I challenge us: Create a government system that is better than any other.
 

In honor of change, which is the goal of this thread, I am changing the thread. Instead of being specific with Capitalism and Communism, I'm wiping that clean, and our new goal is to come up with a government system that is better than any other system of government. It can have elements of any system, and new elements and ideas are highly encouraged. I will leave the old thread starter in a quote here, for relevancy.

If we are talking about communism (basically: everyone owns everything, and there are no clesses), and capitalism (basically: an economic system in which all or most of the means of production are privately owned and operated), then this is seemingly quite simple. The government is publicly traded, and every citizen owns at least one share of stock, or he or she loses his or her citizenship. But in order for this to be communism, all goods and services have to be ownbed by all people, so all goods and services must be tied into the governemnt. In other words, there is extreme central organization, but that organization is decentralized down to each stock holder. The stock holders vote on every decision the company makes, and the shares value increases when they are good decisions, and they decrease when it is a bad decision. People with higher valued shares are able to split shares and sell the second share for goods and services. Each citizen would have to perform a benificial function in the society in order to keep his or her stocks, and there always must be 100% employment, whcih is the burden of the state, and thus the entire populace.

It won't really work (because people are too lazy, and because this level of organization would hvae to be run by a computer), but it's fun to think about.

True, but we can take elements of both and bring them together. We don't necessarily have to make each complete system work together. We are making our own system.

Well for my contribution here are the principles of Communism


In my opinion there is already a marriage of
communism and capitalism existing today called
The United States Of America

I repeat: "We don't necessarily have to make each complete system work together. We are making our own system."

Yes, the United States is our best example put into play. But our goal here is to find something BETTER. Think BETTER. C'mon; you can't say you're fully happy with where America is at unless your defense is in relation to the rest of the world. Our goal is to go past that mentality; past that acceptance, and say, "I want something better for my people and I."

As far as something better?
communism would play no role
it gives way to much power to the state,
and removes power from the people
commumism corrupts capitalism.
From the free market economy
to a state run corporation

Communism as a whole would play no role, but neither would capitalism. But we can take ideas from those two systems and use them for our own. That is what I meant when I said: "We don't necessarily have to make each complete system work together. We are making our own system."

Visit any Scandinavian country or Canada... this is, IMO, the best of both systems.

Charlatan; please expand on that statement. I'm not saying that because I disagree with you, but rather because not everyone actually has had experience in those countries, and not everyone has studied them. It would greatly help the discussion if ideas were laid out for everyone to see and analyze for themselves.

These nations have free markets (as much as *any* market is free today) but they also have a lot of social services (universal health care, national daycare, etc.).

These are so-called Socialist trappings that many on the extreme right would cry individuals should pay for...

In effect, the wealth of the nation is combined (via taxation) and then distributed back to the citizen by way of services.

In my mind, this is the ideal form of government. You get the flexibility of a capitalist system but you also have a highly educated (subsidized to universal education at all levels - University included). Your economy is not centrally planned but the government exercises the power of a single buyer in key areas of the economy (i.e. healthcare) thereby cutting out price gouging.

It isn't perfect but what system is.

In the end, it takes an increasingly collective position in the face of increasing individualism.

Ok, so that's what's good about Socialism. But like all systems of government, it's imperfect. Which elements should we incorporate into our government? Which elements shouldn't we incorporate? It's important to recognize other forms of government, but remember; we're creating our own. Let's focus on that. Who's up for the challenge?

That is my own system. I don't know of any government that operates in that way. I was expecting a little more feedback...

City... it's not Socialism. Socialism has an entirely planned economy.

This, IMO, is the beauty of these systems. They are NOT planned economies and yet there is still a social saftey net and social services.

Perfection is Utopia -- an unattainable goal.

I think the key is to strive for but never reach Utopia and I think the systems I have mentioned are on the right path towards this... the key is to continue to balance between the strengths of free market and the strengths of the planned econmony without being either.

Reigning in the excesses of both systems.

The estimated number of Canadians living in the United States is 820000.
The estimated number of US citizens living in Canada 688000.

Percent of Canadan population living in the US: 2.5%
Percent of US population living in Canada: 0.23%

Hmmmmmmm :)

forgive my drunkeness, but IIRC, 820,000 of almost 300,000,000 is not quite 2.5%

and i'm not sure roughly or canada's population, but say it's roughly the size of the US,then wouldnt' the percentages be roughly similar considering you're talking about numbers that are the size of middle -sized towns? you're talking about a diff of 132,000, not exactly a huge number of people in two developed countries...which brings us to point number 2:

huh?

the supposed percentages have to do with what, exactly?

You are most obviously drunk :)

The 820,000 are Canadian's living in the US, which would be divided by Canada's population to get their %, not the US's.

The gross number of Canadians living in the US is greater than the gross number of US citizens living in Canada, without even looking at population sizes. Add in that the US population is almost bigger than Canada's by a factor of 10, and it seems that it is far more common for a Canadian to come live in the US than a US citizen to move to Canada.

What does this mean? I could mean many things, but what it means directly is the US has something that Canadians want. Perhaps their system is not the best of both worlds, but just another system.

The population of Canada is roughly 35 million compared to the roughly 350 million in the US.


Ustwo... no big deal. I said, in my opinion, these nations offered the best of both systems. Clearly a completely free market is not the answer... we have seen what happens when there is no regulation on the marketplace. The key is protecting people from the bad elements of the corporate world while still allowing other parts to flourish. The key is balance.

Time will tell who got the balance right.

Edit: it could also meant that our old people love Florida and Arizona... :p

Ustwo, I think you might be simplifying the situation a bit; I think that the historical properties of the land masses which have become the US and Canada easily have as much to do with the strength of the economies and the desirability of residence as the differences in the government styles, but maybe that's just me.

For a contribution to the question of government forms, I'm going to suggest that government service be treated like the military is in much of the world; everyone has to serve a certain period of time, at some level of their local, city, state or federal government; depending on their intelligence, resume, etc. Furthermore, there is a limit to how long a person can spend in a particular position, and how long they can spend total. ie. a person has to eventually live under the laws they help to form while they are in the government.

will, in your system does the government control the means of production? I'm wondering how much those shares are different from votes? Furthermore, it would seem that this system would just give control of the government to the rich, more so than they already control it in our present system. Wouldn't those with more shares, and/or more highly valued shares, simply control the government through majority votes? I'd have to think about it a little more to have a more well thought out opinion, I think.

Interesting point. I like it.

I think it's important to keep our independance from the government, while at the same time the government should be a tool to enhance ourselves and our communities. Wouldn't mandatory service be intrusive on such independance? Plus, have we REALLY come up with a test for intelligence? I personally don't think so. We didn't have to test Albert Einstein to realize his intelligence anyways. His (immeasureable) measure of intelligence was based on his works and ideas; but those works and ideas were fueled by his ambition. Yes, I think it's important to have intelligent individuals in government, but I think another thing we must incorporate is their ambition and will to do their job correctly, and to make sure that whatever they do while on the clock is for the good of the country.

That means no kickbacks; no "fund-raising" coke parties; no excess business expenses, etc.

I never stipulated who the rich would be, aside from those who have more stock in a company. That would depend on the ability of the company you work for and/or own stock in. One person = one vote. Those with more shares simply have more options when it comes to access to public property and services.

I'm not saying this is a viable option. I was just trying to create a system that I've never seen before that incorporates a communist and capitalist governmental system. I would hate to live in my hypothtical country, simply because I think capitalism is an extention of private ownership and materialism, both of which I am strongly against.

How about this one: All deeds, contracts, etc. are null and void.
And this one: There shall be no economy; the world is owned by none.

How would this affect us? How could we make them work?

I have changed this thread. I hope that is alright with all of you. I think by not being specifically tied to other systems of government, it can help prevent us from going off-topic, and will help us focus on creating something NEW, rather than looking upon what we already have.

You want some new, super-government? Make new, super-people. As long as we have the same old homo sapiens, any economic system will have the same problems-not enough reward for good behavior will cause too much free riding, and those in power will always work to ensure that they maintain their power, often at the expense of everyone else. Until you can get rid of those two things in human nature, there's no reason trying to come up with some miracle cure.

if you're going to go that route, keep in mind that a central assumption of Marxism is that humans do change over time, according to their material conditions.

I guess the short answer is that we may actually have new humans walking around now that we've shifted (are shifting) economies.

If you think marxist theory is valid then yes.

I think marxist theory is hogwash. You want your govenmernt to work best with human nature, not the other way around.

so here we are again: someone mentions marx or the left and ustwo deploys his sub-limbaugh "understanding" of the topic with the exclusive intent of trying to prevent a conversation from happening.

i have seen many posts from you on this topic, ustwo: you do not know what you are talking about, but you do not hesitate to talk anyway.
given that you have no idea what you are talking about, where is the gratification for you in posting in these threads at all? it is not as though your juvenile quips constitute anything like a serious critique--it is not as though you have any interesting insights to put forward on the matter. you just seem to want to prevent conversations from happening that involve taking the topic seriously.

it is tedious, ustwo, and i really wish that you would stop.

Roachboy - You do have a point, and I commend you for sticking up, but please remember that everyone here has a valid opinion.

Ustwo - Please be more expansive in your responses. The more open we are about everything, the better understandings of each other we will have. I believe that is critical for producing ideas that can be of benefit to everyone. Also, if you plan on responding to Roachboy, I beg you to think deeply about what you have to say. Let's try to keep this thread from becoming a personal conflict with each other.

I find it strange that capitalists can hold incompatible assumptions about economies, human interaction, and human nature.

For example, capitalists often mix the ideological standpoing that capitalism is good, human behavior is innately bad (or at least slothful). Capitalism is good seems to stem from the belief that it allows people to excel on their own merits, presumably leaving the slothful in the dust where they belong (although, according to alansmith's perspective if I understand it correctly, everyone is innately lazy and freeloading).

I guess the mechanism to spur people into action is the invisible market. This market functions to encourage innately lazy people into working. The detritus sifts to the bottom, while the more deserving overcome their personal stumbling blocks (I'm supposing).

Then we have the innate quality of greed. I'm not sure how capitalism keeps greed in check, in fact it seems to encourage it. Yet, greed is a "valid" critique of marxism (or communism, or whatever left of capitalism comes into being). And there is no data I'm aware of that has cemented the fact that greed is innate. It appears at least no small part is due to nurture. Since all of us have been nurtured in a capitalist society, I see no way one can adequately seperate the society we developed within and our notions of what we might be like without it. That is, would people be "innately" greedy in a socialist or Marxist world?

Clearly the idea that we are necessarily individuals and perhaps greed is somehow long ago critical to the survival of the species (if we go with the genetic transference theories) resonates with US citizens. Yet, that would seem to be counter to the historical evidence that humans coalesced into small and then increasingly larger societies. At least in the distant past, our ancestors saw fit to be less individualistic than we proclaim is our innate desire and trait today.

Marx has a different view of human nature, in so far as one can claim humans have a nature. I'm on one side of this debate (whether Marx believed in human nature) and a number of well respected sociologists on my floor are on the other side. I guess to try and do their argument justice, in so far as we might have something approximating a stable characteristic we would not know what it is since it's ever changing. I thought that perhaps we might "return" to our species-being, and that might be the best thing approximating nature. But those others reminded me that to Marx there is no going back, only progression toward what we will be. So there you go, in so far as we might reach species-beingness, I would have to conclude it would look nothing like the original state...

...ah rambling....

anyway, I can only suspect that people espousing the virtues of capitalism while denouncing human nature as greedy and lazy are operating in some odd sleight of mind movement that allows them to grasp the upper shelf. That is, perhaps they are the most crafty or wily. It wouldn't make much sense to believe in fairness and equality if one believed the rest of humanity were acting on the basis of greed and laziness--because then of course the others would take advantage of one's kindness and mistake it for weakness.

Once one starts to unravel all these assumptions loaded into capitalism, individualis, US-specific flavors of clusters of beliefs surrounding these notions, one actually begins to taste just how violently they collide. I don't comprehend how people can hold such incompatible assumptions in their head all at once. Well, I can, but the implications make me sad and weary. And there isn't any real way one can claim to adhere to an invisible market without reifying the dang thing, since it is after all only human interaction...


well, that should be expansive enough. certainly plenty of meat for one to pick through and quote a teensy bit and drill that into the ground. should open up some kind of commentary at some point in time I imagine. good to see you around roachboy, btw. and cool thread, city of angels, haven't seen you in here for like a year but I may be mistaken as I don't as a general rule stalk forum members ;) but nice to see yah again all the same.

Wow. That was an article in itself, and a very interesting one at that. :) Thank you VERY much for your input, smooth.

Is greed built-in human behavior, or is it learned? Can it be unlearned? Or more specifically: SHOULD it be unlearned? Why have we accepted capitalism as the best we can come up with?

Oh yeah smooth; I've been back for a small while, but I come off and on. It just depends on how busy I am. I have a week off work right now so I've been able to spend more time here with you all.

I'm not sure how to relate these sentences. Your last sentence looks like a non sequitor as it's not apparent to me how it supports the contention that marxism is hogwash. I also don't understand how "the other way around" would be: you don't want human nature to work best with your government? I don't see how this is false or undesirable.

In any case, it appears that marx' view on changing species is really not critical. There appears to be a mechanism for this in every discipline, even your medical discipline. So the notion that humans are changing over time as bunk is bizarre to me, other than you just wanting to dispute me. But the central tenet of my claim, the reason I made it, that humans change over time and we might just have a new one on our hands seems fairly safe from critique from you. I don't know how you'd go about it, but I'd like to see it.

Greed, or more importantly, selfishness, is innate and cannot be fully unlearned. We have not accepted capitalism, but rather decided that it is sufficient to the point where we allow ourselves to be too lazy to actively fight it. It's not so bad that we feel the need to fight it, as a whole collective society.

Likewise, we also have the innate ability to be selfless and altruistically heroic. There are those among us who are willing to fight and die for what they believe to be right. There are those who actively work against systems currently in place in order to help the reality we have built around us evolve into a better reality. This group isn't reflected in the common man, but then again, no revolution really ever is.

You say Revolution; I say change. Two very similar words, with two very different literal meanings. If we are to begin a peaceful society, we must begin with peace. It is our duty to show the world that destroying each other is not the answer.

The Canadian population is roughly 32 million. Turns out I overestimated on both accounts... but the 10% rule is still a reasonable estimate.

No, you misunderstand capitalism. What capitalism allows is for everyone to be able to strive for what's in their best interest, without relying upon goodwill to make things right. Capitalism is not a fair system, and doesn't allow for people to excel. It doesn't care who excels, only that the total pie of wealth is the largest. It's also why unfettered capitalism breaks down and is largely internally inconsistent-when someone gets too much wealth, they start creating inefficiencies in the system to maintain their own wealth, without thinking of the overall system. But the opposite (communism) will have situations where people, by acting in their best interest, will sabotage the whole system. Why work as hard as possible, when the results will be the same regardless? It's not about being lazy, it's about doing what's in your own best interest.



Capitalism not only doesn't keep greed in check, it relies upon it to be a driving force. Greed is the desire for people to maximize their utility. If you deny greed, you deny that people will work to put themselves (and their families) in the best situation possible, which is ridiculous. I don't see how you would think this is nurture. It is just because people have more advanced thoughts that they can see "utility" as being more than the next meal. Therefore they strive to accumulate the most they can, and to protect that wealth.

Now, utility is a funny concept, and it doesn't always translate directly into greed. For instance, donating large sums of money might give more psychological satisfaction than having that wealth, so the utility would be higher to give (up to a certain point). But the fact remains that for any economic or governmental system to function properly, it needs to account for greed.

This is true, but it was more a matter of survival. For people to survive, it was more necessary to pool resources, because there were less resources as a whole. But now, we might be more interdependant, but also more able to mass large accumulation of resources because there is so much more of everything.

And here you are correct-capitalism has nothing to do with fairness. It is merely the system which is supposed to achieve the highest total wealth. For instance, if you have a billionaire and someone with nothing, living on the street, in capitalism it makes no difference if the billionaire or the man with nothing were to somehow come upon $50,000 even though the billionaire would hardly care about that sum, and it would make a large difference to the destitude person.

The market works fine, when there's not a market breakdown. But because people aren't perfect, it's rare to find a perfect market situation. So you need an outside body (in my view, usually this should be a strong, central government) to try to eliminate as many of the market failures as possible. Now, I admit to there being some inconsistancies, but I think those usually arise more from people who attribute too much to capitalism and don't really understand what it's designed to do. It's not a cure-all, but it's the best thing to deal with the innate negatives in human personality.

But this is foolish, because it only takes one person to destroy a peaceful society. Because at the least, if you respond in kind, the "peace" has been destroyed. And if you don't respond, you end up with an autocratic society, ruled by the wills of a certain few people who resort to violence.

Only a moment to post, being I am working.

You can either have a fair system or a free system, by default freedom will never be fair to everyone.

well, first of all, alansmith, don't start your replies to me with assertions that I don't understand what I'm talking about or I won't respond to you.

you claim I don't understand capitalism, but my post was about capitalists. To the extent I'm characterizing their argument, it would be their failure to understand what capitalism does or does not do--not mine.

then you launch into some kind of discussion that doesn't even significantly alter what I said. Regardless, the only defining characteristic of capitalism is the personal ownership of assets. Nothing in your post points to this, so at the very least you should temper the irony in your responses. Everything in your reply are assumptions you've loaded into the model as to what capitalism does or ought to do. Your comments aren't the defining characteristics of capitalism. At best, they characterize the US flavor of capitalism, but by no means does it have to be such and wasn't before and certainly won't always be.

As to how one can wonder if something is nurture or not, your comments on greed are not even historically accurate in our american historical context. furthermore, if you were correct, and greed were innate, we wouldn't have lasted very long as a species since particular people would have been driven to conduct themselves in ways that didn't serve their best interests. greed is the desire to accumulate more than one needs. greed would compel people to accumulate beyond their means, not just maxamize their utility. Lots of people maximized ther utility long before capitalism was even a concept to be debated over. our nation's wealth was founded on the opposite of greed. Read the Protestant Ethic by Max Weber for more insight on that. You might really enjoy his work. He's not critical of capitalism except to argue it ought to be fair.

regardless, no behaviorist would or could claim greed is innate. Perhaps some kind of behavior is advantageous to the continuation of our species, but it's merely an expression of a trait. You haven't explained the trait but instead latched onto an expression of it that our society has labeled as 'greed' and, for the most part, claims to discourage (despite what you thought, this makes no claims about capitalism as a system, but rather to state that capitalists simultaneously believe that greed is socially repugnant but somehow essential to our survival (as your post exemplifies).

as Marx saw it, people would always do what was in their best interest. The problem with these kinds of discussions is that capitalists make a false dichotomy between 'work' and 'leisure.' To Marx, if one could enjoys one's 'work' (actually everyday behavior), and live from that, we would have people doing what they do best--each in his or her own capacity.

So while it may be difficult for someone who believes humans are innately lazy and greedy to invision a world wherein people like to drive trains for 6 hours a day, and others who like to chat with their neighbors while collecting the garbage, the reality in my experience is that these people do exist. Such people would happily do what they already do as long as their future livlihood would be guaranteed. Contrary to your commentary, broad swaths of our population are perfectly content to stay in their current economic position. Relatively few people are trying to maximize their utility, as you put it. And even fewer still doing it in a 'greedy' (or socially undesirable) way.

your commentary on the efficiency and utility of 'pooling' resources is historically inaccurate. First of all, the most modern evidence suggests that ancients had a hell of a lot more free time than we do. gatherers worked on average 20 hours per week. pooling resources, as you put it, is not more efficient from an energy perspective. It actually takes a lot of energy to grow something in one state or country, and transport it elsewhere. People formed social groups not because they needed to pool resources, but because they started to run out of space. Now we build vertical.

No, if you were correct, and people were primarily concerned with survival of themselves (we'll leave the greed label off), they would have just killed off the competition. So I think you're committing a few errors when you state we are more advanced in our utilitarian cognition than the ancients. It appears they did much or all of what was correct, for if not, we wouldn't be here according to evolution tenets. But the point remains, we didnt' get here by unbendable commitment to individualism.

I'm would like a response, but when you make broad statements that I find to be incorrect smoo, I think it's best for me to state how I think they are incorrect. I think your general statements about capitalists to be false.

Why do I need to alter what you said? I largely agreed with some parts, but certain things I found faulty. And my assumptions are no more loaded than yours. And personally, what I have always been led to believe is that capitalism isn't just driven by personal ownership, but by market forces. That is the key component. And it's debatable as to whether or not capitalism has always been this way (I would think that most economists would point to capitalism being pretty much the same since it arose from the mercantile period), but I never said it won't always be. But you can't say it will definately be different with any more certainty.

I've read some of Weber's works before, and I found them interesting, but didn't agree with many of his conclustions. And I don't see how you can add fairness into capitalism, because many people have different ideas of what exactly fair is. My point was that now, because of increases in production, utility can be maximized in more exclusionary ways. And by definition, utility would be maximized if someone accumulated beyond their means-if it didn't maximize utility, they would stop accumulation earlier. Unless your claim is that people who are opperating in a greedy way are irrational, and lower personal utility by their overaccumulation. Which I personally find hard to believe, and can't think of anyone else making such a ridiculous claim. Again, being greedy isn't just about overaccumulation, it's impossible to "overoveraccumulate". Because if someone is accumulating more, it's obvious they desire it, it's within the bounds of what they feel they need. Now, it might be more than necessary for bare survival, but that's not an accurate definition of overconsumption (unless you claim that everyone is overconsuming, which then makes it a meaningless debate).

It seems you have misunderstood what I posted. I do think that greed is if not essential to survival, definately a driving factor in survival. And I don't find it necessarily socially repugnant. One of the points I was trying to make was that capitalism relies upon greed, and that many people who speak for capitalism would like to ignore that fact, because of the negative connotation associated with greed.

But again, they are maximizing their utility by being content in their current position. It just so happens, that they value free time more than the monentary wealth they would accumulate by working more, or in higher stress jobs. They might not be trying to increase their wealth by the highest amount, but that doesn't mean they are not increasing their utility. And now I think you are trying to redefine greed as something that is innately socially undesireable. I don't see it that way-I see greed as something necessary for progression.

If that were true, production would've been much higher then, but production is much higher now. Because of division of labor, people were able to increase production greatly. So there was more total wealth. And from what I remember from Weber, one of his claims about capitalism not being something natural to humanity was based upon the fact that ancient civilizations would pool resources.

Why would they kill off the competition if that very competition would give them a better chance of survival? If I can produce x amount of goods myself, but with my neighbor I can produce 2x+1, it's in my best interest not to kill him off, even if we are competing. Competition does not eliminate the opportunity for cooperation-not all games are zero-sum. And also, by agreeing to not kill your neighbors, you don't enter into situations where they are constantly trying to kill you. So, it increases stability (which is one of the things necessary for any sort of property ownership). Also, there were numerous times where they did indeed kill their competition. It depends on the situation, and what is best for the individual at the time.

The reason why you need to alter what I said when responding is because you keep telling me I'm wrong and that you dsagree but then you restate what I said in your own words.

Capitalism is not defined by market forces. You can look it up, or you can figure this out for yourself by realizing that a market exists in any economy. The difference is that the actors come to the market with the assets they personally own--capital. Owners own the means of production and workers own their labor power.

It's not a semantic argument. The defining characteristic of capitalism is personal ownership and personal accumulation of capital. You are incorrect that most economists would argue that capitalism has been pretty much the same for the past 200 years. I would hope that no economist believes or states this as fact because that would fly in the face of contemporary proof that various forms of capitalism exist on the planet right at this very moment. The way the US practices capitalism is very different from the way other capitalist nations practice it.

I'm not trying to redefine greed as a socially repugnant value. You stated in your own reply that people often won't mention this valuable quality because of it's negative connotations. The reverse is true, you are trying to redefine it as a necessary component of capitalism. How does your repititon of this 'fact' rebut my contention that capitalists believe people are greedy (the statement you keep telling me I'm wrong about)? It appears to me that you're validating my commentary. I was mainly speaking of the capitalists who respond to these kinds of threads. I know a much broader variety of capitalists in the real world, but the people here often seem to feel the need to disagree simply for the reason to disagree--even when they are going to state something that doesn't mesh with their own assumptions or when they aren't going to write something different from what they disagreed with.

I already explained to you that production isn't more efficient now. You can argue on the basis that more units are being made now, so that is better. But your original argument was that we are more efficient now. We aren't and this isn't something that needs to be hashed out based on your presumptions because empirical data exists demonstrating this fact.

I think it's bizarre that you are hinging our current greatness on our pooling of resources and division of labor and the cooperation of individuals rather than eliminating the competition. All of those are social behaviors--not individual behaviors. But I guess you've told yourself I'm wrong because I'm not an individualist and then defining all of our social behaviors as ultimately better for the individual...so they make sense to an individualist like yourself.

But the point that I made originally, that you so much want to rebut yet remains firmly standing, is the notion that humans aren't innately individualistic (primarily concerned with their own self-interest, or greedy, or any other way of describing the selfishness we witness in US society). It's drummed into our heads from birth and permeates our social reality despite the historical and modern evidence that humans are social creatures. We have to reaffirm that selfishness is necessary to growth or even the best way to exist because once that idea is problemetized, capitalism starts to lose its luster to the far, far, far numerous people who dont get shit by working hard their whole lives except a hard life of work. Lots of people in lots of places don't believe that selfishness is best and they are just as productive, and some moreso, than people who are individualists. The empirical evidence is that US workers are falling behind the curve--we work more and we are less productive than other workers. The fempirical evidence appears to support my position whereas your facts aren't even internally consistent.


BTW, your recollection of Weber's position is incorrect. He didn't sate that capitalism was unnatural. I don't know who you're thinking of, but it wasn't him. In fact, his position on the (hu)man rationality and drive to accumulate affluence mirrors some of your statements in these replies to me.

Markets are not found in every economic system. In socialism, there is no market. That's one of the main problems with that system-without markets to determine prices and supply, the economy breaks down. The result-"black markets" where goods that are needed can be purchased.

It could be argued that the other nations aren't as purely capitalistic. The usual difference is just in the amount of gov't control that is put in the system, not the system itself.

But without greed, there can be no capitalism. Without people striving for more, capitalism falls apart. How does repetion of any of your opinions rebut anything I've said? You can't assume your opinions are fact, and that anyone who disagrees is automatically wrong.

More units are being produced per hour of labor. That's more efficent. You didn't explain anything, you threw out a statement that you expected to be accepted as fact. Those are two different things. How do you say we aren't more efficient now? Take agriculture for one. One of the major problems facing the ag industry is that we are TOO efficient. The same with manufacturing-we are able to produce so much with so little labor, that many people now are finding jobs being phased out. You just stating something repeatedly doesn't make it true-you aren't Dorothy and you aren't in Oz. If you want to "explain" something, it is usually necessary to provide some facts other than "because I said so". Just saying that people worked less before doesn't prove anything. If I work 20 hours, and produce x goods, and someone else works 40 hours and produces 3x goods, they are more efficient. Efficiency has nothing to due with just time, it's also a measure of production during that time.

Didn't you notice where I said earlier that we were probably more interdependant now than in previous times? Or are you so worried about proving something wrong, you don't have time to waste actually reading things you think disagree with you. If it makes sense personally, a person will cooperate. If it doesn't, they won't. This isn't a hard concept, it comes up repeatedly in history, economics, and game theory. You making some artificial division between "individualists" and... well, you never named this other mythical group is really irrelevant.

What evidence have you given? Are you just making stuff up? Where are these mythical, socialist paradises that you seem to believe in? Can you show one modern example of a country where "selfishness" isn't present, or where that selfishness hasn't propelled the country forward more? You keep talking about some collectivist ideal as if it really exists. You state I'm not internally consistent, whereas you can't even give any examples of what you believe being put into practice.


This is the first thing you've gotten correct. I was thinking of Karl Polanyi, who relied heavily upon Weber.

If I may--fairness is not guaranteed anywhere in this life and not in the next. There are varying forms of attempts to institutionalize fairness (the modern labor union, for instance) in capitalism. Capitalism is merely the economic expression of the concept of consequences. Supply and demand does not have inherent moral qualities that make it good or bad. People make good and bad decisions in every system, and the consequences of these choices are usually evident. In capitalism, the consequences of daily diligence, planning, hard work, and low debt ratios are largely rewarded in a positive manner. Greed and other excessive expressions are, for the most part regulated by the government, mostly because of past experience. A consequence of Rockefeller's, for instance, resulted in reforms against monopolies (a case of greed matched up with resources). So much depends on motive and personal choice, much like the rest of life...

Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you would tell me that socialist systems don't have a market (what?) and then in the same sentence tell me that socialism breeds 'black' (informal) markets...but that's what I've been complaining about all along--your internal inconsistencies. Where do you get the idea that socialist economies don't engage in a market? Or assuming you're correct that black markets would rise (as if they don't exist in capitalist economies), how is that not a "market"? Markets exist in any system where people exhange goods. The difference in capitalism is that the participants individually own the goods being exchanged.

Are you suggesting the US economy is a pure capitalist system? That's the only reason your critique of other systems as non-pure would even be relevent to what I stated.

Actually, I expected you to go look up what I told you. I said it was fact that we are less energy efficient than before. You deny that fact, and you're wrong. Now I have to type a bunch of shit out because you are too lazy to look it up yourself (perhaps that your capitalist persona seeping through, but I sure hope you'd maximize your utility in this conversation and do some of your own footwork when you're talking about something you apparently are only basing on speculation)

"The Transition to Agriculture"
There is a perspective on culural evolution that views the change from hunting and gathering to modern, industrial society less as development or progress and more as a necessary evil. This perspective emphasizes the influences of population growth and population density, the number of people living in a given area. To understand this point of view, we need to examine the transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture, aslo exploring the reasons for the eventual change from relatively simply slash and burn agriculture to more complex labor intensive irrigation agriculture...

...Anthropologist Mark Cohen set out to explain why individuals or groups abandoned hunting and gathering for agriculture, and why so many didi so in relatively short period of time. [synopsis: people roamed around looking for food. Eventually population sizes increased to the point where they started bumping into one another and had to move iaround increasingly larger spaces to gather the food they needed. So they began to cultivate their own crops] Cohen points out that anthropological and archeological evidence suggests they knew how to do this all along, but chose instead to gather crops until the labor involved in traveling to new food sources surpassed the labor involved in growing their own crops. In other words, the historical transition from hunting and gathering to simple agriculture was a necessary consequence of the growth of the population density, rather than a consequence of a discovery or invention that was adopted because it made life better (emphasis mine)...Cohen and others argue that agriculture didn't make life better at all; in fact, it made it worse (we'll explore that claim a little later in this chapter).

[synopsis: H&G transitioned to swidden agriculture (slash & burn). It's highly efficient, but requires huge tracts of land that need to remain dormant after the burn. When population density rises or land decreases, we make increasingly complex methods to produce food. Yet these more complex methods always require more labor. Here's a table:

advanced swidden days of labor per acre (D/a) 18-25
plow cultivation D/a 20
hoe cultivation D/a 58
irrigation agriculture D/a 90-178

(source: Eric Wolf, Peasants[i/] Inglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1966)

Land needed to feed 100 families using different agricultural methods:
swidden 3000
swidden w/ garden plots 1600
irrigation 90-200

/synopsis

"The views of anthropologists such as Cohen and Carneiro suggest that the historica lchange of societies from gathering and hunting to gradually ore labor intensive methods of agriculture was not a matter of choice. S&B wasn't easier than G&H, and plow and irrigation wasn't more efficient than S&B...Isn't it safe to say that Western society, particularly within the US, has ag techniques that are vastly superior to those of small-scale tribal societies?

"Producing Potato Calories"
John Bodley compared the production of sweet potatoes in New Guinea with potato production in the US. They slash and burn and cook the sweet potatoes in fire pits. Sweet potatoes account for 21 percent of their diet and they feed excess to pigs, thus producing protein and acounting for an even larger proportion of their diet. They only use 10% of their arable land and there is no danger of resource depletion. With their technique, the NG populaton can produce about 5 mil calories per acre.
American potato farmers produce more than twice as many calories per acre as NG--about 12 mil per acre. However, the US system also expends vast amounts of non-human energy in this production technique...Thus, while the American system produced more potatoes, the actual energy costs per calorie were lower in NG. Moreever, this doesn't account for hidden costs like health problems from toxic chemicals, soil erosion, and pollution.
Americans must also deal with the distribution costs. Taking the food industry as a whole, calculating all the energy expenditure from machinery and trucking/shipping, refrigeration, processing, and etc. Americans expend 8 to 12 calories of energy to produce a single calorie of food!

Western agricultural techniques are wasteful and inefficient. Examine the production of potato chips on page 45. Examine the cost of a Twinkie on page 77. (a twinkie costs around a $1 but if all the costs of production were included and not subsidized by a nation-state, the real cost would be around $10).

Have fun! And if you want to read more than I've typed out, pick up Cultural Anthropology: A problem based approach 3rd ed by Richard Robbins and read chapter 2, The Meaning of Progress.


But I made two seperate claims: 1) previous systems of "work" were more energy efficient than modern food production (evidence now given) and 2) current manufacturing processes are less efficient in the US than abroad. I'm not going to type out another chapter for you. Go look it up. Workers in Europe are more productive per hour per widget produced than our US workers. They work less hours and they get more done. Sorry to say, whatever our greatness as a nation hinges upon, it certainly is not based on the fact of our efficiency as workers.

Well, if you examine your assumptions you'll be able to discern that, once again, you're holding incompatible views on human labor in the US. If we are the most capitalist system, and capitalism requires greedy people, and greedy people maximize their input while attempting to limit their expenditure, then how could you conclude we have the most efficient worker? You couldn't. The problem is that you want to believe we are the best, have the best workers, have the best economy, have the best governance, and all other things have to be squashed together to make sense of that reality in your mind--even if they are incompatible with one another.

AFAIK, I didn't make any mention of any "socialist paradises." But that comment pretty much demonstrates where you're coming from when you keep arguing with me with baseless assertions. If you want a modern example of collectivism propelling a nation, look no further than up North. And then look across the ocean to the EU. And then look over toward China. And then take a glance at Taiwan....maybe peek at Japan. I guess you can't really spin a globe without landing somewhere where great advances in productivity and progress are being made in a non-individualistic context. The shear magnitude of that phenomena, the notion that capitalism is changing and US flavor of it is not the vanguard, hasn't quite hit the average person in the US yet as your comments indicate. We still, by and large, simulataneously believe that "greed is good" yet discourage it in public spaces. We still think it's necessary to growth, yet the rest of the world is moving on...and we risk being left behind when it does.

A black market isn't part of a socialist economy-it operates outside of that economic system entirely. There's nothing inconsistent with that. A "market" in the capitalist sense isn't just something where goods are exchanged. A market is what gives an economy information about what price things are and how much to produce. In socialism, these things aren't determined by markets, they are determined by planning.


I never said that the US is pure captialist. But the US is closer to pure capitalism than many countries in the west.

Nothing there disputes what I said. In the first secion, the numbers you list show that there's less days of labor per acre for simpler ag techniques, but they have far lower yields (based upon the amount of land necessary to feed 100 families). The second you list also produces far lower yields. It adds in outside sources to prove their point, but it's really irrelevant how much non-human energy is used in transport, refrigeration, shipping, processing, etc. That shouldn't be figured into the equation, because they ignore these factors for the New Guinea population.

Not all of Europe is more efficient, there you are wrong. Germany is more efficent by a small margin, and they do work less on average. But most European companies are less efficient than America in terms of production. And much of the reason for the US's inefficiencies has nothing to due with the supposed European greatness, but usually because the large US corporations are older and more resistant to innovation (such as in the steel industry, or automotive industry).

No, you agenda comes through more and more. You don't seek any real discussion, you are seeing things that aren't here, and are trying to show how large your e-peen is in some silly argument that you started for no reason. I think that many US corporations could learn a lot from outside countries in terms of production efficiency. I never said that the US is best-it's your own hatred/bias against the US that has lead you to believe this.

You mention the EU first. The EU is mostly made up of member nations that have stagnant economies. They have higher unemployment, and lower growth than America. China isn't using collectivistic practices-they are a model for the wonders of capitalism. Their economy is booming largely because they are export based, but also because they have started using more market systems (mainly participating in global markets). And as for Japan, their economy is in a fragile recovery from a devastating period in the '90's. Much of those problems actually arose from problems created by their protectivistic tendencies-because they didn't have accurate market information, they were unable to have accurate production, and became inefficient. The companies that are more vulnerable to market forces (generally more global concerns) unsuprisingly were not as heavily affected by their downturn. And you still aren't explaining how the advances in those places aren't in an individual context. I think India, China, South American, and Eastern European growth would show that the "US" model is still thriving in the world. The world isn't going anywhere relying upon tired concepts of communism. And you have yet to give one shred of proof to support your claim-all you have is a pretty simple America-bashing campaign. For someone who pretends to be as well-read as you are, you don't seem to have understood much. Maybe instead of trying to tell everone else what to read, you should work on understanding how things work in the real world. But now I'm sure you will come back with another tired anti-American rant. If you aren't really interested in discussion, and keep having your "individualistic" tendencies of needing to be correct constantly, don't bother.

I seriously do not think a hybrid of the 2 could co-exist in today's world. You would have to work very hard to re-educate and and get people to want this. I think it would be impossible because of the hatred and prejudices between the 2 philosophies.

My personal opinion, unrestricted Communism or Capitalism cannot work. Both lead to the same end result as we are seeing here in the U.S. with capitalism and as the USSR saw with Communism.

Unchecked and unregulated both lead to corruption, greed, the need to acquire and control everything and the destruction of any small competition.

Look at soda, look at the media, the car companies, the airline industry, the insurance industry, the pharmaceuticals, the stores, the restaurants, etc. The true goal of capitalism is to have a more even and open ownership, with growing markets and a spreading of wealth.

Instead in the last 20 years we have seen ownership be consolidated and competition either bought or destroyed and a consolidation of wealth among the top 1-5% and wages that haven't kept up to inflation in the most heavily consolidated yet most important markets (Oil, healthcare, education, etc.) thus we see the growth of debt.

True capitalism would not run on debt, because eventually debt leads to the destruction of the economy.

True communism can work in small communities but overall greed and man's need and desire to have a leader and some form of government over a nation leads to nationalistic Facism. The USSR was NOT a communist government. It was very much a nationalistic fascist dictatorship. And eventually the US will if we continue this psuedo capitalism we are following.

The only true mix that could work is a the right combination of a Communism/Socialism/Capitalism hybrid.

I didn't start an argument with you, alansmith. You quoted my comments in this discussion and the first thing out of your mouth was an insult that I didn't understand capitalism. That's what started the discussion between us, and everyone reading this has the ability to page back and look for themselves as to who started this "silly argument" despite your contention to the contrary.

You closed with a stream of insults: me still not understanding capitalism, or even what a market is!, that I pretend to be well read, but I don't even understand what I read.

If anyone's got something on their shoulder, or something to prove about an e-penis or whatever, it's clearly coming through in your posts. I haven't once personally insulted you, instead I've sat here and patiently fielded your inaccurate assumptions and allegations about how the "real world" works and what capitalism is or what it ought to do. I even sat here and typed out an entire chapter of a book to support my position, which you casually disregarded as anti-US commentary.

The only thing you took from all of what I've written is an anti-American bashing campaign, which has to make rational people reading this dialog wonder just where the hell you pulled that from. Perhaps you thought that all along and you've just been waiting to lay it out there. It's a non-sequitor to what I wrote, especially since I never once limited my analysis to US capitalism/capitalists; but there it is, wafting like a lingering fart for everyone in the room to smell.

The closest I guess I came to speaking negatively about US in particular was when I said that our culture emphasizes greed but that in general our attitudes about greed are that it's an undesirable trait. How that goes against America is beyond me, especially since you argued back that greed is a necessary ingredient for capitalism, and the US is the closest thing to pure capitalism, and that I'm trying to redefine greed as something negatve (?!).

But much of what you wrote has been beyond me, and I now understand why: evidently I have an inability to understand the things that I read and write. I'm functionally illiterate. Lucky for me, someone on the internet was able to straighten me out about the real world.

smooth is anti-america because smooth doesn't understand capitalism because smooth said that capitalists think things about human nature that don't seem to mesh with how they think their economy works: to wit, people are greedy and lazy but they are driven to maximize their production by invisible market forces

that's a pretty good way to end a discussion, yeah, I agree. When insults didn't work, and I didnt kowtow to your definitions and framing of the discussion, you decided to boldly just tell me to quit talking....way to go, dude.

Umm lets go back to your post on this...

You brought up marxist theory for some reason, and this is not a true evolution but more of a 'you are what you do, how you work' sort of thing (we had this discussion in philosophy at some point).

So you say that shifting economies will bring about new humans? I say hogwash. We are the same as we have been since before the last ice age. Our motivations, and our nature has not changed. Culture may change but only as it fits our predetermined nature.

So while in many, many, many generations we may 'change' into people who would naturally tend tword a communist system, we currently are not well designed for it.

As for human nature, no you don't set up a government and change human nature to work with it. That is what communism does and that is why it will always fail to achieve anything beyond brutal dicatorship. What you do is pick your government with what works best with human nature. Capitalism does this, and no one will claim its perfect, and its very unfair, but it works well and affords us the most freedom.

The reason I said you were anti-american, was because at every chance you chose to drop US into the discussion, smoo. I wasn't limiting myself to the US, and it was you who started bringing that up first. I didn't make a single insult, that was your domain. And it was you who was trying to force your distorted definitions into your argument. And I didn't say quit talking, I was merely saying that if all you could do is throw insults and didn't feel like having a conversation, but wanted a podium to measure your e-peen, that I wasn't interested in watching you attempt to stroke your ego. So, way to go yourself, you attempted to turn a discussion into an internet flashing contest.

I finally found that discussion and I responded to you there. You paraphrased marx, and according to this, "I haven't read Marx in I don't know how long, and without context I'll have some fun with this." -- http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...97&postcount=8

You weren't sure of yourself that you were interpreting what he was writing about.
"We" never had a discussion on that, and you are the only who said Marx' theory is basically 'we are what we do, how we work' and you never mentioned anywhere in that post that it wasn't a 'true' evolutionary theory.

If's odd, he published his theory on the economy at the same time Darwin was publishing Origin. He wanted to dedicate it to Darwin, but didn't receive a warm welcome. A number of analogous points are in both works. I don't know how you conclude that it's not a true evolutionary theory, though, as you haven't articulated your reasoning on that.

I actually didnt' say in my first post that changing economies will change humans, that's Marx. But in the master's I just finallly finished I argued that perhaps the youth deviance I witnessed in my ethnography was due in part to the lack of economic opportunities and formal social structures. Beaurdieu (sp.), long after Marx and still trying to grapple with the tension between agency vs. structure, would write about habitus. Recently, Williams Julius Wilson speculated on the lack of habitus and its effects on urban black youth violence in chicago. there's actually a long trajectory of deviance research coming from chicago. In fact, my discipline has it's roots in what sociologists and criminologists refer to as the "chicago school." They drew correlations between human behavior (deviance, in particular) and the ecology they were developing within. And if you remember your biology, you might remember what biomes were. The program I'm in views that as too deterministic, at least it used to when it was founded, and emphasized the social ecology.

But basically, the only reason I brough marx up at all was to respond to someone's notion that we would have to change the way we think before we could enact any kind of economic change in this thread. So I posed that if Marx' theory of historical materialism was correct, and given the fact that we're changing economic relations right now, both globally and locally, then our relations to one another are going to change and result in new concepts about ourselves.

Some people can take historical materialism without the notion that we move in ever increasing steps of progress. I personally think he made a fundamental error in his logic there on the nature of progress due to his view on human beings (he being a product of a particular social context, himself). But then Weber thought we were progressing too, but toward rationality and beaucracy...which then it'd become more cyclical, as Michel would say :D All of them thought we were marching forward in a linear fashion. I'd say it's more wavish myself.

Communism and capitalism are incompatiable. Just ask the Pilgrims, for they started with the idea that each member of the community was entitled to one share of the output of the community. The community leaders told the villagers what to plant and how much to plant. It failed miserably; people starved, got sick, ect...

They eventually scraped the idea and allowed the community to plant what they want and how much they want. They thrived, and thus began the Thanksgiving tradition.

Bottomline: Communism has failed everytime its tried.