. Freedom in economic matters means that government's only role in the economy is to punish those who commit acts of aggression against others, examples being fraud, collusion to rig the markets, and theft.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '.') Hence this is an objective journey which cannot be hurried, try as we may to mould the material to our ideals. Marx's cautioned against seeking to impose communism, especially in a world still vastly rural and peasant. There has to be that critical mass for systemic shifts of the magnitude that has seen humanity advance in stages.

[Cid_Yama]

You throw the term freedom around like it actually has a meaning.

There is no freedom when competition is squashed by those that would prefer not to be competed with.

There is no freedom when small business start-ups are discouraged by the hurdles of licensing, tax laws, etc. These hurdles are intentional.

There is no freedom in a rigged game, rigged for the majority to lose.

There is no freedom when the economy is designed as one big harvesting machine, fleecing the masses, directing the wealth of the nation into a few hands.

Especially when those few hands no longer feel any loyalty to their nation or responsibility for the conditions that prevail. To them, the American worker is no different than the Chinese worker, or any other worker in the world. They are just labor to be exploited.

This is a direct result of a weak central government. One that can no longer protect it's citizens from the abuses of powerful individuals and corporations.

[dohboi]

The earliest actual markets all arose under very strong kingdoms, mostly around the east Mediterranean. Only where there was very strong central authority could you have anything resembling a market. Otherwise, it was very low level barter or outright theft.

So there has never been anything resembling a 'free' market. They have always been under the fairly tight control of ruling powers.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'T')here is no freedom when the economy is designed as one big harvesting machine, fleecing the masses, directing the wealth of the nation into a few hands.

[prajeshbhat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oakley', 'N')ot sure what you mean, but people who value freedom highly also reject the idea that banks should have the monopoly to create credit or money out of thin air and loan it to the public at interest. Gold and silver coins, or their modern equivalents such as electronically transmitted gold based on 100% reserves against any electronic or paper receipts for gold in warehouses, are the money of free people. Gold and silver must be mined, and cannot be created out of thin air, so it is difficult to inflate.

[AgentR11]

Gold is not credit, even when used as money. It is a compact store of value, just as coffee and rice are non-compact stores of value. If I sail my boat to Brazil, I can trade roughly an ounce of gold for a ton of coffee beans. I sail said beans back to Houston and sell them to Bob the Warehouse Guy for some amount of local currency, which I then use to buy more gold than I used to buy the beans in Brazil. No credit is involved in those transactions. I make a profit, Bob makes a profit, and the growers and sellers in Brazil made a profit... yet there was no credit involved.

Granted, in our modern world we just electronically pay with ebits for Dollars and ebits for Reals and even ebits for ETF Gold. But even in the absence of our electronic paradise, this trick works just fine, and did work just fine in times past with physical gold and silver.

Gold is simply a commodity that is compact enough to where its value density makes it suitable to conduct commerce.

From the other side, credit can do what gold can not, it can leverage and it can work on margin. With 1 ounce of gold, I have control of 1 ounce of gold. With $1000, I can control $5000 in assets, magnifying my potential for profit or loss by a factor of 5 (or more). That is the power of credit.


** numbers have been rounded for conversational purposes.
edits: spelling

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'G')old is not credit, even when used as money. It is a compact store of value, just as coffee and rice are non-compact stores of value. If I sail my boat to Brazil, I can trade roughly an once of gold for a ton of coffee beans. I sail said beans back to Houston and sell them to Bob the Warehouse Guy for some amount of local currency, which I then use to buy more gold than I used to buy the beans in Brazil. ...
From the other side, credit can do what gold can not, it can leverage and it can work on margin. With 1 ounce of gold, I have control of 1 ounce of gold. With $1000, I can control $5000 in assets, magnifying my potential for profit or loss by a factor of 5 (or more). That is the power of credit.
** numbers have been rounded for conversational purposes.

[Oakley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'Y')ou throw the term freedom around like it actually has a meaning.
There is no freedom when competition is squashed by those that would prefer not to be competed with. ...
This is a direct result of a weak central government. One that can no longer protect it's citizens from the abuses of powerful individuals and corporations.

[Cog]

The modern liberal absolutely hates the idea that people can live without a government monitoring, taxing, and otherwise making a pest of themselves in people's lives. It wasn't always that way but a little power corrupts, a lot of power destroys. I won't let the right off the hook on this since the Patriot Act came from a Republican president.

The right to be left alone is the most important right not enumerated in the Constitution, but its heavily implied by the way it was written.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'B')ut at the time that Marx was writing, there was no way to completely remove human labor from the stream of production; the people he envisioned as coming to assume power as a group would all be involved in the production of goods that society needs to function. In contrast, we are moving into a time where it very well could be that a few thousand grow virtually ALL the food consumed by 300+ million; that a few hundred thousand industrialists and their keyman employees produce almost all the durable and consumable goods wanted; leaving 90%+ completely out of the productive sphere, and completely lacking the skills to reenter.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'T')he modern liberal absolutely hates the idea that people can live without a government monitoring, taxing, and otherwise making a pest of themselves in people's lives. It wasn't always that way but a little power corrupts, a lot of power destroys. I won't let the right off the hook on this since the Patriot Act came from a Republican president.

The right to be left alone is the most important right not enumerated in the Constitution, but its heavily implied by the way it was written.

[Cid_Yama]

Such nonsense. You need a strong central government to protect the interests of the nation and it's citizens from the power of the corporations.

The very reason the pols are bought by the corporations is because the central government has been weakened by legislation and Supreme Court rulings that have sided with the corporations against the individual citizen.

With a strong central government protecting the citizens from corporate corruption of our system, that would not happen.

You are on the wrong side. You want an example of corporations running roughshod without regulation, look at Nigeria, or places in South America, where corporations are free to do whatever is cheapest and most expedient.

You are ad hom deleted. if you think corporations wouldn't do that here if there were no regulations to stop them.

We may not have very strong enforcement, leading to things like the gulf oil spill, but just imagine what it would have been like with no regulation, and no one to represent the people's interests.

The government is there to protect the average citizen from corporate abuses of power. Without the government there is nothing to stop them from dumping nuclear waste in your backyard because it was easier and cheaper to do it that way.

Without Government there is no one to stop them from contaminating your drinking water and making the atmosphere unbreathable.

Without Government there would be nothing to stop them from pushing you off your land and taking everything you own, if that's what they wanted to do.

You anti-government types are Ad hom deleted. You only look at what you might get away with, not what would be done to you, if there was no one to protect you.

Also there would be no infrastructure, no roads, or bridges, or dams, or other such projects that benefit society as a whole. This stuff doesn't just appear magically.

[AgentR11]

I think that passage supports my assertion fairly well actually. Marx's vision of the progression of globalism implies an ever increasing head count in the productive process at the bidding of capital (and cheap commodities as mentioned too, PO says hi); but we're taking a step past that now, Chinese labor is being seen as replaceable by something even more reliable and inexpensive. A manager and a couple technicians could be all that's needed to run a sizable factory with the current top tech. As proof of concept becomes standard practice, one shouldn't be surprised if a factory complex with 5-10k workers is replaced by a manager and a few techs in a control room overseeing 10k robotic stations.

At that point, what leverage do the proletariat have to see a transition come about, when we are rapidly coming to a point where the only job the proletariat have is to consume. Do they refuse to consume? Do they try to take over the factory? Do they try to harvest fifty square miles of wheat with not a hand tool in sight? They are entirely unable to do any of that, and that inability is intentional, and will continue to be exacerbated by the forms of modern capitalism.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'B')ut there will be no regression back to the kings of olde just as there will be no regression to our earlier history as nomadic tribesmens. Each order was formed by its material limits...a playing out of the Hegelian dynamic....but through earthly limits rather than some overarching spirit.

[Pops]

Cid, time for the ad homs to stop, this is a good conversation and it's doing very well without your childish name calling.

You can take this as a formal warning.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'Y')ou need a strong central government to protect the interests of the nation and it's citizens from the power of the corporations.