Spectacular failures are Somalia, Hailti and many African countries. Slow failures: Shah era Iran, India and the third world.
Thought so. You have no actual examples of capitalism failing. The problem with every single one of those examples is that you don't actually have private ownership of capital when the capital can be readily stolen by the rulers of those societies. Legal protection from arbitrary seizure is one of the key aspects of capitalism.
We now call it socialism and remark at how awesome Sweden, Norway, Canada are. Even we don't want to be capitalists. Capitalists will let someone die because they don't have good enough health insurance and capitalism creates 1%ers and 99%ers.
I'll just note that currently her dystopian novel is closer to the mark than other classic dystopian novels of those times (such as 1984 or Brave New World). I think a big part of the problem is simply that the people who she villainizes in novels like Atlas Shrugged have their counterparts in shallow, greedy people out there today.
A politician who uses military power just to steal some TVs really is the sort of living, two-dimensional cardboard cutout that would fit nicely in an Rand tome.
There are many places as well where capitalism has failed miserably and resulted in anarchy as well.
Please, give an example or two.
The recent success of China would say communism can work though their approach is to use a combination of free market and state ownership not for a political fantasy philosophy but economic metrics.
They don't do communism any more.
Even if the Chinese implement more free market policies and we let our government grow bigger and reach the same portion of government size, we will call ourselves capitalists and China communists.
Rhetoric doesn't match reality. Film at 11. I have this vague suspicion that what you consider "capitalist" societies won't end up being such.
The other replier noted that the US doesn't actually have a TV industry. But ignoring that, you still have that Venezuela didn't have a TV industry either, so it wasn't competing with other TV manufacturers. Now, it doesn't have a TV market either. That makes the situation a net loss for TV manufacturers.
The real amusement here is that the earlier poster demonstrates greater faith in capitalism than capitalists have. Mandate that TVs be sold belong cost and capitalists will find a way to make a profit on that. That's a huge faith in capitalism that even capitalists don't have.
I wasn't speaking of the fraud associated with this particular operation, but rather creating the ability to conduct high frequency trades on a commodity where it is physically impossible to achieve that frequency of trading on the underlying market.
The thing to ask here is whether Chicago State University has agreed to some sort of contract that requires it to honor "academic freedom". As it turns out, in order to be accredited, the university had to agree to certain standards of academic freedom. They are accredited with the Higher Learning Commission. From the link:
North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the Higher Learning Commission
The current version of this commissionâ(TM)s Handbook of Accreditation includes shared governance under the first of its five âoeCriteria for Accreditation,â specifically, under core component 1d, which states that âoethe organizationâ(TM)s governance and administrative structures promote effective leadership and support collaborative processes that enable the organization to fulfill its mission.â The explanatory paragraphs that follow describe shared governance (without defining it) as âoea long-standing attribute of most colleges and universities in the United States,â adding the qualification, âoewhatever the governance and administrative structures, they need to enhance the organizationâ(TM)s capacity to fulfill its mission.â Among the âoeexamples of evidenceâ that might indicate compliance with this core component is this: âoeFaculty and other academic leaders share responsibility for the coherence of the curriculum and the integrity of academic processes.â Under criterion 2a (âoeThe organization realistically prepares for a future shaped by multiple societal and economic trendsâ) explanatory paragraphs describe shared governance as serving âoeas a check and balance to ensure academic integrity.â
While the North Central commissionâ(TM)s handbook does not employ the phrase âoeacademic freedomâ under criterion 4a (âoeThe organization demonstrates, through the actions of its board, administrators, students, faculty, and staff, that it values a life of learningâ), it does include the following âoeexample of evidenceâ relevant to this bedrock concept: âoeThe board has approved and disseminated statements supporting freedom of inquiry for the organizationâ(TM)s students, faculty, and staff, and honors those statements in its practices.â
Again, I see no actual rebuttal of my original arguments. Labor clearly scales as has been demonstrated by industries much larger than wind turbine manufacture and installation. And it isn't at all "anti-capitalist" to try to get more in a trade.
For stock market high frequency trade opponents, note this please. Here, we have a currency where it is physically impossible to trade at high frequency, yet speculators got around that obstacle.
Ok, so I see two things to comment on. First, labor remains highly scalable despite your fantasy assertions to the contrary. There are plenty of thriving large scale industries which happen to be unionized such as auto manufacturing or construction.
Second, what's "anti-capitalist" about demanding more for something you have like labor or capital? It's a natural tendency of anyone with something to trade to try to get more for what they have to offer.
It still was a failure in the political system. That is also important because that sort of failure can happen with other human activities that also can't be separated from the political system.
"Free" isn't free in this case. Even if piracy weren't a crime, you're not going to get support for a pirated product.
And if the software maker or another party covertly puts a pirated copy out with malicious software embedded in it, then you have no legal recourse (unless they leave enough evidence behind to identify who released the pirated code).
And if they install a hundred of these each month instead of just one a month, then you get the output of a nuclear plant inside of six months. You're speaking of "churning" out something which is easy to parallelize.
And let's look at the actual economics here. Suppose we go with your original assertion that the team installs one wind turbine every month. That one small team creates a nuclear plant's worth in ten years of operations. An actual nuclear plant would require a far larger workforce and capital outlays.
In addition, the team would be very experienced with most members, except for the newcomers, having dozens of successful installs under their belt. There also would be learning curve effects for both the manufacturer and installer making both faster and cheaper as more are successfully installed.
I don't actually see evidence that this was intended to be a protest against Valentine's Day, but rather that a bunch of bored college guys were looking for something to do in November.
That may be the case. But spending the money has to make some economic sense, subsidy or not.
Well, that is the point of a subsidy - to change decisions so that some other choice makes more economic sense.
German law allows land lords to pass on the cost of the KfW loan to their renters, even if the cost of the loan exceeds the cost of energy being saved. So a lot of property owners are using the KfW to subsidise modernising their rentals and then raising the rent accordingly.
That's a classic unintended consequence. Sounds like there's enough going wrong that those policies will be changed in the next few years. I wonder though if the replacements and fixes for these policies will end up being just as bad.
Nearside was shielded from most further bombardment by the Earth
The Earth isn't much of a shield. The vast majority of the junk that passes inside the orbit of the Moon misses the Earth. Really, if a side is sheltered to any degree from impacts, it would be the trailing side of the Moon. Googling around, that results in an interesting theory from a Mike Martinez::
It would really be interesting to find out why the back-side is so different from the front side facing earth. My own 'little ' theory is that the back side was once the leading side of the moon, the side facing orbital direction very early on---and when the moon was much closer to the earth. I believe that the moon was possibly heading into heavy 'traffic' on it's orbital swings at a much faster pace--maybe taking only days to complete one orbit instead of it's 29 days now. Later on--maybe another few 100 million years or more. other massive hits on the moon occurred--swinging it slowly to it's present position.
My pet theory is that the early Moon was in a situation similar to Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Here, Enceladus experiences liquid water volcanism due to the stress heating from moving towards and away from Saturn in its almost circular orbit. In particular, this has resulted in the "Tiger Stripes", a region of substantial volcanism and very new surface (some parts being less than a thousand years old amd considerably warming that the rest of the moon's surface).
Perhaps the lunar mares were at one time the most stressed regions of the Moon while it was cooling much as the "Tiger Stripes" are thought to be for Enceladus.
The sad part is that we're not using some great portion of the profits from oil to work on alternatives. When we run out of oil or its environmental effects become so deleterious that we can no longer justify its use, we will have squandered vast amounts of money and resources.
The implication here is that there is no better use for those profits on oil than to find alternatives to oil. Or rather I should say, to find more alternatives than the vast assortment we already have. I think that is deeply in error.
The problem is threefold. First, we already have huge investments in alternatives to oil and related industries. Second, oil remains too cheap for the alternatives to be viable and isn't sufficiently harmful to preclude its use on your other stated grounds. Third, when oil does increase in price, then those uneconomical alternatives become economical. A simple market change which will inevitably occur under the stated conditions fixes this perceived problem.
Actually, those newcomers are not getting the American Dream. They're getting bread and circuses, trickled down by the owners at the top.
We can reason instead of just saying things. As it turns out, most multinational businesses pay with money instead of food and entertainment. That can be spent on far more than the "bread and circuses". So the employees are getting more than what you claim.
Later versions are variations of that, but it's only really a realistic dream in a rapidly expanding economy - in a slow-growing one, even if it was a perfect meritocracy, the fact is that most people are average and won't ever make the cut. The same goes for the US itself: just an average country, no more opportunities than anywhere else, no manifest destiny to chase. And that's a bitter pill to swallow.
You don't have to "make the cut" in order to be economically independent or better yourself.
An employee depends on their employer far more than the employer depends on any one employee. It is a relationship of subservience, where the employer dictates the terms and the employee has, at best, a chance to choose who to serve - and nowadays even that is getting unlikely, with the job market being what it is.
So what? All I see here is a bunch of excuses and the same zero sum game thinking that has screwed up so much of the developed world.
Keep in mind that developed world labor is several times more expensive than developing world labor. For a lot of industries, that's good enough reason to move the industry to the cheaper labor. All those newcomers are getting the American dream.
Rather than deal with this problem by improving the value of labor, the US and other developed world countries have set up a bunch of counterproductive policies to try to protect the labor that they have. These generally have the features of making labor more expensive and harder to use while increasing the power of large businesses (who can both navigate more effectively the sea of regulation and bribe appropriate politicians to get favorable regulation passed).
Frankly, a society which doesn't offer me opportunities for growth or allows me the freedom to do my own thing, just isn't that much value to me. Most societies can offer roads, police, and fire protection. The US's special thing was that it was a place where you could improve your lot in life.
I don't consider the "American dream" a myth as much as a goal to work towards. And it is on this point, that I find myself in agreement. If there is no longer worthy society-wide goals to work towards and no longer any notable benefit to being part of a larger union, then why do it? One can't rule out a break up of the US, should the reason present itself.
This also means that most people will never be economically independent, no matter how hard or smart they work.
Depends what you mean by "economically independent"? If it means, you personally make everything you ever need, then it's not a particularly useful definition since even in the hunter/gatherer days, some reliance on others was necessary. If it means that you can do work in exchange for the things you want and need, then almost everyone can be economically independent.
Slashdot Mirror
Spectacular failures are Somalia, Hailti and many African countries. Slow failures: Shah era Iran, India and the third world.
Thought so. You have no actual examples of capitalism failing. The problem with every single one of those examples is that you don't actually have private ownership of capital when the capital can be readily stolen by the rulers of those societies. Legal protection from arbitrary seizure is one of the key aspects of capitalism.
We now call it socialism and remark at how awesome Sweden, Norway, Canada are. Even we don't want to be capitalists. Capitalists will let someone die because they don't have good enough health insurance and capitalism creates 1%ers and 99%ers.
Health insurance != health care != not dying.
I'll just note that currently her dystopian novel is closer to the mark than other classic dystopian novels of those times (such as 1984 or Brave New World). I think a big part of the problem is simply that the people who she villainizes in novels like Atlas Shrugged have their counterparts in shallow, greedy people out there today.
A politician who uses military power just to steal some TVs really is the sort of living, two-dimensional cardboard cutout that would fit nicely in an Rand tome.
It is not the philosophy but the implementation.
The implementation of communism has never worked.
There are many places as well where capitalism has failed miserably and resulted in anarchy as well.
Please, give an example or two.
The recent success of China would say communism can work though their approach is to use a combination of free market and state ownership not for a political fantasy philosophy but economic metrics.
They don't do communism any more.
Even if the Chinese implement more free market policies and we let our government grow bigger and reach the same portion of government size, we will call ourselves capitalists and China communists.
Rhetoric doesn't match reality. Film at 11. I have this vague suspicion that what you consider "capitalist" societies won't end up being such.
The other replier noted that the US doesn't actually have a TV industry. But ignoring that, you still have that Venezuela didn't have a TV industry either, so it wasn't competing with other TV manufacturers. Now, it doesn't have a TV market either. That makes the situation a net loss for TV manufacturers.
The real amusement here is that the earlier poster demonstrates greater faith in capitalism than capitalists have. Mandate that TVs be sold belong cost and capitalists will find a way to make a profit on that. That's a huge faith in capitalism that even capitalists don't have.
I wasn't speaking of the fraud associated with this particular operation, but rather creating the ability to conduct high frequency trades on a commodity where it is physically impossible to achieve that frequency of trading on the underlying market.
North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, the Higher Learning Commission
The current version of this commissionâ(TM)s Handbook of Accreditation includes shared governance under the first of its five âoeCriteria for Accreditation,â specifically, under core component 1d, which states that âoethe organizationâ(TM)s governance and administrative structures promote effective leadership and support collaborative processes that enable the organization to fulfill its mission.â The explanatory paragraphs that follow describe shared governance (without defining it) as âoea long-standing attribute of most colleges and universities in the United States,â adding the qualification, âoewhatever the governance and administrative structures, they need to enhance the organizationâ(TM)s capacity to fulfill its mission.â Among the âoeexamples of evidenceâ that might indicate compliance with this core component is this: âoeFaculty and other academic leaders share responsibility for the coherence of the curriculum and the integrity of academic processes.â Under criterion 2a (âoeThe organization realistically prepares for a future shaped by multiple societal and economic trendsâ) explanatory paragraphs describe shared governance as serving âoeas a check and balance to ensure academic integrity.â
While the North Central commissionâ(TM)s handbook does not employ the phrase âoeacademic freedomâ under criterion 4a (âoeThe organization demonstrates, through the actions of its board, administrators, students, faculty, and staff, that it values a life of learningâ), it does include the following âoeexample of evidenceâ relevant to this bedrock concept: âoeThe board has approved and disseminated statements supporting freedom of inquiry for the organizationâ(TM)s students, faculty, and staff, and honors those statements in its practices.â
Again, I see no actual rebuttal of my original arguments. Labor clearly scales as has been demonstrated by industries much larger than wind turbine manufacture and installation. And it isn't at all "anti-capitalist" to try to get more in a trade.
For stock market high frequency trade opponents, note this please. Here, we have a currency where it is physically impossible to trade at high frequency, yet speculators got around that obstacle.
Ok, so I see two things to comment on. First, labor remains highly scalable despite your fantasy assertions to the contrary. There are plenty of thriving large scale industries which happen to be unionized such as auto manufacturing or construction.
Second, what's "anti-capitalist" about demanding more for something you have like labor or capital? It's a natural tendency of anyone with something to trade to try to get more for what they have to offer.
So you scale the infrastructure to move and manufacture *and* install the largest turbine ever built by 100x just like that? In the ocean?
So what part of this can't scale? Some law of physics that we can have only so many barges in the universe?
It still was a failure in the political system. That is also important because that sort of failure can happen with other human activities that also can't be separated from the political system.
How do you price fairly to beat free?
"Free" isn't free in this case. Even if piracy weren't a crime, you're not going to get support for a pirated product.
And if the software maker or another party covertly puts a pirated copy out with malicious software embedded in it, then you have no legal recourse (unless they leave enough evidence behind to identify who released the pirated code).
And if they install a hundred of these each month instead of just one a month, then you get the output of a nuclear plant inside of six months. You're speaking of "churning" out something which is easy to parallelize.
And let's look at the actual economics here. Suppose we go with your original assertion that the team installs one wind turbine every month. That one small team creates a nuclear plant's worth in ten years of operations. An actual nuclear plant would require a far larger workforce and capital outlays.
In addition, the team would be very experienced with most members, except for the newcomers, having dozens of successful installs under their belt. There also would be learning curve effects for both the manufacturer and installer making both faster and cheaper as more are successfully installed.
But that was due to a failure in the political system not some problem of nuclear power.
I don't actually see evidence that this was intended to be a protest against Valentine's Day, but rather that a bunch of bored college guys were looking for something to do in November.
That may be the case. But spending the money has to make some economic sense, subsidy or not.
Well, that is the point of a subsidy - to change decisions so that some other choice makes more economic sense.
German law allows land lords to pass on the cost of the KfW loan to their renters, even if the cost of the loan exceeds the cost of energy being saved. So a lot of property owners are using the KfW to subsidise modernising their rentals and then raising the rent accordingly.
That's a classic unintended consequence. Sounds like there's enough going wrong that those policies will be changed in the next few years. I wonder though if the replacements and fixes for these policies will end up being just as bad.
I didn't put in the link for the Mike Martinez comment.
Nearside was shielded from most further bombardment by the Earth
The Earth isn't much of a shield. The vast majority of the junk that passes inside the orbit of the Moon misses the Earth. Really, if a side is sheltered to any degree from impacts, it would be the trailing side of the Moon. Googling around, that results in an interesting theory from a Mike Martinez::
It would really be interesting to find out why the back-side is so different from the front side facing earth. My own 'little ' theory is that the back side was once the leading side of the moon, the side facing orbital direction very early on---and when the moon was much closer to the earth. I believe that the moon was possibly heading into heavy 'traffic' on it's orbital swings at a much faster pace--maybe taking only days to complete one orbit instead of it's 29 days now. Later on--maybe another few 100 million years or more. other massive hits on the moon occurred--swinging it slowly to it's present position.
My pet theory is that the early Moon was in a situation similar to Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Here, Enceladus experiences liquid water volcanism due to the stress heating from moving towards and away from Saturn in its almost circular orbit. In particular, this has resulted in the "Tiger Stripes", a region of substantial volcanism and very new surface (some parts being less than a thousand years old amd considerably warming that the rest of the moon's surface).
Perhaps the lunar mares were at one time the most stressed regions of the Moon while it was cooling much as the "Tiger Stripes" are thought to be for Enceladus.
The sad part is that we're not using some great portion of the profits from oil to work on alternatives. When we run out of oil or its environmental effects become so deleterious that we can no longer justify its use, we will have squandered vast amounts of money and resources.
The implication here is that there is no better use for those profits on oil than to find alternatives to oil. Or rather I should say, to find more alternatives than the vast assortment we already have. I think that is deeply in error.
The problem is threefold. First, we already have huge investments in alternatives to oil and related industries. Second, oil remains too cheap for the alternatives to be viable and isn't sufficiently harmful to preclude its use on your other stated grounds. Third, when oil does increase in price, then those uneconomical alternatives become economical. A simple market change which will inevitably occur under the stated conditions fixes this perceived problem.
The subsidy, if there is one, is that most KfW loans are interest free for the first 10 years.
I assure you that is a subsidy. Anything given to you of monetary value is a subsidy.
Actually, those newcomers are not getting the American Dream. They're getting bread and circuses, trickled down by the owners at the top.
We can reason instead of just saying things. As it turns out, most multinational businesses pay with money instead of food and entertainment. That can be spent on far more than the "bread and circuses". So the employees are getting more than what you claim.
"Starship troopers is obviously satire because..."
They were roto rooting Bug pimples at the end of the movie.
Later versions are variations of that, but it's only really a realistic dream in a rapidly expanding economy - in a slow-growing one, even if it was a perfect meritocracy, the fact is that most people are average and won't ever make the cut. The same goes for the US itself: just an average country, no more opportunities than anywhere else, no manifest destiny to chase. And that's a bitter pill to swallow.
You don't have to "make the cut" in order to be economically independent or better yourself.
An employee depends on their employer far more than the employer depends on any one employee. It is a relationship of subservience, where the employer dictates the terms and the employee has, at best, a chance to choose who to serve - and nowadays even that is getting unlikely, with the job market being what it is.
So what? All I see here is a bunch of excuses and the same zero sum game thinking that has screwed up so much of the developed world.
Keep in mind that developed world labor is several times more expensive than developing world labor. For a lot of industries, that's good enough reason to move the industry to the cheaper labor. All those newcomers are getting the American dream.
Rather than deal with this problem by improving the value of labor, the US and other developed world countries have set up a bunch of counterproductive policies to try to protect the labor that they have. These generally have the features of making labor more expensive and harder to use while increasing the power of large businesses (who can both navigate more effectively the sea of regulation and bribe appropriate politicians to get favorable regulation passed).
Frankly, a society which doesn't offer me opportunities for growth or allows me the freedom to do my own thing, just isn't that much value to me. Most societies can offer roads, police, and fire protection. The US's special thing was that it was a place where you could improve your lot in life.
I don't consider the "American dream" a myth as much as a goal to work towards. And it is on this point, that I find myself in agreement. If there is no longer worthy society-wide goals to work towards and no longer any notable benefit to being part of a larger union, then why do it? One can't rule out a break up of the US, should the reason present itself.
This also means that most people will never be economically independent, no matter how hard or smart they work.
Depends what you mean by "economically independent"? If it means, you personally make everything you ever need, then it's not a particularly useful definition since even in the hunter/gatherer days, some reliance on others was necessary. If it means that you can do work in exchange for the things you want and need, then almost everyone can be economically independent.