What Capitalism has Done for the Common Man.

[whitehall]

If Capitalism has benefited the "common man" I can assure you it was unintentional.

I agree. That’s how capitalism works. Separate people pursuing their separate interests, dealing in a manner of which parties come to an agreement in order to exchange goods and services.

What the hell is going on in the union based education system when a poster says that the benefits of capitalism were unintentional and you freaking agree? Are the hypocrites who benefit from the freedom of capitalism so filled with hatred that they become bi-polar?

 

[bripat9643]

If Capitalism has benefited the "common man" I can assure you it was unintentional.

Who cares if it was "intentional?" The question is what is the system that benefits the common man the most. The movie is a clue for you: it ain't socialism.

Furthermore, how does an economic system have "intention?"

 

[bripat9643]

I am capitalist.

It needs fettering or it kills its self

You're about as capitalist as Karl Marx

 

[Moonglow]

Publius smells an alot like a John Locke I knew

 

[Publius1787]

Capitalism and the exploitation of the dense energy found in oil have revolutionized our world.

Time will tell which played a bigger role.

Does the word "exploitation" in the above sentence have a positive or negative connotation?

 

[Publius1787]

That's the idea. Let the individual persue his own economic self-interest and we all gain. You socialists think central planning is the answer but that never works.

I agree! You would think "liberal" would be much more laissez-faire.. literally means "let [them] do" as most "capitalists" are! But most liberals also think there is a finite pie which is NOT the case. In fact when all is said and done.. what truly is the driver of all economic engines? It is quite simply people exchanging part of their life for something of value they want. In other words people go to work exchanging 8 hours of their life for an hourly wage.

Assuming therefore the same ratio of US workers to general population 153,516,000 workers to 300 million or 50% is applied to the world's population. or 3 billion employed people.
Drop off another 1 billion for all unemployed or 2 billion people.
Assume hourly wage is world wide $3.00.
2 billion people looking for $6 billion an hour in exchange for 1 hour of their life.
Assume they work 20 years (some just starting some close to retiring..)
Over the next 20 years these 2 billion people will exchange @ 2,000 hrs/year for $3/hour or a total of
$240 trillion over the next 20 years.
That's the pie folks.
So when world planners get out the spreadsheets for more accurate assessment they can say..
OK.. mortgage 20 years $100,000 for
car payment..
etc.,etc.
The world's productivity is what is ultimately being exchanged.

So, first you say the pie is infinite...

Then you go about defining the exact value of the pie....

OK then. So the pie is infinite AND 240T...at the sam time.

Limited resource theories, or, classical economics, never takes in to account technology, innovation, or efficiency. One of the few things Adam Smith didn’t take in to account believe it or not.

 

[antagon]

Capitalism and the exploitation of the dense energy found in oil have revolutionized our world.

Time will tell which played a bigger role.

Does the word "exploitation" in the above sentence have a positive or negative connotation?

Exploitation is a word I've heard used to refer to unearthing and using resources, and does not carry a connotation like it would in reference to innocent children.

 

[Publius1787]

Capitalism and the exploitation of the dense energy found in oil have revolutionized our world.

Time will tell which played a bigger role.

Does the word "exploitation" in the above sentence have a positive or negative connotation?

Exploitation is a word I've heard used to refer to unearthing and using resources, and does not carry a connotation like it would in reference to innocent children.

That’s what I thought. But so many liberals use it as a negative term. They always put emphasis on the word "exploitation" when it comes out of their mouths.

 

[whitehall]

Personally I think the argument about capitalism is important. Let the freaking neo-socialists come out of the political closet and tell us that their concept of hope and change was really about hoping that capitalism changes to socialism. It makes the choice so much easier in November.

 

[antagon]

Does the word "exploitation" in the above sentence have a positive or negative connotation?

Exploitation is a word I've heard used to refer to unearthing and using resources, and does not carry a connotation like it would in reference to innocent children.

That’s what I thought. But so many liberals use it as a negative term. They always put emphasis on the word "exploitation" when it comes out of their mouths.

If you're a treehugger, you take sympathy on everything and treat it like and innocent child, so exploitation is a term to describe what everyone not hugging the tree is up to. It can be quite confusing.

 

[Publius1787]

Personally I think the argument about capitalism is important. Let the freaking neo-socialists come out of the political closet and tell us that their concept of hope and change was really about hoping that capitalism changes to socialism. It makes the choice so much easier in November.

One problem, they won’t come out of the closet. Modern liberals and socialists are one in the same. But they can't run on socialism.

Upton Sinclair: "The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."




.

 

[bripat9643]

The problem is keeping capitalism, capitalistic. It's like economist Friedman said, capitalism runs on greed, so some, pretending to be capitalists, end up trying to destroy capitalism by creating monopolies, mergers, holding companies and so on. To keep capitalism alive and well, government has had to pass all kinds of laws and regulations keeping the greedy ones from destroying our capitalistic economic system.

Friedman never said that, you lying piece of crap. Friedman lobbied incessantly to cut regulations. You read commie propaganda and then somehow attribute it to Friedman. I challenge you to produce a single quote of Friedman saying anything you claim he said.

 

[bripat9643]

Capitilism is a great tool in many areas. Socialism is also a great tool in many areas. Neither functions well in all areas. Properly used they supplement each other.

Wrong, Socialism isn't great for anything accept enslaving and impoverishing the population. What does socialism do better than capitalism other than looting the productive for the benefit of a privileged class?

 

[bluecoller-eddy]

I'm going to present private sector employment, because republicans hate government employee's

Romney said of Obama, “he wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government
workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not
get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back
on government and help the American people.”

private sector jobs

Eight years of supply side vulture capitalism.
Jan 2001 --111,631
Jan 2009 --110,985
---------------646 thousand jobs lost.


11 years,8 months of supply side vulture capitalism.
Jan 2001 --111,631
Jul 2012 --111,317
---------------314 thousand jobs lost.

Three trillion dollars in tax cuts in 11 and 1/2 years, and we wind up with
314 thousand jobs lost.

For Republicans, Lying is a way of life.


---- bluecoller -- the grumpy old kraut-------

 

[Londoner]

The problem is keeping capitalism, capitalistic. It's like economist Friedman said, capitalism runs on greed, so some, pretending to be capitalists, end up trying to destroy capitalism by creating monopolies, mergers, holding companies and so on. To keep capitalism alive and well, government has had to pass all kinds of laws and regulations keeping the greedy ones from destroying our capitalistic economic system.

Indeed. Everyone knows that capitalism is the most productive engine in history, including Karl Marx. His worry was over the final phase of capitalism - known as monopoly capitalism where competition is replaced by the compete takeover of the wealth-creating-resources by a small group of people. This kind of capitalism went into overdrive starting in the 80s, under Reagan, which was the era of mega-mergers. Companies bought competitors in order to consolidate control over markets. AIG is bigger than the Edinburg of Adam Smith's youth. They have completely locked down many insurance markets. These large mega-corporations pour money into government in order to rig entrance barriers so that they don't have to lose market share to competitors. They start off as great competitors but they end by purchasing their competitors and government. This is how Eli Lilly got rid of foreign and generic drug makers in several markets. Look at energy or health care - it's a joke. These government protected monopolies funnel money into Rush Limbaugh so he will agitate the serfs on their behalf. They think protecting the status quo is a way of protecting "free markets". (******* morons)

You have cable TV companies like Cox, Charter and AT&T who slice up the country into no-compete zones. There are parts of California where on one side of the street you can get Charter but not Cox, while on the other you can get Cox but not Charter - and in another town you can get Charter on one side of the street but not AT&T. The entire system has calcified into anti-consumer, anti-trust monopolies where shareholders benefit by owning monopolies over consumers who have no choices. This allows companies to reduce the quality of service and raise rates without losing customers. The final phase of capitalism is the slow and steady erasure of competitive markets. The market winners have the financial leverage to fund elections and staff government. Then they write laws which give them control over markets.

People learn in 3rd grade that competitive markets are more effective than central planning for most things, save things like the Hoover Dam or defeating the Nazis. This is not a revelation. Besides, the video doesn't explain the difference between the managed capitalism of the postwar years (when the USA saw it's most sustained economic growth) and the capitalism promoted by the Reagan Revolution (when the USA saw the cancerous expansion of credit to make up for money thet never trickled down into the pockets of consumers).

And the video doesn't go into the crisis of capitalism that happens when the drive for cheaper labor costs (to achieve a higher return on investment) runs into the supplier's need to sell his products (which is made more difficult if his workers don't make enough to buy what they produce). Reagan's big gift to business was that he broke-up unions and freed capital from it's bondage to high American labor costs. We spent the last 30 years helping American investors make trillions by shipping production to cheaper labor markets, mostly in China and the developing world. But a problem arose. How can workers consume and keep the economy afloat when their purchasing power goes down in order to satisfy capitalism's demand for lower operating costs? Capitalism's answer: the expansion of credit, which went into overdrive in the 80s but eventually blew-up under Bush.

And what about the world's fastest growing economy, which is run by the Communist Party of China? And cleaning our clock? While there is a growing private sector in China, large industries are still controlled by the heavy hand of the state. In the USA those same large industries are controlled by monopolists who also control government. But we have less intellectual freedom than China BECAUSE in the USA Republicans are trained not to see the monopolists which control of government and run the economy. 100% of the Republican party and 80% of the Democratic party works directly for the large special interests which run the economy. This is the final phase of capitalism. During the first few phases capitalism expands freedom and prosperity. During the final phases it destroys freedom as the market winners consolidate their power of government, markets, and media.

(God ******* help us. people are being completely fooled about who actually runs the country)

 

[bripat9643]

Publius smells an alot like a John Locke I knew

Drinking alone on a thursday night?

 

[Londoner]

The video also doesn't go into the problem of resource depletion. Individual economic actors who need to take care of their children are not going to worry that they are destroying non-renewable resources. Capitalism burns through resources more efficiently than any other system. It has the power to change global weather patterns and the ideological tools to drive science into profit friendly conclusions. It may eventually destroy fresh water and productive cropland. It's a bulldozer and it has the resources to silence non-market voices who warn that we should slow down on petrol-intensive systems because the stuff is running out. When a scientist first warned that we needed to shift away from petroleum, it was profit which shut him down. It was in someone's short term self interest to distort the facts. This is what happens when you put self-interest about everything. People can benefit by individual decisions that drive us collectively off a cliff.

 

[Publius1787]

The video also doesn't go into the problem of resource depletion. Individual economic actors who need to take care of their children are not going to worry that they are destroying non-renewable resources. Capitalism burns through resources more efficiently than any other system. It has the power to change global weather patterns and the ideological tools to drive science into profit friendly conclusions. It may eventually destroy fresh water and productive cropland. It's a bulldozer and it has the resources to silence non-market voices who warn that we should slow down on petrol-intensive systems because the stuff is running out. When a scientist first warned that we needed to shift away from petroleum, it was profit which shut him down. It was in someone's short term self interest to distort the facts. This is what happens when you put self-interest about everything. People can benefit by individual decisions that drive us collectively off a cliff.

Most people aren't classical economists for that very reason. Many economists believed that resources would forever remain limited and would result in a population bubble that would pop via death and mass starvation. Adam Smith was one of them. However, they never took in to account innovation or advancements in technology and their effects on efficiency and growth. What created that new technology, that innovation, that effiency better than any other idea in the history of the world? Capitalism, private property rights, individual liberty, the right to contract, among others.

Quit watching Link TV. If a man finds a way to do things better, cleaner, more efficient, more resourceful, and at a better price, he will patent it, sell it, and make money off of it. Trust me, the incentive is out there.

You sound like this lady.

 

[courseofhistory]

Thomas Edison apparently disagrees with the sentiment in your poster:

Thomas Alva Edison, born in Ohio on February 11, 1847, was one of the most well known inventors of all time. He spent a few of his early years in formal schooling, but he received most of his education at home. Thomas set up a laboratory in the basement of his family's Michigan home and spent most of his time experimenting. Edison's mother, Nancy, knew her son was fond of chemistry and electronics, so she gave him books to read on the subjects. One book explained how to perform chemistry experiments at home; Thomas did every one in the book.

A biographer of Edison once noted:

"His mother had accomplished that which all truly great teachers do for their pupils, she brought him to the stage of learning things for himself, learning that which most amused and interested him, and she encouraged him to go on in that path. It was the very best thing she could have done for this singular boy."

As Edison himself put it:
"My mother was the making of me. She understood me; she let me follow my bent."

...

 

[Douger]

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