Here's the problem with capitalism

Lokutus

As I see it.

What percentage of people are self made with a net worth of a million or more? (Not inherited wealth. By the way, a million isn't what it used to be anymore. Maybe the threshold should be 2 million?)

It's low. Under 5%. Maybe as low as 1 or 2%.

What percentage of people are self-employed?

Not sure, and too lazy to search, but it's about 5%.

So what can we deduce from these figures?

Well, I think it's safe to say that these figures show that only about 1 in 20 people on average have the talent and drive to succeed at the game of capitalism.

The rest have talents and interests which lie in other "games" of life.

The majority of the population either doesn't have the talent or the desire to compete all out in the capitalist game.

So why have a system that benefits so few?

Think of it this way. What if the game of life were a different one?

Suppose that society had evolved along a different line one where pure physical strenght determined who got what. In this scenario the big tough mofos would control all the wealth instead of the capitalists. Would this be a fair system?

If you think our current system is not insane think about how few people really benefit.

Think of America. 300 million people.

Of which about a third are basically considered as nothing more than sources of cheap labor and cannon fodder.

Roughly another 150 million live highly stressed out lives where both spouses must work steadily increasing hours for diminshing benefits and no longer existent job security.

The top section does live extremely well. However not all are producers. This group includes many who live off inherited wealth and conttribute little to society if anything.

I admit that capitalism is the best system mankind has developed to date. However, there are problems with it that should not be ignored or swept under the rug. (One such problem is capital accumulation. Basically the elites and big business have hijacked our government.)

So, it is a fair system considering that it's a game at which only about 1 in 20 are keenly interested in playing?

[For the record, I'm one of the self-employed minority who has done reasonably well for himself over the past two decades.]
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PenultimateManStanding

but this is all so yesteryear. all this stuff has been hashed out a million times. We in the US had very high confiscatory tax rates 50 years ago. We had a Great Depression in which the old capitalist ways were found wanting and we moved to socialism to get out of the mess. We'll probably do it again. There is really only one solution. We need to find a huge new continent with nothing but hunter-gatherers on it and take over again. Everything else has already been tried.

greenworm · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jan 27, 2006 Posts: 1377

I always wondered why the other 95% never attempted to start their own government and get rid of the fed by issuing their own currency. I guess they like being slaves or maybe they just don't notice it yet. Laughing

Carlhole · Knight of the Realm Joined: Jul 05, 2004 Posts: 3221

I think population growth works to the considerable disadvantage of ordinary working people and Labor. This was recognized by intellectuals and capitalists as long as three centuries ago in Britain, where the Capitalist ethic first took off. I remember reading a quote (paraphrased) from one of them that the laboring classes "will never accumulate any real wealth because they will simply have more babies first."

And it's true. After the ravishes of the Plague in Europe, the working classes realized they were suddenly much better off and had much more bargaining power with people who needed their labor - because there was a profound shortage.

Of course, we are still seeing the anti-competitive effects of cheap labor at work in the global economy of the world today with multitudes of poor Mexicans streaming into the American economy and jobs being off-shored to China and India and elsewhere. Same principle, but in a globalized world.

Marxism may have worked OK but I don'ty think it really took into consideration the economic and political effects of a population boom. Constantly growing population really benefits the owners of capital. Wouldn't it be great if the working classes could control their birth rate? Fat chance.

Besides labor scarcity, another thing that benefits working classes of people is a gold standard money supply. At the end of the 19th century as the amount of produced goods burgeoned, the supply of gold could not keep up. So with more goods chasing less gold, prices continually decreased in accordance with Law of Supply and Demand. This was a very serious and damaging problem for the owners of Capital because capital investments in various forms of commerce would lose value. As another result of continually falling prices, Debtors were able to repay debt much easier and so this wreaked havoc with banks and other lenders.

So guess what? Currency is no longer gold-backed.
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Lokutus · Last edited by Lokutus on Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:15 pm; edited 1 time in total

Good post Carhole.

One of my points of concern is that our lives feel as if they have been hijacked by capitalism's insatiable quest for more and more profits. I'm old enough to recall when business were closed on Sundays and people had leisure time. IIRC, they were happier because they worked to live.

Now we are in a situation where we live simply to work...to play our bit part as a cog or bearing in the machine. Look at any middle class family and both parents have to work. The influx of females into the work force drove wages down by almost doubling the work force within a decade back in the 1980s.

Now everyone is just stressed out.

What's the line from Network?

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

That's what everyone should be saying.

But then most people are mindless sheep.
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WildRose · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 21, 2006 Posts: 1081

gampy

Good post Lokutus.

I think you have offered an interesting perspective. Especially the point about capitalism needing the working class to pump out all those babies. I guess that is part of the "needed growth" aspect of modern capitalism and economics.

It's funny. I am a single guy with no kids, and I can see how children are the real ball and chain for this kind of economic, and consumer slavery.

Let me explain:

Children are a burden to adults. Sounds rather cold and horrible, but it's become a burden because of capitalism. When babies are born...what do people do?

Buy a house with 3 bedrooms, a garage for 2 cars and 2 cars for said garage.

This is what drives the economy. Children...the new shoes every fall, the junk food and Pepsi, the X-boxes, the Big Macs and Whoppers, the Pampers, the CD's of Britney Spears and Eminem, the toys, the plastic, the Mexican nanny and her husband that works on the construction crew that builds her employers house and lays the sod and digs the swwimming pool.

It's all about the children.

Children are wonderful and we need them, but our society has turned them into pawns for the consumerist machine that supports the 1% that are at the top of the heap.

How do you say to your kid..."Geez Billy, I don't think you really need that piece of plastic that costs 10 times what it's really worth."

I see parents continually duped by the marketing firms into buying all this stuff for their kids. Including the 3 bedroom house and minivans.

What sane adult wants a minivan, and a ugly box of building supplies out in a suburban wasteland?

Wouldn't you rather live downtown in a a one bedroom condo, and walk to work? But noooo....gotta do it for the kids!

Says who?

Well, that's what people need to start asking themselves.

Sorry. A little long winded and rambling...but Lokutus inspired me.

Lokutus

gampy,

I think women drive the market for accumulating crap and not men.

I pretty well live a Walden Pond life these days with few possessions but those that I do have are of high quality. Over the past 5 years I have been deliberately shedding stuff. My biggest possession by weight now is books. They outweigh the rest of my possessions by a significant margin.

I really do travel light now that I'm single again.

It's when you get involved withh women that you find yourself working your ass off to buy crap simply because it's on TV or will allegedly make others envious.

Most men are not into that game beyond maybe having a nice car.
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chris-h · Heavy Crude Joined: Oct 11, 2004 Posts: 447

pea-jay

Women drive alot of the day to day purchases, including impulse items (speaking from experience here). Men drive the big purchases. I tend to think it comes out in the wash monetarily with both genders more or less driving consumption. Its just the products and the pitch that differ.

As for capitalism, its a flawed flawed system. Unfortunately its the best anyone has come up with and put into practice. Here are my gripes (greatly distilled)

1) The system is unable to quantify external costs (such as the cost of polluting the air or water) on its own
2) The system is unable to make long term plans for the future if there are no near term benefits as well.
3) The system is unable to collectively prepare for changing conditions if the investments exceed the capabilities of a single firm to make
4) The system depends on an ever-growing monetary system to operate effectively, growth that is driven on the assumption of ever-rising resources.
5) The inherent belief that the market through monetary expeditures will drive the necessary technology to create the needed resources. Thus Capital drives technology which creates resources.

Those are the key flaws I see. I know there are others, but these bother me the most.
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Ayame

Women buy porceline crap whereas men buy gadgets crap (at least until they are married and have to buy crap for their kiddies instead). So the moral of the story is, crap will always be bought until the cheap crap is no longer made or people just don't have the money for it.

Capitalism itself relies on constant growth which at some point (maybe very soon) will be impossible then it won't cope very well. The government will probably step in like it is doing in Zimbabwe then and it will get even worse.

WildRose · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Jun 21, 2006 Posts: 1081

TommyJefferson

SinisterBlueCat · Intermediate Crude Joined: Sep 06, 2005 Posts: 950

Lokutus