The world loves free markets, with good regulation

[KungFusion]

Agreed - we need to overcome the orthodox anti-socialist / anti-regulatory streak that runs through free market ideology. The rabid, unrestrained capitolism that American corporations have faught so hard to achieve and romanticize is actually a relic of the pre-globalization age. We should be taking a step back to let China and Cuba serve as petri-dishes. Look at it in terms of fiscal defense policy rather than frantically scrambling and clawing our way back to the top.

 

[ReillyT]

I perfer to think of it as modifying Capitalism until it can help us sustain a decent world in which that vast majority do not have to suffer great pains to sustain the commerce level.

As it is now we have cycles where people are convinced that regulations on the market are killing it. Then you end up with too little regulation on the market and the raping begins anew.

It time to learn the task of perfecting the regulations instead of just applying them and then removing them.

I think we as a world are starting to learn this lesson.

Even Cuba is starting to ecperiment with giving people small plots of land to Run farms free of government intervention. They can now have cell phones if they can afford them. Russia and China are falling in love with the free market.

Its time the US moves to the middle too.

If the world can come from all directions toward each other we can learn the lessons more effectively and hopefully meet in the middle and find a sustainable balance.

There is no balance. There is no right answer. There are only trade-offs and constantly changing dynamics. Even if there were a middle in which to meet, by the time you got there, it will have moved.

I appreciate your sense of optimism though. It is refreshing.

 

[Diuretic]

"The use of the plane metaphor was to illustrate a point and not to be taken literally."

Understood - but the point of where i was going with the 'sometimes i wouldn't even choose to fly the plane of life' quip (also not meant to be taken literally) is that the instinct whereby we react to what you accurately point out are the perennial boom / bust cycles associated with free markets by systematically purging them of all their associated risks is also the same instinct whereby we sacrifice our civil liberties in the name of security. The economy, like life itself, is not just choosing to fly or not to fly; the risks are built in, no matter which approach you take, and when we try to insulate ourselves from them we usually end up in as equally a compromised position as that in which we began back when we still had all our liberties and faced the initial risks. You reach a certain point where you can't eliminate risk anymore, you can only displace it, shift it around.

So when you say we need to modify capitalism until it becomes something else, i can't help but adopt a skeptical stance and wonder what direction youre suggesting we move in . . . ? Managing markets is one thing, entirely transforming them raises serious doubts (as well as all sorts of unpleasant historical associations . . .)

maybe i'm just jumping to conclusions about what youre suggesting, though . . .

I don't think you're jumping to conclusions. I don't think I have the answers either (and I'm sure no one of influence would listen if I said I did). Market mechanisms are very good for achieving equilibrium, I'm not suggesting they be dismantled, I've indicated that planned or command economies don't work, there are too many variables happening at any given time for the planners to be able to deal with. It really is a case of the invisible hand being required. But it's the players, or some of the players, in the game that I'm looking at.

The capitalist or perhaps I should say "corporatist" mentality, if not severely restricted, will simply take all before it. The urge is to grow, to consume to amass everything it can. I mean take the environment. There are examples around the world and across time where, sans regulation/restriction, corporate entitities have denuded whole swathes of land like locusts, without a thought about what will happen later. It's the ant and the grasshopper. There have to be restrictions.

The boom and bust cycle isn't good for us or our environment. When things are booming it's like hyperactive kids in a candy shop, hands going everywhere grabbing and stuffing. Then when things are busting there are huge amounts of misery, real people suffer, not just abstract things called corporations. It just doesn't make sense. We need to get past this. We need to invent - just like capitalism was invented - a system that takes the best parts of capitalism and the best parts of socialism and puts them together in a system that serves us rather than having us serve it.

 

[KungFusion]

"There are only trade-offs and constantly changing dynamics"

This is true and well put, but that doesn't mean there's no middle at which economies can more effectively and reliably thrive. There will always be a chaotic element, but it needn't reign supreme in perpetuity.

 

[Truthmatters]

Its like a great machine. You have to do the maintainece. Change the oil, retune it, replace the broken parts.

It will never run itself. The people who think it does run itself seem to care more about the machine than the people it was designed to serve.

Like others above have said we are its masters not the other way arround.

 

[KungFusion]

Yeah, in some ways the economy evolves naturally, but unlike nature itself, economic evolution follows principles of intelligent design.

 

[jillian]

unlike nature itself, economic evolution follows principles of intelligent design.

And then Alan Greenspan retired...