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THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Wed 26 Sep 2018, 20:10:32

Cog wrote:Lest we forget, high interest rates and Jimmy Carter. Neither of which inspired consumer confidence.

But now you get into a cause/effect issue. Interest rates and inflation had been heading up long before Carter. He was just there for the end of it. No doubt his dithering didn't help, but blaming him for all of it is like the left currently blaming Trump for trends that were apparent for many decades before he was POTUS. Convenient politically, but NOT AT ALL convincing.

And the repeating oil crises were greatly exascerbating the inflation issue. The interest rates were a consequence of the inflation.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Wed 26 Sep 2018, 20:14:13

Cog wrote:I'd prefer a president who puts América first rather than one who goes on apology tours condemning it. But to each his own.

Sorry your girl lost.

So a strategy of constant blatant lying, to the extent our POTUS has virtually NO credibility *, and now just gets openly laughed at, with his absurd claims is a good thing?

I'll pass on BOTH the apology tours AND the lying like a 5 year old behavior by our POTUS, thank you very much.

...

* Outside the Fox News / far right echo chamber, of course.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby Cog » Wed 26 Sep 2018, 21:28:10

What behaviour might that be?
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby GHung » Wed 26 Sep 2018, 23:12:31

Cog wrote:What behaviour might that be?


https://youtu.be/PX9reO3QnUA?t=17

.... or

Trump sells Qatar $12 billion of U.S. weapons days after accusing it of funding terrorism
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-sell ... terrorism/

I can do this all night, and for days. The guy is a never ending source of amazement.

Image
https://www.businessinsider.com/who-has ... ynn-2017-7

Been to Nambia lately?
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby Cog » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 04:17:08

You have an issue with him firing Sally Yates who refused to follow directives concerning the travel ban and James comey who gave Clinton a pass on classified emails? And Andrew McCabe who was at the center of a conspiracy to spy on the Trump campaign.

A president is entitled to hire and fire anyone, for any reason or no reason at all, who work for him. Surely that is not news to you.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 05:27:53

Trump bashing is entirely out of place in the Capitalism thread. You have many available threads to bash Trump in, please use those rather than this one, which is reserved for bashing our silly pin-headed members who owe everything they have including their liesure time, to the Capitalist Economies they live within.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby Cog » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 07:29:27

Amen KJ.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby GHung » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 09:06:56

Cog wrote:You have an issue with him firing Sally Yates who refused to follow directives concerning the travel ban and James comey who gave Clinton a pass on classified emails? And Andrew McCabe who was at the center of a conspiracy to spy on the Trump campaign.

A president is entitled to hire and fire anyone, for any reason or no reason at all, who work for him. Surely that is not news to you.


A President who can't hire and keep good help, including cabinet members, will have a problem managing our capitalist economy. (That was just his first 18 months!)

A President that goes on the world stage and acts like an imbecile will have a problem being taken seriously by trading partners, or anyone else who is pragmatic and sane.

A President who isn't engaged enough in our national security to sit for regular briefings can't ensure the security and stability of our global capitalist economy. He IS the Commander in Chief, BTW.

A President who can't read, write and speak above a middle school level is a huge embarrassment.

A President who would rather insult other Americans, insults allies and important world leaders, and buddies up to dangerous tyrants rather than have rational dialogue about serious issues involving economic/security matters is a clear and present danger.

I submit that anyone who can't understand these things is also irrational. NOTHING anyone can say will change my conclusions about the above.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby GHung » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 09:37:51

KaiserJeep wrote:Trump bashing is entirely out of place in the Capitalism thread. You have many available threads to bash Trump in, please use those rather than this one, which is reserved for bashing our silly pin-headed members who owe everything they have including their liesure time, to the Capitalist Economies they live within.


Pointing out FACTS about our President isn't bashing. It's an assessment of the supposed leader of our so-called capitalist nation.

As for our " silly pin-headed members who owe everything they have including their liesure time, to the Capitalist Economies they live within...", It is my Constitutional right, indeed my DUTY, to question the system of which I am a member and citizen. If you can't agree with that, live someplace where the majority (or, in this case, minority) in power can force people TSTFU. I have.

All I have said here is that our form of capitalism will be self-terminating, primarily due to resource constrains and a failure to control our waste streams. I stand by that, and NONE of you has provided any response to convince me otherwise. I have also tried to start a dialogue about what form of capitalism, or any other system, would allow a lasting future of freedom and prosperity. Not a peep.

It's easy to spot those who really have been nowhere; done nothing but be an office drone, and now (in your case) want to be part of some collective controlled by a hive mind. Next you'll be referring to Trump as Locutus, eh?

You try to say we shouldn't be allowed to bite the hand that feeds us? Really? Or maybe you think you have the right to tell me to STFU. Ain't going to happen. Patriotism is about questioning OUR system, economic, political, social.... That's what our country was founded on. I have the right to do that. I have the right to call our President an asshole. Says a lot that you don't like that.

Again: CAPITALISM AS WE KNOW IT WILL BE SELF-DEFEATING. Some of us have the balls to try and change that, even if your President doesn't get that.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 10:46:06

You seem to have made a grand assumption here, without a shred of evidence supporting it. That would be that somehow, magicly, we can think our way out of the conundrum of overpopulation and the attendant problems of resource shortages, climate change, pollution, species extinctions, etc.etc.

Well, it ain't necessarily so. In fact, it almost certainly is not. The nature of humanity, the most successful species yet shaped by evolution, does not guarantee a solution will be found, can be found, or should be found. I have for years argued that - for the sake of the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens, we should colonize space so that when Nature's grim solution to human overpopulation kills many of us, we have another home where WE make all the decisions.

That could work. But should a species unable to coexist with other species on a planet get another chance off-planet?

Only if you are an optimist at heart. In any case, "Capitalism" is just a label for how evolution shaped us to behave on a planet. Any other economic "system" you can imagine isn't "natural", and therefore won't work.

You are about to understand this all too well. When the manure splatters off the rotating ventilator, some of us will be ready while others will still be debating economic "systems". You are welcome to have that conversation with a starving Bangladeshi or Sub-Saharan African, but I warn you that they - and all other disadvantaged everywhere, are ardent Capitalists, because evolution shaped them to be.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby GHung » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 13:52:13

KaiserJeep wrote:You seem to have made a grand assumption here, without a shred of evidence supporting it. That would be that somehow, magicly, we can think our way out of the conundrum of overpopulation and the attendant problems of resource shortages, climate change, pollution, species extinctions, etc.etc.


I have made no such assumption and am not known for magical thinking. Indeed, more than perhaps any other member of this forum, I have conducted my affairs under the opposite assumption; that our capitalist system under its current form and trajectory is doomed to fail. That doesn't mean that discussing what happens after, or whether we can affect the current system in positive ways isn't important. Defending the current system, as some here do, or attempting to shut those discussions down, is idiotic, IMO.

Only if you are an optimist at heart. In any case, "Capitalism" is just a label for how evolution shaped us to behave on a planet. Any other economic "system" you can imagine isn't "natural", and therefore won't work.


Just plain wrong there, KJ. Sharing economies, trade/barter, syndicate/guild systems, even hunter-gatherer societies existed for thousands of years before what is now accepted as "capitalism" came to be. Most of our history. And the predominance of the imaginary (fiat) wealth pseudo-capitalist world we now enjoy is a very recent artifact of a world full of humans quickly outrunning their resource base, bearing little resemblance to the circular economies of several thousand years ago.

You are about to understand this all too well. When the manure splatters off the rotating ventilator, some of us will be ready while others will still be debating economic "systems". You are welcome to have that conversation with a starving Bangladeshi or Sub-Saharan African, but I warn you that they - and all other disadvantaged everywhere, are ardent Capitalists, because evolution shaped them to be.


Now you are being patronizing. Better check your ego at the door, KJ. Have you ever been to sub-Sahara Africa? I have. I've traded and bartered for goods there, and watched how things work. It could loosely be described as "anarcho-capitalism" , not very different from the black market I experienced in the USSR. That is likely where we are headed, but has little to do with highly developed, hyper-complex, over-leveraged, very-long-supply-chain-for-for-just-about-everything western/global economies doomed to fail.

I, for one, am in the process of adapting to whatever comes next. I don't see you doing much of that.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 16:29:11

I haven't made any assumptions, and I don't have an agenda, and I'm not being patronizing either. But one thing is abundantly clear from this rambling and seldom coherant thread. There is actually nothing there - no system called "Capitalism". IOW, nothing to blame for whatever you perceive to be shortcomings. No reason that we should be either more or less prosperous going forward, other than the obvious one: more people means that there will at some future date be less per person, when resource constraints meet endlessly growing numbers of humans.

Then, as we get hungrier and sicker and more malnourished, we will respond to hardship as we always do, by reproducing more and more. Because that is what evolution hardwired us to do. I like to think of it as primates behaving like primates. Others apparently find some value in labelling such behaviors "Capitalism", and thinking that we can do better.

Well, there simply is no "better". Built into that set of primate behaviors is a curb on reproduction. Once you get prosperous enough, you reproduce more slowly. We are there in the USA, Canada, much of Europe, where births have fallen below replacement rates. But we already exported the knowledge of how to use technology and fossil fuels to grow more food, end disease, and be more comfortable. But tragically for those new to such knowledge, birth rates don't begin to fall for a few generations after the newfound knowledge arrives. We used those generations to build infrastructure in our Western world. There is not enough energy or raw materials to allow that for the billions of new humans.

There we are, at 7.7 Billion and still growing. Well past the point I might add, where we could let our prosperity naturally curb reproduction, because there is not at this point enough "stuff" for that solution, there are too many people already.

So blame "Capitalism" if you think having a label helps you hate something. But there is nothing else. No magic set of rules, ready to take over when those we have evolved with fail newly changed conditions. You want to believe a solution exists. I really doubt it does, that's all.

Which is why I've always been an advocate for leaving the planet. It's the only solution that allows humans to continue to be humans. Endless solar energy, raw materials that exceed the total mass of the Earth many times over. Habitat for literally trillions of humans. Time enough for evolution to fundamentally change the nature of H Sapiens to something else. Time to revise that set of instincts that evolved for an upright plains ape living on an African savannah.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Thu 27 Sep 2018, 18:10:27

KaiserJeep wrote:
Then, as we get hungrier and sicker and more malnourished, we will respond to hardship as we always do, by reproducing more and more.
Actually there is another more probable future where factions go about killing as many of other factions as possible. Question is will you be on the side that wins or on one of the sides that loses?
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby noobtube » Fri 28 Sep 2018, 07:11:14

That is what I despise about the Capitalism cowards (similar to the Christian crazies and Muslim maniacs).

Whenever it becomes clear that their beliefs are wrong and they caused their own disaster, the numbnuts either deny it was the fault of their belief system or claim it doesn't matter anyway. Such cowardly horseshit.

This is why whenever someone screams Capitalism is the answer (or Christianity, or Islam) to all life's problems, I know this is a moron. And, there are a lot of morons in the United States.

When morons can fill their bellies while being raging lunatics, you'll have a society dominated by raging lunatics (see Trump, Kavanagh, Clinton, the capitalist cowards, religious nuts, and so on).
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 28 Sep 2018, 09:53:43

I believe you don't comprehend the nature of Capitalism. Nobody invented it, defined it, or made any rules. Capitalism is tens of thousands of years old, as old as the Bronze Age, when trade routes brought crucible steel into Britain from China, to be forged into blades so expensive only Kings could have them.

Whenever Fuedalism or Socialism or Communism or any other "ism" breaks down, as all of them do, Capitalism spontaneously takes the place of the failed system. Just as when the USSR was on the ropes in the 1940s and 1950s, a thriving and entirely Capitalistic Black Market system fed the populace. When Mao's farm collectives failed, he chose another path, and starved 65 million to death in the greatest act of mass genocide in History.

Capitalism is just normal primate behavior, and humans are primates with all instincts intact. This was not widely recognised until Darwin's works were expanded upon via Anthropology in the mid 20th Century. In fact all social theories and economic speculations such as The Communist Manifesto are entirely defective because they do not acknowledge the nature of man the primate. That is why in a nutshell, all currently taught Economics is obsolete. Karl Marx was a contemporary of Darwin, and never understood his insights, and wrote total nonsense.

Academia has not kept pace with Science on this one. Which is why so many undergraduate minds get filled with collectivist twaddle.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby GHung » Fri 28 Sep 2018, 11:06:40

Whatever, KJ, if you choose to paint "capitalism" with a very broad brush.

The question remains; can capitalism exist in any of its many forms as a subset of a circular, sustainable, economy?
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 28 Sep 2018, 11:17:20

That's the nature of instincts. Evolution built them into your consciousness. Nobody taught you what to do or how to act. They persist and you cannot escape or discard them.

I do not think it matters whether or not the economy grows, shrinks,or remains in steady state.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby GHung » Fri 28 Sep 2018, 11:54:48

KJ said; "Nobody taught you what to do or how to act."


Really?! Very very wrong again, KJ. What an absurd statement. My parents taught me to not lie, to not be a bully, to not steal, to conduct myself and my affairs as a person of good character, and all of the things that made them respected individuals. I also learned the traits of a person of good character in Church, in the Boy Scouts, in character development classes in a Catholic all boys school, and in the military codes of conduct. I was mentored at times by people who were excellent examples of what an adult should be, and called me out in no uncertain ways when I exhibited bad behavior.

Sad that you seem to have not had this kind of upbringing, as your statement above suggests. Evidence abounds that these good character traits are learned, and what happens when these traits are NOT taught and insisted upon by society.

Indeed, I submit that this is why America will fail. These standards are not taught and insisted upon from our leaders. We therefore have worms like Trump, who is just about everything I was taught to NOT be, holding high office and in positions of power.

I'm nowhere near perfect, but I do know the difference between right and wrong. I was taught to rise above my lizard brain. That's what sapience is.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 28 Sep 2018, 13:34:27

Well put Ghung. Yes, I too have this problem with we are programmed or we are just Primates. No, not quite. We evolved from them but we are beyond them. We are more than anything now creatures of our Culture as it has evolved. Both channeling us into a very materialistic pattern and into a quite unequal and unjust world. So, back full circle into what Capitalism represents. It represents the formalization and adoption of an economic system which stresses competition, selfishness and greed among other negative traits. We can do better, Ghung I believe also believes this.
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Re: THE Capitalism Thread Pt. 4

Unread postby GHung » Fri 28 Sep 2018, 13:49:10

onlooker wrote:Well put Ghung. Yes, I too have this problem with we are programmed or we are just Primates. No, not quite. We evolved from them but we are beyond them. We are more than anything now creatures of our Culture as it has evolved. Both channeling us into a very materialistic pattern and into a quite unequal and unjust world. So, back full circle into what Capitalism represents. It represents the formalization and adoption of an economic system which stresses competition, selfishness and greed among other negative traits. We can do better, Ghung I believe also believes this.


It's not just humans. I've seen the same behavior "corrections" in nature and in domesticated animals. I've raised dogs for decades and one of the best methods to raise a good pup is to put them with a good pack. It's more than training. It's behavior and temperament modification. While it's true there are "bad dogs", just as there are some bad people (likely genetic traits), very much of their behavior is learned through training and pack behavior.

I keep hummingbird feeders and have watched the adults correct their chicks behavior. Not sure if they are teaching manners, establishing hierarchical respect, or what, but they won't let the chicks feed until they exhibit some behavior that the parents approve of.
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