You Americans better make Bush win this election

[Sabastian]

Ok, so I haven't read your entire post yet, but only the last paragraph. And that is indeed something that gets me thinking; what will happen when capitalism has created a relative equality between nations (since that is what I personally believe it can do, rather than create equality within nations which is what Humus is talking about, if I understood him correctly), and the economy is relaitvly evenely spread? This is obviously a kind of utopian scenario, but nontheless it is sort of the 'goal' of capitalism. Can capitalism work in an equal society, or does it require that there is inequality present? And as you said, are we really prepared for an equal world?

Well I think that a global Keynesian model would slow failures of capitalism from slipping into a more collectivist model of course. Beyond that I don't know. We don't know what sorts of technological advances will effect the market and possibly help to create equal outcomes in the future. Of course improving the standard of life will always be a prerogative. Inequalities will always exist in human life. Capitalism requires a certain degree of inequity of incomes I think. Will it always be that way? I don't know. One thing I think is inevitable though, granted it won't be anytime soon, is that capitalism will run its course. What happens after that is a good question.

 

[oi]

I kinda feel like one of those old guys on Discovery talking about space or something. "We simply don't know what's out there, waiting to be found. Hopefully, the future will bring answers." And I'm not sure I like it a whole lot hehe.

 

[Sabastian]

I kinda feel like one of those old guys on Discovery talking about space or something. "We simply don't know what's out there, waiting to be found. Hopefully, the future will bring answers." And I'm not sure I like it a whole lot hehe.

lol, yeah but predicting the future is quite difficult. I am not sure if I like its prospects a whole lot ether.

 

[Humus]

However, this also opens the door for institutionalized prejudice. For instance, you currently live in Sweden, within the EU, whose main economic idea is raising economic walls against those parts of the world that aren't in a strong position to negotiate their terms for trade.

Actually, putting up trade barriers and other protectivistic measures are rather uncapitalistic. In the book I mentioned earlier the author makes good arguments why the EU needs to remove the outer economic wall. What it "protects" us from is really lower prices and better products, which it's hard to understand why we need to protect ourself from. The gain in a export/import model is not on the export side as it's often thought, but rather when we import things. We're really on plus if we could import loads of stuff for the price of exporting nearly nothing. The EU outer walls tries to increase our export, while keeping import low, which is a great way to ensure we get as little purchasing power as possible for our work.

Capitalism has major benefits, but it bears remembering that there are no morals in the system. A human being that was completely focused on a single purpose, with no regard for people around him other than as a means for furthering that purpose and inclined to dominate or destroy those who stand in the way of said purpose, would be a classical psycopath. Yet that is exactly how corporations function. Capitalism may offer a good set of trade-offs as far as economic systems go, but it is not necessarily a good model for how to build a society, nor an ideal principle for all organisations or purposes.

True, which is also a good argument why capitalism needs to be complemented by laws defining the moral. A completely unregulated capitalism, aka darwinistic capitalism, is not the ideal. What we want is laws that maximizes the benefits of capitalism while minimizing bad behavior.

 

[Humus]

I can agree to that as a nice theory. But as you said, the problem is that people do care about sex, religion and race. And call me a pessimist, but as the world stands now I don't think that capitalism as a process is enough to remove the prejudice by itself. I mean just look at the US, which most likely is the most capitalistic nation today, and the gay marriage debate or the lack of female representation at top spots in politics as two examples. Or that one fifth of the worlds population lives in extreme poverty, and that 70% of those are women. Add to that that the income of the worlds 200 richest people reached 1 trillion USD in 1999, and that the combined income of 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries was 146 billion USD. And matters such as that since 1980 more than 1.3 trillion USD has been transfered from less developed countries to more developed countries in debt interest payment - without actually decreasing the size of the debt.

So as I said, I'm sceptical towards that capitalism by itself can solve the inequality, I rather think that some other yet unidentified force is needed to remove or at least decrease inequality before capitalism can do it's job as was intended in theory.

Well, it won't entirely remove inequalities. They will always be there as long as we have people acting according to their own opinions and moral and since people can always inherit capital and reputation from their parents. But it will reduce it. In the end though, the most important thing is not the distribution. My living standard is in absolute terms, not relative to somebody else. Just because someone else earns twice what I get doesn't reduce my living standard. The main point of capitalism is that it lifts all people, both rich and poor get richer.

Regarding third world countries, I know it's not not PC to say it, but it's mostly their own faults that they are poor, or at least the fault of their governments. The book I mentioned does an indepth comparisons of data between various third world countries, and the common factor among those who are rising up from poverty is that they have deregulated their markets and adopted capitalism. These countries are seeing remarkable growth that far exceeds the growth in developed countries. So the gap between these third world countries and the developed world decreases. But the gap to countries like North Korea is increasing though, but that's just because these countries have stalled due to being ruled by dictatorships or simply because some countries are discouraging enterprice by enourmous amounts of bureaucracy, in some countries it can take years to get legal right to start a company. Of course the antiglobalisation movements like to compare to this latter group instead of the steadily growing group of reformed third world countries.

I'm quite optimistic about the future. If we can only get the third world countries to reform, and of course reduce the debt burden on them, then we could even see world poverty removed in our life time.

 

[Humus]

The problem is though this globalization movement greatly devalues the work we do in our countries sense on a global scale we are vastly overpaid for the work we do. For this reason I think globalization should occur but carefully as to not create a drop in standards of living so that we are also forced to compete for work that pays as low as 2 dollars a day not that this would happen of course but I use the extreme example to convey the point.

I don't think this effect will be very large. While it opens for competition, it also opens another market. IT companies may be outsource to other countries, but as these countries' economies grow their demand for products from us will increase, and soon enough will be enough to drive enough new tech companies to replace the lost ones.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I don't believe world poverty is a problem that will ever get sold.
There's just far too many people in power that simply don't care about how the people in their country are living.

North Korea is a good example of such a country where the leader simply doesn't care about aiding his citizens, instead the leader focuses on military might while the normal people starve.

I'm quite optimistic about the future. If we can only get the third world countries to reform, and of course reduce the debt burden on them, then we could even see world poverty removed in our life time.

 

[ByteMe]

North Korea is a good example of such a country where the leader simply doesn't care about aiding his citizens, instead the leader focuses on military might while the normal people starve.

Sometime within the next few years the USA once again will clean up the mess that is NK. China and Russia should be bitch slapped for allowing NK to get to what it is now.

 

[Sabastian]

What it "protects" us from is really lower prices and better products, which it's hard to understand why we need to protect ourself from. The gain in a export/import model is not on the export side as it's often thought, but rather when we import things. We're really on plus if we could import loads of stuff for the price of exporting nearly nothing. The EU outer walls tries to increase our export, while keeping import low, which is a great way to ensure we get as little purchasing power as possible for our work.

True, which is also a good argument why capitalism needs to be complemented by laws defining the moral. A completely unregulated capitalism, aka darwinistic capitalism, is not the ideal. What we want is laws that maximizes the benefits of capitalism while minimizing bad behavior.

I don't know of any countries that have a completely unregulated system, is this a realistic fear or fear-mongering? I am not suggesting here that you personally are fear-mongering Humus I am only questioning the validity of an argument that uses an unregulated market as something we ought to fear?

My living standard is in absolute terms, not relative to somebody else. Just because someone else earns twice what I get doesn't reduce my living standard. The main point of capitalism is that it lifts all people, both rich and poor get richer.

Regarding third world countries, I know it's not not PC to say it, but it's mostly their own faults that they are poor, or at least the fault of their governments. The book I mentioned does an indepth comparisons of data between various third world countries, and the common factor among those who are rising up from poverty is that they have deregulated their markets and adopted capitalism. These countries are seeing remarkable growth that far exceeds the growth in developed countries.

some countries are discouraging enterprice by enourmous amounts of bureaucracy, in some countries it can take years to get legal right to start a company. Of course the antiglobalisation movements like to compare to this latter group instead of the steadily growing group of reformed third world countries.

My sakes, I am really liking much of what you are saying here Humus, allot.

I don't think this effect will be very large. While it opens for competition, it also opens another market. IT companies may be outsource to other countries, but as these countries' economies grow their demand for products from us will increase, and soon enough will be enough to drive enough new tech companies to replace the lost ones.

Yeah, I only think that the problem is aggravated by it. I don't think it will stop globalization from occurring. As it is, I don't think the momentum of a globalized market can be stopped. There would have to be considerably stronger political will on the national scene then there currently is.

EDIT:Thanks for this link Humus. http://www.johannorberg.net/ .. His latest book is interesting.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

You're right, it will end up in a blood bath in the end. Just like everything else.

North Korea is a good example of such a country where the leader simply doesn't care about aiding his citizens, instead the leader focuses on military might while the normal people starve.

Sometime within the next few years the USA once again will clean up the mess that is NK. China and Russia should be bitch slapped for allowing NK to get to what it is now.

 

[ByteMe]

You're right, it will end up in a blood bath in the end. Just like everything else.

Do you think any more will die than are starving right now?

 

[epicstruggle]

You're right, it will end up in a blood bath in the end. Just like everything else.

Where exactly has there been a blood bath???

later,
epic

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

You're right, it will end up in a blood bath in the end. Just like everything else.

Where exactly has there been a blood bath?

later,
epic

Err, don't you know about the war on terror?, Iraq?, Bosnia? Then there's the future.
Dark ages, WW2, WW1 just to give you an example of "Where exactly has there been a blood bath?".

Correction: Bloodbaths occur world wide.

Do you think any more will die than are starving right now?

Most likely more will die over time if Kim is allowed to rule than if war occured between the USA and Nth Korea.

 

[Humus]

I don't believe world poverty is a problem that will ever get sold.
There's just far too many people in power that simply don't care about how the people in their country are living.

North Korea is a good example of such a country where the leader simply doesn't care about aiding his citizens, instead the leader focuses on military might while the normal people starve.

The good news though is that the number of such countries is decreasing. There's still a long way to go, but I'm optimistic.

 

[Humus]

I don't know of any countries that have a completely unregulated system, is this a realistic fear or fear-mongering? I am not suggesting here that you personally are fear-mongering Humus I am only questioning the validity of an argument that uses an unregulated market as something we ought to fear?

There are no countries with completely unregulated markets, which is a good thing. Nor do I think we should fear that it might happen somewhere. I'm just saying that while capitalism in itself doesn't have moral as such, we do have laws that define the moral. The market shouldn't be more regulated than neccesary though. Not to mention also that we need a basic set of laws for capitalism to even work, laws that protect our right to private property and right to conduct business.

 

[epicstruggle]

You're right, it will end up in a blood bath in the end. Just like everything else.

Where exactly has there been a blood bath?

later,
epic

Err, don't you know about the war on terror?, Iraq?, Bosnia? Then there's the future.
Dark ages, WW2, WW1 just to give you an example of "Where exactly has there been a blood bath?".

Correction: Bloodbaths occur world wide.

How has the war on terror been a blood bath? to my knowledge its hasnt had many casualties compared to say WW1 or WW2. Maybe your not using blood bath correctly.

EDIT: here is the definition of blood bath:
Savage, indiscriminate killing; a massacre.

So WW1, WW2 clearly werent blood baths, it was a war. Im sure there were battles within the war that might be considered that.

Do you think any more will die than are starving right now?

Most likely more will die over time if Kim is allowed to rule than if war occured between the USA and Nth Korea.

Thats true. Although we really dont know what the average north korean would do in a war situation. They are brain washed, but will the chance of freedom cause them to uprise. Who knows? Anyways, this is similar to the Iraq thing. More people will live without sadam in power than with him in power. So for me the war was worth it.

later,
epic

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

So WW1, WW2 clearly werent blood baths, it was a war. Im sure there were battles within the war that might be considered that.

So the deaths of all those Jews isn't considered a massacre?

How has the war on terror been a blood bath?

How many innocents have terrorists killed in the lifetime of this world?
Since when have terrorists cared about all those who aren't specific targets?

When I speak about the war or terror, I'm not only speaking about America's war on terror. I'm speaking about countries having to deal with terror. IE: Israel, Russia, etc...
I'm not talking about a specific time either, you can trace terrorism back a very long time.

 

[London Geezer]

Epic, whatever you call it, war, battles, terrorism, the fact still remains that millions and millions of people died in each of the WWs, both civilians and military, and not considering them blood baths is quite ridiculous.

 

[epicstruggle]

So WW1, WW2 clearly werent blood baths, it was a war. Im sure there were battles within the war that might be considered that.

So the deaths of all those Jews isn't considered a massacre?

Yes, that I would consider true. However they werent the end all and be all of WW2. Genocides clearly are blood baths. But that isnt the case in say WW1, or the actual war in WW2.

 

[epicstruggle]

Epic, whatever you call it, war, battles, terrorism, the fact still remains that millions and millions of people died in each of the WWs, both civilians and military, and not considering them blood baths is quite ridiculous.

Arg, your not using the term correctly. Yes the holocaust was a blood bath. But how can you claim that well equiped soldiers killing themselves in a battlefield a blood bath is beyond me. Thats my point, the term is being misused.

later,
epic