Politics What did Romney and the GOP do wrong?

Yeah, once for overcoming a cocaine addiction and the other for standing up to Cheney and demanding a pony.
--- merged: Dec 19, 2012 at 4:07 PM ---

No, it's a stupid question.

 

If you start with the premise that capitalism is a system based on greed you will always arrive at your conclusion. So it's not your conclusion that is flawed, but your premise.

No definition of capitalism I can find suggests that it must be based on or driven by greed.

Making a profit can, but does not have to revolve around avarice. Cunning, intelligence, skill, experience, talent, luck, and hard work all contribute and can easily co-exist with a sense of fairness and consideration for others and the environment. All are aspects of capitalist success stories.

Consumer desire to accumulate "stuff" does not have to be based on greed either. The compulsive drive to possess the newest IPhone or IPad or latest model car is much more likely to be based on an individual's desire for status and acceptance within his social community and the insecurity that arises from feeling "less than" if the item is not within reach. Accumulation behavior speaks directly to the heart of our insecurities. In broader terms, greed itself is the manifestation of personal insecurity, along with drug abuse, alcoholism, and a slew of other unhealthy and self destructive behaviors.

Greed is a human characteristic. Capitalism is a concept. Greedy individuals will operate greedily within the capitalist construct. The fair-minded and generous will operate quite differently within it yet have no less success for it - unless success is measured by the attainment of ever greater personal wealth or corporate profit. Modest profits realized from a marketable product or service by a company, business or corporation, which retains its employees through fair wages and benefits and keeps its customers satisfied is successful enough to be a contribution to the capitalist engine. In fact, I would consider this brand of success to be more of a contribution than the chum in the shark tank model you believe makes the economic world go round.

If all you see is greed as a motivator, I sincerely feel sorry for you, Ace for you have a problem.

 

Stupid is the wrong word.

 

personally, i'm just tickled that Romney wrote his acceptance speech before he won. has anyone else checked out Binders Full Of Women ?

 

Outside of the fact we have not defined the concept of "living standards" in any objective manner - if the living standards are better in another place (outside of some remote tropical island paradise where one may be surrounded by scores of adorable women, good food and no cares or specific individual measures of living standards) it is because of the exceptional innovations that have come from the United States of America and its form of capitalism grounded in greed.

I love American exceptionalism. Is there Canadian exceptionalism? Do Canadians strive for more or are Canadians a content population of people with little motivation for the types of excesses American's strive for?

 

Inane, then.

 

Capitalism is a system based on a profit motive. Profit to me suggest excess - taking out more than the sum of inputs - more than what is immediately needed. In a strange form of semantics some don't believe this characterizes greed. I think it does. If it is not a characteristic of greed, what is it a characteristic of?
--- merged: Dec 19, 2012 at 6:41 PM ---

I like that better - normal minds don't come up with that kind of stuff and I agree it was inane - but I still enjoyed it.

 

You obviously read only a portion of my post or didn't understand it. If that's the case, just say so.

 

Ideally, profit should represent added value. In a sound business model, it does.

Also, might I suggest that the "exceptional innovations" from the USA are based on the exceptional inventions coming from other places - my own homeland, for instance?

 

capitalism is an economic system based on the separation of ownership from production itself and an organization of production that tends toward long runs of a single standardized commodity. profit taking pre-dates capitalism: the capitalist form of profit taking is linked to the imposition of the wage system, which is linked to the standardization of the process and of the outputs capitalist enterprises produce. the wage system is linked to the deskilling of work: in capitalist contexts, in the classical formulation, workers sell their labor power for a wage. skill is transferred into the technologies of mass production.

so most small businesses aren't capitalist, strictly speaking. there are all kinds of non-capitalist production that operate in a context that's generally called capitalist. the calling of that entire context "capitalism" is an ideological question. it does not reflect reality.
(now we're moving into what the classical lexicon calls an ideology in the context of a particular mode of production, which refers to the ways in which social life more broadly comes to be ordered politically around the dominant forms of organization)

it is a shared characteristic of classical political economy and its marxist counter-image to think of history in terms of stages. the migration of capitalism from a specific form of ownership and the organization of production to designating an entire period in which all kinds of enterprises operate simultaneously follows from this strange affection for naming historical stages. it probably has something to do with christian mythology (before and after the big guy) or from the ways in which historians, even before the development of the particular curiousity called history in a professional sense these days, like to arrange events into tidy little boxes. it also has something to do with curiousity cabinets. and power. but i digress.

i imagine it would come as some surprise to someone like ace, were he willing to read things that aren't operating from the same premises he departs from written by people who do not think as he imagines they do, that his own small business is not, in any strict sense, capitalist, even has he's inhaled the noxious gas of capitalist ideology seemingly for a long time.

one effect of this division of history into neat little stages is the impression that to reject capitalism is to reject the entirety of the social world as it operates at a given moment. but really, it's to reject a specific form of organization and specific modes of thinking related categories like hierarchy, power, exchange, etc. viewed from that perspective, revolution doesn't necessarily have to have this messianic thing attached to is, as if, all at once, at noon on a given day, absolutely everything has to change. at the same time, it does require a break with capitalist rationality. if you look at that rationality, it's utter stupidity should make it easy to do that---but as it's also an aspect of the broader socio-cognitive framework through which people see themselves, each other and the world--even quite radical forms of opposition position themselves with reference to it---so it doesn't seem so easy.

think about it though: any form of art making is not capitalist. any form of craft production is not capitalist. any form of small-scale farming is not capitalist. the fact that one might bring one's products to a market doesn't make one capitalist. exchange is not inherently capitalist.

the idea of greed---which i assume means a way to rationalize that sort of bottomlessness that enables acquisition to be eternal and no amount ever enough---is a pathological mode of interacting with the world. hell, even people in very ancient times knew---and said---that people whose sole motive was greed were assholes. and they always fuck up because they only think about their own immediate gratification, but there can be no immediate gratification because nothing, ever, is enough. it's a hollow, stupid way to live one's life.

so no, ace, i don't think all americans are as stupid and one-dimensional as you make them out to be.
and i do not think that you are, yourself, a capitalist.
it's possible that you're greedy.
but you know how those people have long been understood.

 

Win-win?

Now there's a socialist concept if I've ever heard one.

 

Greed is to capitalism what Jose the migrant worker's dump in the irrigation ditch is to a head of lettuce.

 

Oh, I read what you write, both the text and the subtext. I think I've correctly characterized your beliefs, minus the bluster, anecdotal "evidence" and constant shifts of focus. If seeing it stripped of obfuscation troubles you...

If you must work "greed" into the conversation, consider that our economic system shifts from need, through want and desire, and into greed as you work your way up the economic strata. Having "enough" changes with the more you acquire until eventually, for some, there is no longer "enough," there is only "more." You accuse all Americans of always and ever wanting "more" to the exclusion of all else. That sounds like the rationalization for one's personal desire for increased acquisition, or "greed." You admit to being a greedy capitalist, Aceventura, and to convince yourself that there are no moral problems with that, you desperately try to paint all of society as greedy.

The poor are greedy for desiring food, shelter and a little entertainment. The lower middle class is greedy for wanting affordable health care, a modest vacation and the Social Security benefits they have paid for their entire working life. The upper middle class is greedy for wanting an SUV, a pool and cottage on a lake. The upper class, therefore, gets to be greedy by writing themselves huge bonus checks and hiding the money from the taxman in offshore banks, or by leveraging buyouts, stripping companies of assets and shipping jobs to the lowest wage-scale corners of the world... then writing themselves huge bonus checks and hiding the money. To some, this is all twistedly logical.

Not only do you fail to comprehend how destructive this outlook is to a society, you enthusiastically embrace it as the way the world is meant to operate. Any deviation is descent into Socialism.

Buffalo Bill? BS indeed!

 

^^So fucking bang on.

 

View: http://youtu.be/2auI6Uz3D8I

 

Thank God for Reagan. Now no one has to believe this old fogey nonsense about capitalism anymore.

 

You may not realize it, but I actually like you and your posts. You always make me smile. I find your point of view very intriguing and it is also puzzling - I love a good puzzle - tell me if I am getting close to solving the roach puzzle.

Here is how the story goes -

You are a cog in a system that you despise.
The system has served you well.
You are comfortable in a system that is counter to you view of fairness.
Given the conflict, you have suppressed guilt.
With your guilt you find solace in lashing out at those who understand the system, celebrate the system and hold no guilt related to being a part of the system.
Given your level of comfort and perhaps age you have neither the will or fortitude to do anything to fix the problems you perceive in the system.

Just between you and me, we know I am pretty close, aren't I?

And if you really want to be honest about it - this form of neo-liberalism as you call it, is an evolutionary response to failed socio-economic systems. In this form of neo-liberalism we have a system where the powerful advocate just enough power creating an illusion for the masses of freedoms and choices. It is a system designed to creat just enough comfort to avert revolution or overthrow of thos in power. It is a system that gives the masses the illusion that one day they can be in the power class and in fact the system occasionally randomly rewards a select few in the masses with an abundance of power and control in exchange for those select few to preach the message of neo-liberalism to help continue the illusion of freedoms and choice.

You get pissed with me because, I know the game is rigged, you know I know the game is rigged and I know you know - yet I believe I can still win the game. A game you gave up on a long time ago. It just makes you want to slap me and say - Ace, the game is rigged get a clue. And I typically come back with - I have a clue, which makes you want to slap me again. Like I said, it all makes me smile.