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Fewer Than Half of Young Americans Are Positive About Capitalism (cnbc.com)
gollum123 writes: According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively. "This represents a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68 percent viewed it positively," notes Gallup, which defines young Americans as those aged 18 to 29. Meanwhile, 51 percent of young people are positive about socialism. This age group's "views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year," reports Gallup, "but the 51 percent with a positive view today is the same as in 2010."
The problem is the conservatives are operating on bad science and bad economics, creating huge risks for themselves and others, reducing the profit prospects for the rich, and so forth. The current crop of liberal progressives needs to take some time to think and architect things; they've got the right ideals, but no concept on how to approach them.
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liberalism is not about socialism. here in the USA there is lots of socialism for the government hating conservatives. Free money for farmers, unending highway construction and expansion when public transit is cheaper, socialism for rural airports with no real flights, government bailouts when property rights idiots build in flood zones in houston and then run to the government to rebuild their homes, socialism for police and prison unions and corporations via sending people to jail for minor crimes, etc.
Its not the liberals protesting legalization of marijuana. It's the conservatives and police who will see a reduction in their jobs
That's easy, it's none.
Now with communism, you could argue that it's higher. Then again, was it communism or totalitarianism that caused the Ukrainian famines?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
.....or maybe there's a generation of people who don't blindly accept what they're told and question things, apply logic/reason, and think objectively.
It's quite obvious that most core ideas underlying (free market) capitalism also fail, just like socialism has in the past. That's why over the years, governments and their people stepped in to make modifications (e.g., welfare capitalism). Many existing models have pretty huge flaws. Take the US for example where capital accumulation continues indefinitely leading to higher and higher concentrations of wealth. One obvious issue here is this then shifts social power to the wealthy through governmental manipulation.
While it's true most modern day capitalistic economics work better than other models we've seen in the past, that doesn't mean it will continue indefinitely and it certainly doesn't mean we have the "be-all-end-all-model." Thinking we do is both ignorant and arrogant.
We also need to revisit the social contract as to what a society expects by agreeing to fall into a governmental system. It's quite obvious people aren't happy with the current social contract because most citizens are falling further and further into losing their half, so to speak. As such. they're rightfully upset. Now, we can both agree socialism isn't the answer but our current frame of capitalism isn't the answer either and it needs some changes to give people what they rightfully deserve.
Capitalism is bad at:
No where on earth is there a purely capitalist society outside of complete anarchy (e.g. Somalia). Once a government is established, the first thing it does is socialize something: defense.
Some other things most countries socialize:
Education is a prime example of capitalism dealing poorly with long time horizons. If we took loans out to pay for our entire education, it would be 20 years before we could make the first payment. Most debt is expected to be paid off in less than 30 years.
In terms of natural resources, the value placed on them is based on the labor required to extract them. However, air requires minimal labor to extract. You do it every time you breath. Because of this, we have subconsciously, and collectively agreed that no one owns the air. It is shared by all of us as a community. It's a communist system.
In summary, capitalism is a tool in our economic system, that works along side socialism and communism to get resources to people that need them. The trick is choosing the correct tool for the task!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Eh.... I'm very curious as to precisely how the poll was conducted. This is one of those things where the precise wording is important, and the subject is vulnerable to a lot of bias.
As an example, I will use my own views. I'm well aware of how poorly socialism has fared historically, but I'm also aware of how the implementation of socialist ideals has always been hindered by human corruption and greed, just as those same vices have caused inequality and suffering in capitalist societies. If I were asked whether I'd want to live under a socialist government, my response would be a resounding "no".
However, if asked whether I would be in favor of socialism as a legislative doctrine, I would have to answer "yes". I have seen significant evidence that governmental structure can actually run social services decently, if the human corruption can be adequately checked in the system design. Philosophically, I believe that we as a society should work to support the whole society, rather than seeking personal hegemony.
To borrow a phrase, capitalism is the worst system, except for everything else we've tried. There are certainly some good ideas in socialist systems, but they rely on an awful lot of trust. Capitalism assumes no trust, but brings its own collection of faults. I think an ideal system would draw on both ideologies (and others), with careful thought toward how the system can be exploited in the future.
One way that balance can be acheived is by using technology to monitor and control governmental services, filling the role that bureaucracy does today. It is much easier to design a "fair" computer than it is to ask a human to be "fair", because it's relatively straightforward to have computers explicitly ignore certain input.
That means we need to educate our children not just on civics, but on security, philosophy, history, and technology, as well.... We're doomed.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Competition is a powerful tool, but it requires a referee, and intelligent rules that ensures that competition continues, and that once you have a "winner", another contender can emerge and eat his lunch if he's sleeping. In many cases, we don't have that. Also, unlike sports, you have to consider the well being of the loser, which is where a government focused entirely on capitalism falls short. You want people to play the game, to play hard and ensure there's something to "win", but you don't want your losers to fall out and give up (or just plain die, when applied to real life). You need a safety net.
Young people are perhaps overreacting to the negative realities of capitalism. It is not a perfect system, it has many faults, as does socialism, as does a command economy. The overreaction is in part due to the fact that the US has reached a plateau, that geopolitics is not favoring us significantly and there is a lot less to go around, but also in part to the hard right turn reflected in both parties. We are seeing some facets of socialism that we have had for a long time, that were working amazingly well, get defunded and brutalized for an agenda that doesn't really make any sense. We're also seeing the government move away from the safety net idea that was going to enable us to be competitive globally, shoring up the weaknesses of capitalism, in favor of some very naive and misguided libertarian principles, all while ignoring the very real reality of a global economy, that will succeed no matter what we do.
I don't know what economics courses you took, but when I read about the ISMs, I didn't hear "this is the best and clear winner". What I heard is here is what it does well, here is what it does poorly. Even command economies have strength: no other ism can move and adapt as quickly, no other ism CAN be as skillfully manipulated for a purpose. But of course, the weaknesses are tremendous. It's important to understand these shades, China manipulates all of the isms masterfully, at least in comparison to literally everyone else.
Can you name a single instance of capitalism being used as justification to brutalize and murder millions of people?
Work Safe Porn
This, exactly. Capitalism isn't bad in and of itself. It's when it's unregulated that it becomes a nightmare. And you need to mix in some socialist branches (like we do already, such as libraries, law enforcement, etc.).
the opposite is also true. it can be bad when over regulated as well. even more so when your regulators are corrupt.
That's an oversimplified description. Socialism isn't just that the government owns the means of production, but also that it is responsible for the distribution of the produced goods and services. Since that's also the much larger and more difficult part of the philosophy, it's also the part that should be discussed most thoroughly.
In essence, any government that collects taxes already has a government-owned means of production. The government produces tax income. How it then uses those taxes is the subject of endless debate, and those of us who want a bit more socialism want to see distributions that focus on the socialist philosophies. We want to see less focus on propping up private industry, and more focus on community projects. We want less subsidies for corporate expansion, and more grants for anyone to claim.
In short, the socialist influence the young people look for is for government to aim to improve life outside of work, rather than dumping resources into privately-managed companies that have primarily just increased inequality over the past few decades.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I was a die-hard conservative at 20. At 38, Iâ(TM)m pretty liberal.
I make plenty and own my home mortgage-free, but too much of the country is getting the short end of the stick.
I followed the same path- only less extreme. I've gone from right of centre to left of centre (stayed pretty centrist over all- even now).
I probably didn't have much of a heart at 20. I was pretty cold and rational. Getting older, being married, experiencing life, having children, I realised there is more to life than money and society matters. I gained empathy with age whereas many people get jaded and lose empathy.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
For instance, Sweden, Norway, and Finland are definitely socialist countries.
No they aren't. They are capitalist countries with slightly higher spending on social programs. If you call that "socialism" then the word has lost all meaning.
An American is more likely to work for the government than a Swede. The Swedish post office is privatized, and their education system is more privatized than America. They have LOWER per capita government spending on healthcare: America spends more money per person on Medicare+Medicaid+VA to cover 30% of the population than Sweden spends to cover 100%. Just because America's system is stupid and wasteful doesn't make it "less socialist".
Norway's Statoil is an example of socialism, but that is a special situation of a massive public resource owned by a small population. Very few other countries have that benefit.
Don't forget they protect that debt so that not even bankruptcy can discharge it.
They saw a problem (cost to do college was getting a bit too high and becoming too needed) and inadvertently poured gasoline on the problem by triggering a huge escalation of cost through trying to provide relief while compromising with the private sector (you can spend government money and the debts *will* be repaid, but the government will not step in to negotiate terms because *that* would just not be capitalist enough).
The state of college funding represents the worst blend of capitalism and government intervention. More government control over pricing or less government meddling in the loans would likely work better.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
My son just went into the military to avoid taking out loans for college. It's not for everybody, but he's dead set on getting an education without owing anybody anything.
We have kids getting questionable (literally) degrees in "social sciences" that cost them $100K+ in student loans, and then they're shocked that nobody other than McDonald's cares about those degrees.
My kids know the deal - get a real degree and get a real job. Or make a real job. Or become a plumber and work it. Whatever. The point is to get a marketable skill while you're young and make it into a lucrative career. This still works, as I know plenty of young folks doing it.
Do you have ESP?
Capitalism means that capital controls the means of production. Corporatism means that corporations control the capital. Corporatism is therefore simply a form of capitalism.
If you want to solve the problem of corporatism without throwing away the very real benefits of capitalism, you have to regulate corporations. They are not even strictly necessary things; everything they do could be done by co-ops, and co-ops of co-ops. And that would actually mean that the workers had a share and a say.
Capitalism is itself amoral. Humans, on the other hand, are frequently immoral. And since corporations are controlled by humans... well, you know.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I feel that capitalism works well for economy building,
Correct. Capitalism serves the needs of the masses so long as you are experiencing significant growth. When the growth slows or stops, as it must if we are to avoid destruction of the biosphere upon which we depend, pure capitalism has run its course. At that point, [more] socialism is needed in order to serve the masses, who are no longer offered a share of excess.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My wife is finishing up her BA in business right now - and did it for about $24K, total, over 6 years (part-time, evening studies). No need for big money spend to get a degree.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And yet, if you ask young people about this, they see that Denmark and similar countries have high living standards and rank at the top for happiness. Meanwhile in the US they see poverty, a massive gap between rich and poor, unaffordable education, unaffordable housing, unaffordable health care, and so forth. So is it any surprise that when given the poll that young people think about these issues?
Taxes are a matter of perspective. We tend to hate our relatively low taxes in the US because we see so littlle in return for our money, whereas in many high tax countries thre is a visible return of services back to the tax payers.
And also there are extremes. Denmark isn't engaged in autocratic centralized control of all facets of the economy. Yet some people spit at the word "socialism" as if it were equivalent to Stalinism or Maoism. We also don't have an extremist model of capitalism in the US either. Most modern countries are indeed a mix of some capitalist ideas and some socialist ideas. Denmark is clearly a capitalist state but it also has had social-democrat governments with strong social welfare programs - it's not 100% one way or the other.
Another problem is that "socialism" is being used by the right as an insult to apply to anything they don't like, exactly the same as the left using "fascism" to apply to anything they disagree with.
As a result of capitalism? Or "capitalism" as it's being practiced? We've had a long string of "you can't make an omelette without breaking an egg" followed by "mommy gubbamint! mommy gubbamint! wipe out my debts and save me from debt servitude, people want me to pay for the eggs I broke!" Take a look at the long list of Superfund sites as it grows year-to-year and tell me not one person died from any of those disaster zones.
One good way to partially fix the House of Representatives would be to change the way the Speaker is elected:
1. Allow Representatives to vote for ANY House member to be Speaker... by secret ballot, using a Condorcet method. No nominations, and members can't refuse if they win (otherwise, parties would just punish any representative from their party who accepted the position without their approval). Representatives can vote for as many or as few members as they like, and indicate different preferences for those they vote for (with everyone they don't vote for at all being treated as "last choice, with equal preference... so even someone who loyally supports his or her party's choice for Speaker would, at a minimum, have to vote for everyone in the party... assigning the party's choice as their #1 choice, everyone else in the party as their #2 choice, and everyone else as choice #3).
2. The top three candidates from step 1 run against each other, once again via secret ballot among House members. If one of them gets a simple majority, he/she's the new Speaker. Otherwise...
3. The top two candidates from step 2 have a run-off election (also by secret ballot). If one of them gets a simple majority, he/she's the new Speaker.
4. If, however, step 2 produces a result where the top candidate wins a plurality & the remaining two are tied, or if step 3 produces a tie, step 2 is repeated... but this time, under Condorcet rules (as per step 1).
Electing the Speaker this way wouldn't be likely to result in a Speaker who's from a party different from a majority of Representatives... but it WOULD effectively throw a monkey wrench into either Party's ability to enforce party discipline on Representatives, and quite probably result in the election of Speakers who are absolutely, positively NOT the first choice of the Party's own leadership. A Speaker who gets to be TOO heavy-handed about bringing representatives in line would be unlikely to win again, because he'd ultimately piss off too many members of his own party. By keeping the votes for Speaker secret, Representatives could freely vote against those who've pissed them off or antagonized them without fear of reprisal or punishment by the Party.
I think Americans need to travel abroad more and get a broader perspective. :) oki, I exagerate
That is problematic.
No guns
Driving at 18, not 16
Drinking from 16 on, not 21 (even in public on a bench in a park)
Having sex from 14, not 18
Walking to school
No police sirens all day long
Working and afordable public transport
No elevstors in most houses
Food that actually tastes
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I'm leaning toward simply being wrong and away from being outright-evil, aside from a few specific cases of pathological psychopaths who probably also believe themselves to be the great visionaries who are doing what is necessary.
Economics sounds like bullshit when it's correct. Microeconomics shows you can escape poverty by going out, working hard, and starting a business. Macroeconomics shows jobs come from consumer demand, and opening a business in a poverty area either won't work or will take jobs away from other people in that area and cause no net-gain of jobs. Macroeconomics also shows bringing jobs back to America by closing off trade results in huge losses of American jobs as you open a factory for 50,000 workers making a good at a higher price than the 150,000,000 American workers were paying, ultimately losing shipping and retail jobs, resulting in poorer Americans overall and 90,000 jobs lost, a net 40,000 loss in American jobs.
When you work out the economics, you find that social welfare programs make the economy overall more-productive, stabilizing the consumer base and increasing revenue streams. Those higher taxes on the rich end up making the rich richer, and giving money to poor and unemployed people causes them to get jobs. If you don't work out the whole economic machine, it all looks obviously wrong.
I assume that conservatives are in general just wrong about things, not pretending they believe in bullshit economics about tax cuts and eliminating welfare.
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All of you here on Slashdot came from privileged backgrounds.
Really? My parents qualified for foodstamps when I was a child. I qualified for foodstamps twice as an adult. I got a college education, but I lived at home, worked a job, and paid 100% of my tuition myself (it was possible because I did it before the massive tuition inflation took hold). I didn't even get any grants. Just student loans, which took the full 10 years to pay off thanks to the DotBomb.
I know, everyone thinks that got where they are by 100% of their own efforts but if you were truly honest with yourselves, you'd realize how lucky you are.
Lucky? If I was lucky, I'd be a rockstar, live in hilltop houses, drivin' fifteen cars, and the girls would come easy and the drugs would come cheap.
Instead I live in suburbia. I have the suburban lawn and the two car garage my parents had (most of the time).
Having said all that, I'll respond to the GGP post. People are not liberal at 25. People are what their parents were when they're 25. You get your politics from your parents as assuredly as you get your religion from them. It takes time to shuck either one of them off and learn enough to know better. Me, I'm over 40 now, and like the sibling post, my house is paid off. And I'm fairly liberal too, especially because I know damn well social services are good and useful because I used them, for a while, and if the hard-scrabble all-consequences-are-yours-alone-to-deal-with "conservative" assholes had their way, I'd have starved to death at 27. It's a stupid fucking philosophy that would result in enormous amounts of preventable tragedy, for no benefit whatsoever, and humanity has never ever pursued it, in all of history, because humans have empathy, and these sociopathic little shits should stop wishing for people to get what they deserve—they just might get theirs.
Mostly, because Condorcet logic is really hard to explain to normal people, and even HARDER to pitch to the media as something that can be presented via soundbites and headlines. My hybrid scheme makes the first round a relatively low-key internal affair for the House of Representatives, then gives the media 3 candidates to talk about & handles the Speaker's election in a relatively straightforward (by American standards) manner beyond that.
The main benefit of using Condorcet rules for round 1, and having the entire vote for Speaker via secret ballot, is ensuring that whomever ends up winning as speaker probably WON'T be the preferred first choice of either party... and that any Speaker who pisses off too many Representatives by getting overly heavy-handed about enforcing party discipline won't be re-elected as Speaker.
There's a second reform I can think of that would severely limit the power of party leaders over individual representatives: whenever a bill is defeated, there's an immediate and automatic secret "no confidence" vote among representatives. If the Speaker loses the vote, a new Speaker is elected immediately (under the same rules as above), and the newly-elected Speaker is not bound by the previous Speaker's committee appointments or policies.
This would put a stop to Speakers who ram bills through the house with single-vote victories by putting the Speaker's position in EXTREME peril if he allows a vote to proceed without being REALLY confident of a solid victory. It might work once... or twice... but eventually, s/he's going to piss off one Representative too many, the bill will be defeated, and the Speaker will be defeated as well. Every Speaker would have to choose between loyalty to his/her party, and desire to keep being Speaker. The relative power of parties to dictate legislation would probably ebb and flow, but any party that pushed TOO hard to control its Speaker would find itself having to continually re-establish its power over new Speakers -- each of whom would be harder to control than the last.
There's a hugely bizarre attitude toward "socialized medicine." In a capitalist country, one can argue having the LARGEST number of people healthy and able to work is best for the economy, so EVERYONE should have access to healthcare. Not unreasonable. One of the problems we have with medicine is that it's outrageously expensive for no reason why anyone can, or will, tell. Why? Why should a 2 day hospital stay where the only thing you get is 6 IVs of (not expensive) drugs over that time cost almost 20K? Why? When the room isn't clean, and you question whether the staff have adequately washed hands before coming in, etc. Capitalism should encourage efficiency and all I see in healthcare is...the opposite.
Sure they are. They could charge individually for their services. We don't need protection or law enforcement all the time; it could always be privatized.
I am curious about how other age ranges feel about capitalism right now too.
The funny thing is that capitalism is still the best method for managing resources since the inputs and outputs are decentralized; however, once everything gets centralized like it is right now, I would have to ask if it is really capitalism or if it has morphed into something else.
TL;DR, asking today's youth about capitalism is absurd since we do not really have capitalism right now. Maybe a form of corporate fascism since companies seem to be able to buy laws with impunity.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen