The single most important cause of the demise of civilization

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Lawrence Reed, speaking at the Foundation for Economics Education, correctly identifies what is the most defining cause of a nation's demise and fall. He does so at the start of the video, but he expounds on the idea at the end beginning at 14:00.



I fully agree with Reed. There're no shortage of my posts that point to the same thing as being what's wrong with all manners of things.

Thread topic: that which Reed identifies as the most important aspect of civilization.
 
This stuff gets so old and tiring, the big bad wolf theory of civilization should have been thrown in the dustbin of economic thought long ago. The recent great recession could even be used to demonstrate why. If men were angels we'd need no government, who said that Madison maybe. I agree with the author we need honest men of character, but when you find one let everyone know. They are rare creatures where money is concerned. You know you are in lalaland when words like liberty and freedom stand in place of concrete reality. I could link lots but I'll note a few books and hope that someday people will wake up. Unlikely but....

Do you believe that Capitalism requires 5.5% unemployment?

History repeats itself, or does it in America just continue for some people. Many Americans fail to realize we did not arrive at this place in time without a lot of turmoil and change, revolution, civil war, Laissez-faire capitalism, great depression, unions, new deal, civil rights, great society, riots, and on and on. This fictional dichotomy has existed in the minds of the simple since the New Deal - if not before - corporate America has since tattooed it into the minds of the impressible. Makes everything easy to categorize. I'd suggest for those interested in its story a book I am reading now. "Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalism—funding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism."

How economic boom times in the West came to an end | Aeon Essays

Reading
"Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" Jane Mayer
'Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal' Kim Phillips-Fein


Jobs: The Greatest Job Creator Of All Time

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." John Maynard Keynes
 
Interesting talk on your video. I wonder when he gave it? Seems so apropos right now. But who decides which leaders have "good" character? You? Me? I believe you and I differ on Hillary's character, but I freely admit that is a personal reaction after watching her over the years. Many "believe" in Trump's good character, same as you and I don't. It is a highly subjective concept, no matter how hard you try to define it with terms like honesty, trustworthiness, etc. It can all be viewed through the opposite prism, no matter how carefully you think you've proven your point.

We can never expect men and women of good character to appear and wish to lead us when the entire "swamp" they would have to navigate is what it is. I think Obama was pretty much a straight shooter, but the powers that be convinced him and the rest of the Dems to lay low on the gun control thing when they had the chance--I can hear them whispering now. "Look ahead--gun control will get you voted out--you need to look at the big picture." Now they're holding sit-ins, now that they know they can't actually do anything about it. I hate politicians. I have no idea why I come here in the first place.

I like the Keynes quote about capitalism that ends Midcan's post. Astounding, yes. Ironic, you betcha. But it works better than any other, doesn't it? I'm genuinely asking.
 
The Swiss have maintained control over government and continue to manage very well despite the country's regional cultural differences, four official languages and that they have embraced capitalism.

Their secret is to keep the Federal government in check with most spending and taxation decisions made at a local/regional level.

The Swiss federal government spends the equivalent of about 10% of the country's GDP and is responsible for some 30% of total government spending - the other 70% is spent by the Cantons and local municipalities.

People at the local level have more control over government and this certainly contributes to reducing big government waste and corruption.

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If the "demise of civilization" has never happened and obviously Mr. Reed lives in a time of incredible advances in civilization the only conclusion you can make is that he is peddling a book.
 
Lawrence Reed, speaking at the Foundation for Economics Education, correctly identifies what is the most defining cause of a nation's demise and fall. He does so at the start of the video, but he expounds on the idea at the end beginning at 14:00.



I fully agree with Reed. There're no shortage of my posts that point to the same thing as being what's wrong with all manners of things.

Thread topic: that which Reed identifies as the most important aspect of civilization.

I don't know what he said in the first 14 minutes, but I certainly agree with what he said from 14:00 on.

Another way to look at this is cultural deterioration. We've not only lowered our standards across the board, but there are many who are perfectly comfortable with it - and with that, they further enable it.

For someone to deny that would take a level of either denial or intellectual dishonesty that would not be worth trying to overcome. Or, perhaps, a satisfaction with the fact that our culture is in decline. Payback for our sins, maybe.
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Lawrence Reed, speaking at the Foundation for Economics Education, correctly identifies what is the most defining cause of a nation's demise and fall. He does so at the start of the video, but he expounds on the idea at the end beginning at 14:00.



I fully agree with Reed. There're no shortage of my posts that point to the same thing as being what's wrong with all manners of things.

Thread topic: that which Reed identifies as the most important aspect of civilization.
The fall of Rome was undoubtedly the decadence of centuries of success and the weakening of the institutions that made it so successful.

The fall of America will be likewise, including an influx of people from cultures that don't take pride in its greatness.

It is the people that make success, not success that make the people. Reagan was able to reverse a trend. We can only hope that Trump is equal to the task.

Having said that, America's days as an unrivaled superpower are numbered and a less diluted East Asia is rising. It is inevitable.
 
If the "demise of civilization" has never happened and obviously Mr. Reed lives in a time of incredible advances in civilization the only conclusion you can make is that he is peddling a book.

Reed first, as far as I know, publicly introduced the ideas in that video in 1979, just a year after obtaining his master's degree. His earliest published book came out in 1981.

That Mr. Reed was hawking a book is not at all among the conclusions to which one would rightly come after having read your statement quoted above; moreover, those conclusions have nothing to do with Reed. Regardless of what conclusion you think I can make about Reed, one hopes you conclude about yourself that it's high time you explore more thoroughly the plausibility of your own remarks before sharing them in public.
 
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I have always suspected the fall of the United States would be due to Barney cartoons, and then the invasion of the Canadian Huns.
 
I like the Keynes quote about capitalism that ends Midcan's post. Astounding, yes. Ironic, you betcha. But it works better than any other, doesn't it? I'm genuinely asking.

So that quote is one that comes up in many an economist's formal training, most often early in it. It does, because taken in isolation, the quote is satirically hilarious and at the same time captures the omnipresent three way "tug of war" among positive economics' straightforward, well tested,and readily understood and applied laws and principles, moral philosophy's notions about socioeconomic justice, and the humanity's general disregard of the better ideas of both.

As for your question, capitalism is a system for which there is a right and wrong time and place. The same can be said of other economic systems as well. The thing that makes capitalism "better" than it's competing economic systems is that capitalism is compatible with a variety of political systems whereas it's opposite on the economic continuum, command economy, is not at all. Capitalism's flexibility is what makes it best.

Capitalism is indeed best when the people living in that system are well educated, well informed, thus able to make responsible/rational choices and they do indeed so choose. It's not essential that the whole of the polity have those traits; only the ones empowered to make decisions need to have them, but it helps if more rather than fewer people at least feel thus (sufficiently) empowered, regardless of whether they actually are.

Where capitalism is not best is where (when) the people in question aren't informed/educated enough to make rational decisions. You see, though people are given to say X or Y is subjective, positive economics rarely cannot identify what is the most rational economic choice and how that choice compares to the alternatives in terms of maximizing utility and profits. People must, however, know what positive economics shows is the most economically rational choice, and they must know how the relevant factors affect the outcome. Well, if people just "go with their guts" on such matters, sometimes they'll be right and sometimes they won't. In short, the more perfect the information, the better capitalism will be for the situation in question.

For example, the models of how supply and demand interact are different in capitalism under perfect competition than they are under monopolistic competition. An individual who knows of neither model may guess right and come out okay, but that's not rational decision making. An individual who knows only the perfect competition model and applies it to his monopolistic competition situation will likely flounder and fail, unless he's lucky.

With that in mind, one need only look to mid-20th century China and the nature and extent of the general public's educational levels and access to information. Even if left to make choices under capitalism, the people would have blundered left and right because they simply didn't have access to the information needed to make a rational economic decision. Oh, they'd have been doing the best they could with the information they had, no doubt about that. The problem comes in when one realises that the facts of a situation are the facts, regardless of whether all the actors involved know of them and their extant implications.

In capitalism, firms and individuals' success depends on their opting for one the top rational choices that can be made, even if not the most rational choice. If under capitalism one makes the most rational decision one can and that election is not among the most rational choices, success is far less likely. Where information dissemination is grossly imperfect, so too is capitalism. Command economics are better when external factors make distributing information pointless. We don't water dead plants.


Aside:
IIRC, the quote has been attributed to Keynes; however, I don't believe there's been any concrete evidence he actually said or wrote that. A similar remark has been found in Robinson's early 1940s discussion of monopoly. (Monopoly : by E. A. G. Robinson ; with an introduction by C.W. Gulliebaud. - Version details)

The great merit of the capitalist system, it has been said, is that it succeeds in using the nastiest motives of nasty people for the ultimate benefit of society.
The version that midcan5 shared is from a 1950s text about Christianity and business and the specific context for the statement was with regard

who decides which leaders have "good" character? You? Me? I believe you and I differ on Hillary's character, but I freely admit that is a personal reaction after watching her over the years. Many "believe" in Trump's good character, same as you and I don't. It is a highly subjective concept

What be good character is not subjective. We all know it when we see it. It may be hard to put our finger on it and define it in a few sentences but we know whom among us doesn't give us pause about their intentions and who does. The people who "held their noses" and voted for Trump knew quite well that he is not a man of good character.

The question in my mind is why they didn't just write in the name of someone whom they felt is of good character. It is the pervasive and pragmatic acquiescence to depravity that is a civilization's doom. Had the electorate been of sufficiently good character overall, we'd have neither Trump nor Clinton in the WH right now. Quite simply, when society becomes overrun, as it appears we are now, with individuals who are just too chickensh*t to subordinate petty politics to good character, we are doomed.
 
There is no demise of civilization!

We live in great times . Why y'all be so negative ?
 
The Swiss have maintained control over government and continue to manage very well despite the country's regional cultural differences, four official languages and that they have embraced capitalism.

Their secret is to keep the Federal government in check with most spending and taxation decisions made at a local/regional level.

The Swiss federal government spends the equivalent of about 10% of the country's GDP and is responsible for some 30% of total government spending - the other 70% is spent by the Cantons and local municipalities.

People at the local level have more control over government and this certainly contributes to reducing big government waste and corruption.

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The health of a nation is often equivalent of the level of trust that people have in their government. Participation in the decision-making process and transparency are two essential components in maintaining the trust of the electorate.

The great failing of representative democracy is that it is often impossible to practice participation in the decision-making process and assure transparency at a national level. We hope that those we elect to represent us will act on our behalf but too often our representatives are influenced by lobbyists and special interest groups, supporting issues over which we often have little control.

If trust in government is important than Switzerland leads the world with close to 80% trust in government, which is in no small part is due to the form of direct democracy practised in the country:

"Serdült sees one of the reasons for foreign interest in Switzerland’s direct democracy as “a certain frustration with representative democracy”. Many citizens don’t feel they are being represented by the elected politicians in parliament; they want a say, and to be able to participate directly."
The run on direct democracy

The Swiss express greater trust in government because of the greater the control they enjoy at a local/regional level, as well as national level. Trust is the key:

"Evidence also shows that trust in government is negatively correlated with the perceived levels of corruption in government. In other words, the fact that Swiss see the activities of their government in a positive light encourages them to follow its decisions and to perceive it as uncorrupted."
The government most trusted by its citizens | Invest | Switzerland Global Enterprise, S-GE

Without trust in government the electorate will increasingly view their government, industries and policies as corrupt, fragmenting society into millions of cynical and self-interested individuals. This is in fact what happened to Rome.

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Lawrence Reed, speaking at the Foundation for Economics Education, correctly identifies what is the most defining cause of a nation's demise and fall. He does so at the start of the video, but he expounds on the idea at the end beginning at 14:00.



I fully agree with Reed. There're no shortage of my posts that point to the same thing as being what's wrong with all manners of things.

Thread topic: that which Reed identifies as the most important aspect of civilization.

Liberals...
 
Single biggest cause of the demise of civilization
...People stop wanting to work together to maintain it....

Not working together is a manifestation of several character flaws. Can you guess which ones?

characterispower.jpg



There is no demise of civilization!

We live in great times . Why y'all be so negative ?

Do not confuse "cause of demise" with "demise." They are not the same things.
 

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