The Problem with a Market Society

[TakeAStepBack]

False premise. There is no reason why someone can not invest their own private capital and work within contract laws to build a subway system. That's where I quit reading.

 

[LibertyLemming]

The problem is in equating the market and society.

It isn't a problem or even something that has to be done. The market will do the things society wants on its own without government interference and destruction.

 

[Wry Catcher]

While there are always exceptions to the rule, the vast majority of us in this country are where we are in life based on the choices we made throughout it.

That's an opinion ^^^ and one which strikes me as absurd. We are a product of choices made to be sure, but there is not a singular cause for poverty, nor a singular cause for great success. We all know people who were born with talent, skills and abilities far above the norm, and others born with limits, some severe, some physical and some mental.

Painting with too broad a brush creates a picture which limits detail and thus practical and productive debate. It's one of my major peeves when reading posts such as the one above. There are billions of human beings on the planet today and we are all unique - to put anyone group in a box based on one data point - sex, color, ethnicity, wealth or poverty - is absurd.

 

[SAYIT]

I wish there weren't folks with no intention of reasoned argument crashing this thread. For god sakes it's in "Philosophy" which you have no interest in. You're looking for "Politics" which centers around rhetoric and propaganda. Philosophy seeks to understand, unlike Sophistry, which is literally all there is to American Politics anymore.

The fact someone is poor is more likely an indication of where they were born. It's much less of an indication of how hard they work/can work. You seem to forget that there are over 300 million people in America and there are less than 200 million private sector jobs. Even if everyone supposedly sought work (like they are not doing that now!) only a few thousand people would be hired, what are the rest to do? There simply is not enough work for the amount of people in this country yet the blame seems to always lie with not working hard enough. We do not live in a meritocracy, end of story.

This is a clear case of a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing. In our population of over 300 million are more than 100 million children, retired seniors and unemployable citizens. Are you suggesting our economy must provide them with jobs? Frankly you are so busy trying to sell your dogma you have lost contact with reality. That seems to be common among socialists.

 

[dblack]

The problem is in equating the market and society.

It isn't a problem or even something that has to be done. The market will do the things society wants on its own without government interference and destruction.

I was referring to the notion that market values and societal values are one in the same. Many liberals reject free market capitalism because they, rightly I think, see humans as worth more than their 'market value'. But the market, like government, isn't the be-all, end-all of society. The vast bulk of our interactions with each other happen outside the realm of trade, and outside the realm of government.

 

[LibertyLemming]

The problem is in equating the market and society.

It isn't a problem or even something that has to be done. The market will do the things society wants on its own without government interference and destruction.

I was referring to the notion that market values and societal values are one in the same. Many liberals reject free market capitalism because they, rightly I think, see humans as worth more than their 'market value'. But the market, like government, isn't the be-all, end-all of society. The vast bulk of our interactions with each other happen outside the realm of trade, and outside the realm of government.

The problem with your criticisms, or liberals, of capitalism is that we currently do not have capitalism but corporatism and cronyism.

I agree the bulk of interactions happen outside of the government, but not outside the market.

 

[dblack]

It isn't a problem or even something that has to be done. The market will do the things society wants on its own without government interference and destruction.

I was referring to the notion that market values and societal values are one in the same. Many liberals reject free market capitalism because they, rightly I think, see humans as worth more than their 'market value'. But the market, like government, isn't the be-all, end-all of society. The vast bulk of our interactions with each other happen outside the realm of trade, and outside the realm of government.

The problem with your criticisms, or liberals, of capitalism is that we currently do not have capitalism but corporatism and cronyism.

I agree the bulk of interactions happen outside of the government, but not outside the market.

Maybe I'm not making my point clearly. What I'm saying is I'm sympathetic to the common liberal's rejection of the idea that human value is a market calculation. People offer value to society in ways that can't be measured in dollars.

 

[LibertyLemming]

I was referring to the notion that market values and societal values are one in the same. Many liberals reject free market capitalism because they, rightly I think, see humans as worth more than their 'market value'. But the market, like government, isn't the be-all, end-all of society. The vast bulk of our interactions with each other happen outside the realm of trade, and outside the realm of government.

The problem with your criticisms, or liberals, of capitalism is that we currently do not have capitalism but corporatism and cronyism.

I agree the bulk of interactions happen outside of the government, but not outside the market.

Maybe I'm not making my point clearly. What I'm saying is I'm sympathetic to the common liberal's rejection of the idea that human value is a market calculation. People offer value to society in ways that can't be measured in dollars.

Okay. I agree with that... I'm not sure who thinks of people in terms of value besides employers and the government though. Capitalism is about human action not human value

 

[midcan5]

As I read through these posts and threads I often read about this magical Market that can do all things. A kind of Supermarket that builds roads, bridges, tunnels, subways yet? But you know what, I never see one of this Market miracles. Where are they folks?

"Throughout the nineteenth century, the loans which financed large American capital investment programs, mounted by private consortia, were continually defaulted on. The history of the American railroads is a history of default. More specifically, the history of American capitalism is one of default. This happened in a spectacular manner during the Panics of 1837, 1857, 1873, 1892-93 and 1907. None of this reneging happened in the civilized manner organized by a Solon or a Sully. Rather it involved a panic and a crash, which created massive bankruptcies, which in turn wiped out massive debts. Because of the disordered way in which each ripping up of obligations came, the result was always a short period of widespread depression before the cleansed economy took off again with renewed force. In the Panic of 1892-93 alone, four thousand banks and fourteen thousand commercial enterprises collapsed. In other words, the nonpayment of debt was central to the construction of the United States.... The great depressions of the last hundred and fifty years can be seen as the default mechanisms of middle-class societies. Depressions free the citizens by making the paper worthless. The method was and is awkward and painful, particularly for the poor, but it destroys the paper chains and permits a new equilibrium to be built out of the pain and disorder of collapse.... One of the most surprising innovations of the late twentieth century has been not only the rationalization of speculation but, beyond that, the attachment of moral value, with vaguely religious origins, to the repayment of debts. This probably has something to do with the insertion of God as an official supporter of capitalism and democracy." p403 John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'


"Capitalism is the ownership and use of the concrete but dynamic elements in a society - what is commonly known as the means of production. A capitalist is someone who produces more capital through the production of the means he owns. This necessitates the periodic reinvestment of part of the capital earned into the repair, modernization and expansion of the means. Capitalism is therefore the ownership of an abstraction called capital, rendered concrete by its ownership of the means of production, which through actual production creates new capital.... However, capitalism as conceived today tends to revolve around something called the profit motive, even though profit is neither a cause of capitalism nor at the heart of the capitalist action. Profit is a useful result of the process, nothing more. As for the ownership of the means of production, this has been superseded by their management. And yet, to manage is to administer, which is a bureaucratic function. Alternately, there is a growing reliance upon the use of capital itself to produce new capital. But that is speculation, not production. Much of the development of the means of production is now rejected as unprofitable and, frankly, beneath the dignity of the modern manager, who would rather leave such labour and factory-intensive "dirty" work to Third World societies. Finally , the contemporary idea of capitalism grandly presents "service" as its new sophisticated manifestation. But the selling of one's own skills is not a capitalist art. And most of the jobs being created by the service industries are with the exception of the high-technology sector descendants of the pre-eighteenth-century commerce in trade and services." p360 'Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West' John Ralston Saul

 

[gnarlylove]

So pleased to see some genuine exchange of ideas. *breathes a sigh of relief*

Would love to weigh in when I have more time. For now though, my contention in my original post was that market values tend to crowd out our more deeply held social values and human virtues. To think they are one in the same seems a bit odd. Society existed prior to markets. If by markets you mean only the exchange of goods then I suppose we agree but I am referring to the markets we have in society today. The one's that determines whether one has food or is eating out of a trash can. I know both and the latter is unacceptable in a healthy society but clearly is widely accepted in our society, since we more or less refuse to offer basic needs to people (unless the sell their time and body for survival/comfort thereby becoming alienated from the natural processes of life). Then we kick 'em while their down for having no ability, no avenue to earn. My point is a detailed one and does not attempt to make sweeping generalizations, as Wry said, there is no singular cause of events and painting too wide reduces our ability to perceive what's really going on. Now allow me to generalize haha

I think in summary the problem is we have unwittingly accepted markets at the behest of those who benefit most from markets (or more accurately cronyism). With money more valuable than a human life, we can see that society is bound to fail or flounder is ceaseless dysfunction. It's because we don't treat humans as they really are--we see them as labor machines to be bought and sold. Don't forget discarded!

 

[Toro]

Norm takes apart another straw man.

 

[LibertyLemming]

heard this one the radio yesterday:

I point to the United States from 1865 until 1914 (Federal Reserve Act) as an example of what a Libertarian State could have looked like. Slavery ended. There was no central bank, no income tax Labor was paid for what it was worth (no pesky minimum wage laws). This country ran on tariff and a one penny per barrel tax on distilled liquor. Maybe the tariff and alcohol tax moots my point. Major internal improvements were financed by privately issued bonds or tolls, not directly via taxes. Individuals that used roads, paid for their use. The Patent office boomed as the government kept out of the way of individuals like Edison, Ford and Westinghouse. One could argue a Patent office is not libertarian, but Patent infringements were not handled by an armed bureaucrat, it was Patent holders who prosecuted/sued when it came to trade secrets. In a Libertarian society, an inventive person does have the right to profit from his work.

Also, from 1870 to 1890 real wages increased by 50%. When was the last time that happened?

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Toro]

Slavery ended because of a war that killed a couple hundred thousand people.

 

[LibertyLemming]

probably why he said the period after the war huh nerd

 

[LibertyLemming]

even though that isn't really accurate

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I wish there weren't folks with no intention of reasoned argument crashing this thread. For god sakes it's in "Philosophy" which you have no interest in. You're looking for "Politics" which centers around rhetoric and propaganda. Philosophy seeks to understand, unlike Sophistry, which is literally all there is to American Politics anymore....

Interesting thread. Don't expect reasoned debate from most people online, people like Quantum use ad hominem arguments as they are naive children. Most replies have nothing to do with the content of the OP. But don't let them deter you, others may read and learn. Use trackbacks, save your links, if you stay online long enough you'll find much of the same but on the rare occasion some interest and thought.

This from the guy that is so stupid that the only way he can post is cutting and pasting other people's words that have nothing to do with whatever point he is trying to make.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The problem is in equating the market and society.

Bingo, which is why I stopped taking the OP seriously. Discussing the merits of a free market with an idiot that thinks the economy and society are the same thing is impossible.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

While there are always exceptions to the rule, the vast majority of us in this country are where we are in life based on the choices we made throughout it.

That's an opinion ^^^ and one which strikes me as absurd. We are a product of choices made to be sure, but there is not a singular cause for poverty, nor a singular cause for great success. We all know people who were born with talent, skills and abilities far above the norm, and others born with limits, some severe, some physical and some mental.

Painting with too broad a brush creates a picture which limits detail and thus practical and productive debate. It's one of my major peeves when reading posts such as the one above. There are billions of human beings on the planet today and we are all unique - to put anyone group in a box based on one data point - sex, color, ethnicity, wealth or poverty - is absurd.

"You didn't build that."

Want to tell me again you don't support communism?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

As I read through these posts and threads I often read about this magical Market that can do all things. A kind of Supermarket that builds roads, bridges, tunnels, subways yet? But you know what, I never see one of this Market miracles. Where are they folks?

In other words, you read stuff that no one is saying.

Believe it or not, that says more about you than it does the people who posted the stuff you aren't reading. The market is not magical, unlike the government. The market is a dynamic result of multiple forces that end up reinforcing cooperation over competition. I would explain how that works, but the math is actually complicated enough, and esoteric enough, that I don't understand it well enough to explain it to illiterates. I can, however, point you to a really easy to understand film clip that explains why you are wrong.



I ignored the rest of your post because, like everything you post, it is totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Slavery ended because of a war that killed a couple hundred thousand people.

No it did not.