Population decline, capitalism and socialism
I was just reading this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/24/as-birth-rates-fall-animals-prowl-in-our-abandoned-ghost-villages
and it made me wonder about the causes and impacts of population growth and decline, and what it means for us right now.
Usually, population size is linked to availability of resource, cost of having offspring, and probability of survival of offspring (how many children it's worth expending energy on).
It isn't clear that what's happening now maps onto that at all well, although there are points of comparison. For one thing, as was pointed out in another thread, we are perfectly capable of feeding and sheltering everyone on the planet right now (although that is likely not sustainable). On the other hand, in many countries the cost of raising children is becoming increasingly prohibitive, but not because of lack of resource.
One example is the cost of education in a capitalist society. There will exist a gradation from those for whom the expense is negligible to those for whom the expense is prohibitive.
Another is cost of housing. In some European countries, and my own is contemplating this, the idea of buying your own home in your own lifetime has been dispensed with, replaced instead by the idea of passing your debt on to future generations who might pay it off in theirs.
It seems to me that, coupled with contraception, which allows people to make more rational decisions about whether they can afford to reproduce (and which, for that reason, is becoming increasingly curtailed by states in sharp population decline like Iran), issues like this are going to have an impact on people's choices about having children (a sentiment that's quite ubiquitous). Focusing on my home turf for a moment...
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/articles/anoteonchildbearingbysocioeconomicstatusandcountryofbirthofmother/2016
In interpreting the above data on birthrate as a function of economic status, it's worth bearing in mind that there are far fewer people in e.g. NS-SEC 1 than in NS-SEC 4, for instance, which goes some way to explain the disparity, although that is also reflected in the fact that NS-SEC 1 has a less important effect on outcomes.
The birthrate has a double peak: women in middle management positions and semi-routine occupations are by far the largest contributors to the birthrate. The former will typically be in good, reliable, twin-income households (in couples in which only one person works, it is more likely the worker is male here; likewise the vast majority of couples contributing to the birthrate are heterosexual). The latter will typically be women who sometimes work, again with partners that work.
Note that non-career women who have to work all the time are less likely to have children, as are women who never work.
This suggests to me a comfort zone of reproduction, with either secure twin incomes or with women topping up her partner's income when needed. And this comfort zone is, apparently, not enough to sustain population levels.
This doesn't bode well for capitalism, which requires a) consumers, and b) a worker resource that is much larger than its needs (to drive down wages and job security).
It seems to me that birth decline would be catastrophic for capitalism which rests on faith in the myth of sustainable growth. My personal view on capitalism is that it is a useful tool that we should regulate but tend in conjunction with socialist policy.
An obvious application of this kind of pluralism to birthrate decline is that it is clearly advantageous to have a broader socioeconomic range of people creating the next generation of workers and consumers. This means policy that either reduces the cost of raising a child or that raises the socioeconomic status of people at various points, particularly the unemployed and those stuck in dead-end jobs.
Since those that most espouse the necessity of capitalism (typically conservatives) are those most averse to any hint of state intervention and social welfare, is capitalism about to fuck itself over by driving down the very thing it depends on?
Or do we just need robots and fast? I for one welcome etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/24/as-birth-rates-fall-animals-prowl-in-our-abandoned-ghost-villages
and it made me wonder about the causes and impacts of population growth and decline, and what it means for us right now.
Usually, population size is linked to availability of resource, cost of having offspring, and probability of survival of offspring (how many children it's worth expending energy on).
It isn't clear that what's happening now maps onto that at all well, although there are points of comparison. For one thing, as was pointed out in another thread, we are perfectly capable of feeding and sheltering everyone on the planet right now (although that is likely not sustainable). On the other hand, in many countries the cost of raising children is becoming increasingly prohibitive, but not because of lack of resource.
One example is the cost of education in a capitalist society. There will exist a gradation from those for whom the expense is negligible to those for whom the expense is prohibitive.
Another is cost of housing. In some European countries, and my own is contemplating this, the idea of buying your own home in your own lifetime has been dispensed with, replaced instead by the idea of passing your debt on to future generations who might pay it off in theirs.
It seems to me that, coupled with contraception, which allows people to make more rational decisions about whether they can afford to reproduce (and which, for that reason, is becoming increasingly curtailed by states in sharp population decline like Iran), issues like this are going to have an impact on people's choices about having children (a sentiment that's quite ubiquitous). Focusing on my home turf for a moment...
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/articles/anoteonchildbearingbysocioeconomicstatusandcountryofbirthofmother/2016
In interpreting the above data on birthrate as a function of economic status, it's worth bearing in mind that there are far fewer people in e.g. NS-SEC 1 than in NS-SEC 4, for instance, which goes some way to explain the disparity, although that is also reflected in the fact that NS-SEC 1 has a less important effect on outcomes.
The birthrate has a double peak: women in middle management positions and semi-routine occupations are by far the largest contributors to the birthrate. The former will typically be in good, reliable, twin-income households (in couples in which only one person works, it is more likely the worker is male here; likewise the vast majority of couples contributing to the birthrate are heterosexual). The latter will typically be women who sometimes work, again with partners that work.
Note that non-career women who have to work all the time are less likely to have children, as are women who never work.
This suggests to me a comfort zone of reproduction, with either secure twin incomes or with women topping up her partner's income when needed. And this comfort zone is, apparently, not enough to sustain population levels.
This doesn't bode well for capitalism, which requires a) consumers, and b) a worker resource that is much larger than its needs (to drive down wages and job security).
It seems to me that birth decline would be catastrophic for capitalism which rests on faith in the myth of sustainable growth. My personal view on capitalism is that it is a useful tool that we should regulate but tend in conjunction with socialist policy.
An obvious application of this kind of pluralism to birthrate decline is that it is clearly advantageous to have a broader socioeconomic range of people creating the next generation of workers and consumers. This means policy that either reduces the cost of raising a child or that raises the socioeconomic status of people at various points, particularly the unemployed and those stuck in dead-end jobs.
Since those that most espouse the necessity of capitalism (typically conservatives) are those most averse to any hint of state intervention and social welfare, is capitalism about to fuck itself over by driving down the very thing it depends on?
Or do we just need robots and fast? I for one welcome etc.
Comments (131)
That would be natural selection at its finest.
Haha! Although they might also be best placed to survive the collapse of capitalism. :worry:
Of course. Natural selection.
Even systems are (and need to) change constantly. The problem with social planning is that it cannot predict what changes will take place and therefore socialist systems accumulate errant plan after errant plan until the whole thing comes crashing down.
The point of the market "being in control" is that it can react much quicker (and with a great deal more accuracy) to the needs of all concerned.
Progressives have it right when they see the need for change, but they have it wrong when they believe that they know what the change needs to be.
As I think I pointed out elsewhere, this isn't obviously the case. Countries with the strongest socialist policies tend to be more reactive to problems. The obvious example is environmental concerns. More progressive countries are even at the stage of buying in waste from other countries for green reuse. This strikes me as a success for the reactivity of the state to emerging crises. The same cannot be said for more capitalist countries which keep kicking the environmental can down the road.
On which:
Quoting synthesis
That might be the idea but evidence doesn't weigh it out. Capitalism is extremely myopic and, left to its own devices, will pollute indefinitely, poison its own customers, lobby against long-term solutions in the legislature, buy up and bury long-term solutions in the market, all for the sake of maximising profit in the short term.
This is precisely why I think capitalism might destroy itself. The long-term future of capitalism is, by virtue of being long-term, outside of capitalism's area of interest.
Quoting synthesis
I'm not seeing a credible alternative on offer. I'd intended the OP to address a specific issue that pluralism might resolve (up for debate). It's not a generic mudslinging against capitalism, nor is it obvious that generic feelings against socialism are going to be enlightening. But if you have something more concrete in mind, I'm sure that would be interesting.
Another, perhaps more pertinent example of capitalism's ability to seed it's own destruction due to its inability to react to long-term problems is the financial crisis of 2008. From a short-termist viewpoint, it obviously made a lot of sense for financiers to carry on with their legalised pyramid scheme. However it was pretty obvious that such a scheme would self-destruct.
In the end, it was state interference which was required to save the day, with the taxpayer bailing out most of the failing banks. In fact, it surprises me that people still tout the reactivity of the markets and ineffectiveness of state intervention when capitalism's inability to react and the necessity of the state to stop the country being brought to bankruptcy is a fresh memory.
Take, for example, Scandinavian countries and their use of electric cars. Seems nice and environmentally friendly, yes?
Except that the damage is done elsewhere on the planet. Parts of Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina are destroyed in the process of producing lithium for batteries for electric cars.
And where is all that electricity for electric cars supposed to come from?
And so on.
As opposed to all of the planet being destroyed by burning fossil fuels? Also, this doesn't strike me as relevant to the question. Lithium batteries in cars aren't produced by state intervention, but by corporations responding to demand for cars that don't burn fossil fuels.
No, they encouraged by state intervention, such as through subsidies for "green technology".
The state, if it would be a moral agent acting morally, would intervene with 1. this demand, and 2. the response of corporations to it.
Of course, the potential price of acting morally for any agent are poverty and extinction.
I believe you need to be a bit more expansive in your analysis. Seems like you are doing a little cherry-picking here. Attempting to compare the U.S. with a small Scandinavian country is not so fair. Just the same, in the end I believe that the country with freer market will win-out in the long run. I am not sure anybody wants a poor environmental outcome, so the mistakes made (via greed/corruption) become self-correcting as the market figures it out and demands change.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
If you look at the medium to long term, it seems pretty clear that capitalism (even though it is political corruption that causes most/if not all of the difficulties) is a system that provides the best life for the most people. Yes, you can point out an area where a "socialist" country may have put its resources to work in order to fix a problem or two, but look at what the U.S. was able to achieve post WWII. There is nothing even close in history to compare.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Here's the deal, freedom is ALWAYS the answer, be it in personal matters, matter of the state, or the economy. Allow people to make decisions and take responsibility for themselves. There are certainly needs for a state, but not so many. The last thing that is needed is somebody telling everybody what they need. This is when it starts to get ugly.
Actually, yes, I suppose there were general electric car battery subsidies that inevitably funded lithium ion battery research.
Quoting baker
Okay, so you are in favour of state intervention. In this case, I suppose more would be desired, e.g. more specific terms for subsidy, regulation on batteries.
To defend the use of lithium ion batteries for a moment, I don't see anything particularly wrong with solving a big problem with a lesser problem. I agree that at best it should be a transitional technology while better ones are developed. That industry would put their weight behind its most mature and transferable technologies (since lithium ion batteries were already mature for other use cases) is, from one angle, precisely the sort of short-term thinking that we want from them. The downside is industry's likely inertia in moving from lithium ion to other, better technologies once they're so heavily invested.
In the UK btw we've set a deadline for abolishing the sale of petrol- and diesel-only cars. This will obviously push industry into investing more in alternative technologies, which will in turn keep those industries going longer. Little comfort for those malaffected by lithium ion battery manufacture, I agree, but biggest problem first.
It was the state that caused much of the problem in the first place! You need to go back to 1913 (the origins of the third central bank in the U.S.) and understand the history that created the 2008 financial crisis).
State intervention prevented the market from cleaning-up much some the problem. Capitalism (like everything else) sucks when you massive corruption coupled with state intervention.
The problem is three-fold...corporations with waaaay too much power, incredibly corrupt government, and a global banking system using Monopoly (the game) money. Take care of these three problems and you will have another golden age.
Quoting synthesis
Okay, it looks like curiosity has encountered religiosity and no synthesis is likely.
Quoting synthesis
I did look at the medium to long term, e.g. the 2008 economic collapse, its obstinate reaction to the climate crisis. The blind faith in capitalism to react is simply not something that can be taken very seriously in light of the evidence. As I said, I didn't raise the question to start a religious war between fervent capitalists and fervent socialists, since I am neither. Facts, evidence, argument based on those... good. Ideology (including ideological historical revisionism per your follow-up post)... not helpful. Sorry. No offense meant, just not the sort of discussion I was fishing for. Others might take you up on it though.
The problem is that sometimes, when people make their own decision and act freely, this results in difficult situations that they themselves cannot mend, and those negative situations negatively affect other people.
An example of such a difficult situation is consumerism, which, if left unchecked, is on the trajectory to destroy the planet.
I'm talking about, for example, the state paying part of the price if you choose to buy an electric car or install a solar system on the roof of your house.
I couldn't possible take offence from anything you have said. The point is that society is based on an infinite number of things going on at the same time. Nobody can understand this kind of complexity, yet proscribe solutions for it. Therefore you allow those participating to figure out what works best for them in their situation (and guard against folks over-reaching and corruption).
I am sure you've heard the adage, "If you want to make God laugh, make a plan." Even the simplest of things is infinitely complex, so the best path seems to be to allow for each participant to chart his own course (within the context of respecting others' rights to do the same).
I'm afraid that this is a matter of ideology.
How are people going to change their consumer habits if they don't first change their minds?
Well, everybody has to put on their big-boy pants and figure it out.
And I don't believe the planet has much to worry about. It will rid itself of us when the time is right.
This is simply unrealistic.
Those who have more power, more resources can afford not to respect the rights of others and get away with it.
If someone wrongs you and you don't have the money to sue them, you're screwed.
Quoting synthesis
In neither version have you shown how your conclusion follows from your premise.
In a Mad Max scenario?
Oh, you mean it like that. As if Earth should look forward to becoming more like Triton ...
Although actually this is worth treating. When the financial sector self-destructed this century (due entirely to its own practices, and from which it was unable to react constructively), the affected nations faced two alternatives:
1. take capitalism seriously and let the banks fall, bringing down every saver, every mortgage payer, every business depending on provision of loans with them.
2. inject taxpayer money into the sector, allowing the banks time to recover and ride out their own wave of destruction.
Neither are good options, but the first was, rightly, seen as the worst.
There was a perfect opportunity to ensure that this never happened again using a pluralistic approach. Ethical banks that followed a more stringent, preservative set of regulations could be guaranteed to be underwritten by the state, just as banks effectively are now, since if they fail again, we must bail them out again).
Meanwhile freer, more reactive (short-termist) banks could carry on as usual, but should they fail, market forces hold without the intervention of the state.
Customers who want security could opt for the state-secured banks; those who don't can risk the casino banks. The latter are free to exemplify capitalist dogma... Until they die, as they should and would. New ones can rise up and take their place, and the people who used them have lost out, but with fair warning.
This to me shows how pluralism, not capitalism, exemplifies choice. Capitalism underwritten by the state is not capitalism at all: it's just a scam to part taxpayers with their money. Capitalism as part of a pluralism can be as free as capitalists pretend capitalism already is, including free to die.
Phew!
Quoting synthesis
That's fine, but note I'm not arguing that the state should run everything. I'm arguing that the state should create an environment in which capitalism runs things more sustainably.
Redistribution of wealth, to whatever degree, does not require precise knowledge of the markets. In the case described by the OP, the state already knows better than anyone where birthrate is falling, and I'm suggesting that it's not difficult to figure out why.
If capitalism is driving plummeting birthrates, we don't need the state to step in and run industries, i.e. take over from capitalism. Instead we need the state to address the problems capitalism is causing. One way might be progressive taxation and investment. Another might be means-tested housing or education credits. The precise details and pros and cons we could get into. What is obvious is that a capitalism that destroys its own worker and consumer base is not capable of sustaining itself.
Quoting baker
Well, we at least can do better. :) I was just trying to steer synth to a more critical mode of discussion. It's understandable that everyone is a bit defensive atm.
But yes beyond whatever we say here, there are definitely ideological barriers.
Robots don't consume though, and lack of consumers seems to be the more significant problem for modern capitalism.
The idea that capitalism destroys itself by driving down wages below the threshold required to sustain consumption of it's products is not a new one. So far, predictions to that effect have always underestimated capitalism's ability to simply outgrow the problem.
I'm not sure whether birthrates are just a symptom of that same problem - lack of resources does seem part of it, but it's not like it's a simple linear relationship. There also doesn't seem to be a direct correlation between the countries worst affected (which as far as I know are Japan and South Korea) and a certain kind of capitalist practice. There is clearly a cultural element playing into this.
I think the problem with birth rates might be less one of capitalism in theory, and more one of where capitalism has ended up in practice. Which is to say that the whole consumer culture might not be very conductive of optimism about long term prospects or the kind of mindset where you welcome children in your life as a new source of both challenges and happiness. Those are just shower thoughts though, I don't really have the background to judge that. What I am reasonably confident of is that most people no longer implicitly trust that their children will have it better than they will. That "american dream", seems very much dead. And that has an obvious implication for having children.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I know what you want to say here, just want to note that capitalism has always been backed up by the state in practice. The idea that capitalism represents a free economy in opposition to the state is a myth.
As long as there are so many people on the planet, there is no danger to capitalism.
People have always lived and died for ideas anyway.
Yes, someone will ALWAYS have an advantage. You are looking for heaven on Earth. It's simply not possible.
I am not sure I follow you.
OK.
Quoting synthesis
Is a premise.
Quoting synthesis
Is a conclusion. They're linked by the word 'therefore'
Again.
Quoting synthesis
Premise.
Quoting synthesis
Conclusion. Linked by the word 'so'.
Your premises do not lead to your conclusions.
What would you say to me if I said "Lemons are yellow, therefore we should all sing the national anthem"? Something's missing, no?
Likewise with your contention.
Does that clarify at all?
What should have been done is what happened during the 80's S&L debacle where you allow the savings and loans to fail and go through bankruptcy (redistribute remaining assets to debtors).
The banks should have been allowed to fail in 2008. Savers would have been protected by the FDIC (in the U.S.) and new banks would have been re-capitalized. This is how the system is supposed to work. Instead, the banks (the wealthy and influential) were saved by tax payers and money printing (inflation tax) and essentially none of the issues were resolved. This was massive government corruption (remember, most of the banking laws were changed in the 90's to allow much of this to take place).
For sure, it would be too difficult to consider every country which is why I narrowed down to my own. It would be great to consider others though, even if a broad picture is out of reach. Affordability is my interpretation of the data but it makes sense to me. When you have to afford university and house deposits, that has to place a severe cap on the number of children you can afford on lower incomes, especially when the probability of survival of one child is extremely high.
If we're moving toward a hereditary mortgage system, only one child can keep that mortgage going. Again, that's going to have an impact on decisions about how many children to have.
Quoting Echarmion
I think all problems with capitalism are practical ones. I think the attraction of pluralism is that you can let capitalism adhere to theory, let it succeed or fail in practice, and, if it fails, not bring everyone down with it. The ideal, and the theory, is that the failure of a trader will destroy that trader, not the market or the country.
Quoting Echarmion
Same here. My generation is the first for a long time to be less well off than our parents, and it's by quite some margin.
Quoting Echarmion
I know, but the counter-argument tends to be along the lines of "the market takes care of itself" when history tells us it does no such thing. In this sense, a pluralist approach allows for a more capitalist capitalism, just not as the only gun in town.
(You can extend this idea beyond birthrates and climate change. Take cyber security, for instance. The state is being forced to intervene because corporate practices are both a commercial and national security issue. Capitalists might shudder at the regulation coming in, but a pluralist approach would allow for state-approved corporations that obey regulation and cooperate with inspection in return for not being fined millions when they're hacked.)
So part of the OP is on this point. Capitalism depends on growth, on consumers, and on cheap labour.
If the worker pool contracts, rather than many people competing for the same jobs, you'll have corporations competing for the same workers, which drives up wages. This is already evident in some job roles in rapidly expanding industries, such as IT. There hasn't been a bad time to be a programmer ever, even after the dot-com bubble burst.
Likewise if you have less people to sell shit to, you have less profit. So from both ends, a contraction in the population is a contraction in the markets.
And let's not forget, we're talking about the future here. The number of people in a given market is not the problem: it's the direction that number is going and the speed it is moving there.
Welfare states will certainly suffer from declining birth rates. Declining birth rates imply a decline in the population, which also means a decline in the labor force, which means a decline in government revenue and a decline in the need for government services. This spells a decline in the welfare state itself.
But, as we’ve seen, rather than reduce the welfare state or better focus its spending on an aging population, the welfare state will seek to protect itself and move to replace its declining labor force through policies such as immigration.
I know, the problem is that the state cannot do such. It can do things like provide defense or build roads, etc., but it does this at TREMENDOUS costs. When you apply the same to capitalism, you will fail because of the incredible inefficiencies baked into everything governments do (and how they do them).
Governments are great at taking money from other people and (doing whatever...good, bad, or indifferent), but they suck at doing anything efficiently so they are the last people you want influencing your economic system.
Should, according to capitalist theory, yes. A few banks (Barclays being one iirc) refused the bailout, but most took it (and used it to pay banker bonuses), so corporations cannot even be trusted to adhere to this capitalist ethic.
But the consequences of not bailing out the banks would have been catastrophic, not just for the market, but for the entire country. And that of course was the scam. Banks provide an essential public service, and so cannot be allowed to fail. What I'm arguing for is an environment in which banks can be allowed to fail, properly, and people can choose (freeeeeedom!) between trusting capitalist banks and risking failure or underwritten, regulated banks which will not perform as well in the short term but will abide such catastrophes.
Thank you.
The idea is that you want to simplify processes, that is, individualize them (if possible) because simplification is the antidote for complexity.
Joe Blow is in a much better position to ascertain the needs for himself and his family than is a politician attempting to make the same decisions for a million of his closest friends and neighbors.
To get immigration, you have to be a nation that is attractive to live in. If it were true that socialist states have more, that would suggest that the world's workers are betting on those states.
Quoting NOS4A2
This doesn't appear to be the case. Eastern Europe has the fastest declining birthrates in the world since emerging from communism. After that, Japan.
Here’s my take:
In the past , growing populations were
am indication of prosperity and scientific, technological and economic progress. I think it is the reverse now. The most educated and prosperous a society is, the more likely it is to be experiencing shrinking birth rates.
Among other things, robotization is a cause of this trend , which I think will only accelerate. I also think that, as a reflection of choices people make for their own benefit , it will benefit capitalist economies. The current panic-mongering among economist over
population decline is the result of relying on old and outdated models to understand the relationship between economic growth and population.
I also think shrinking population and what is driving it has much to do with the rise of populist movements around the world. Essentially a growing percentage of our populations are becoming obsolete and they are sensing this. Small towns across the U.S. are crumbling and simply vanishing, as everyone heads to megalopolises.
I think this is a tragedy without a political solution.
That's total bullshit. This is what the politicians and bankers were telling everybody. I wonder why??
It is imperative that banks fail! It's how the markets must work. If you want to insure the depositers (moral hazard) that's one thing, but to not allow them to fail is why we are where we are. Banks used to fail all the time (and good riddance to them).
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Nobody is arguing against regulating banking. Personally, I believe banking is evil, but that's another story. Risk and failure is an essential component to this economic system. It doesn't matter what you are selling, if you do it poorly, you should fail.
Which is still not a problem, as long as the capitalist aims to be proportionally/relatively wealthier than others.
Ie. for such a capitalist to be successful, wealthy means to have x-times more than others. Whether this means having 10 billion when others have 10,000, or whether this means having ten horses while others have one donkey.
I'm saying you are the one looking for heaven on Earth, when you say:
Quoting synthesis
Quoting synthesis
This is what needs to be argued. The most sustainable economy in the world is Switzerland, which no one would consider a socialist country: it has the most corrupt banking sector in the world and a regressive corporation taxation approach. However... it also has one of the most progressive human development programmes, the tightest environmental safeguards, and a progressive income taxation effectively set by the people in the most progressive parliament ever. It is a little anomalous, but even here a pluralistic approach is evident: let banks and corporations do as they will, but invest in the people from the proceeds.
Next are Sweden and Denmark, both progressive countries with strong socialist and environmental policies to complement their capitalism.
Fourth is here, the UK, which also has a strong history of socialism: the National Health Service, the welfare state, and an on-again off-again progressive taxation system. (Even the regressive Conservative government that scammed its own people by riding on a ticket of economy savings before undervaluing and selling banks nationalised in 2008 and cutting tax for the richest and frontline services saw the benefit of the bankers bonus tax.) However, right now, all of that is under threat, although we are currently enjoying the most environmentally conscientious government we've had for a hundred years.
Quoting synthesis
Well, that's what the OP is arguing for: take money from the rich and the corporation's to invest in those people who are retreating from raising children in order to sustain capitalism in the future.
Quoting Joshs
Well, I for one welcome etc.
Quoting Joshs
Can you bring us up-to-date? For instance, a rebuttal to:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I think more people try to escape from socialist states than move to them. The Venezuelan refugee crisis and Cuban exodus give us reasons as to why this occurs.
Because it's not total bullshit. Growth depends on banks loaning money. After the collapse, even after we bailed the banks out, recovery was protracted because banks were cautious to lend. So how could that have not been worse if there had been far fewer banks to lend?
Most homeowners in my country have mortgages. Banks can recall those loans at any time, and seize those homes upon default. The alternative would be to flood a failing market with mortgage deeds. Possibly many homes could have been protected this way with a massive transfer of collateral from the few to the even fewer, but a lot of people would have lost their homes (in fact, a lot of people did, but scale that up).
Even governments depend on lending. Unlike the aforementioned Switzerland, the UK has been essentially bankrupt since the second world war, exacerbated by Thatcherism and the financial crisis.
And that's before we get to savings, which would have been wiped out.
The idea that all would have been well had the banks been allowed to fail is, in your parlance, total bullshit.
Quoting synthesis
When they were small enough to insure, to fail, and for insurers to be able to pay out the odd failure, yes. Insurers would no better have weathered the collapse of the entire sector.
Take a look at the typical fate of a business with falling or static stock prices. It's a problem.
And, again, the mass exodus from former communist states after the fall of communism in Europe tells the opposite story. And let's not neglect those rapist Mexicans. At best, you've hit upon an irrelevancy.
As an addendum to this, and perhaps an opportunity to bring it back to the OP, consider those countries for whom it was genuinely catastrophic, i.e. those that couldn't bail themselves out, like Italy, Portugal and Greece, the three countries in western Europe that also have the steepest decline in birthrates.
It's a problem for that business, but not for capitalism on the whole. One business fails, and another one flourishes. That's capitalism.
What you're describing is equilibrium. But what's being discussed is not an equilibrium condition. Irrespective of how individual businesses fare, the market as a whole would contract. (Pending elaboration on Josh's objection.)
I am hoping that the crisis of the current time may call for the best combination between capitalism and socialism. Consumer materialism is starting to collapse and this was happening before the beginning of the pandemic and is likely to increase more than ever now.
I feel that the battle between capitalism vs socialism needs to be transformed altogether to meet the needs of humanity in the widest possible sense.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Fertility rates have plunged also in countries with free education and adequate housing. The most important reason is that with prosperity and women joining the workforce people don't need offspring to take care of themselves when they are older. More affluent people have had far less children than poorer people for a very long time. And that the fertility rate has dropped also in non-Christian and non-Western countries tells quite well how universal this demographic transition is. Only the poorest countries have high fertility rates.
Above all, this transition has happened irrelevantly of a country being socialist or capitalist. (Here's the Soviet/Russian Total fertility rate)
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I don't think this a problem for capitalism, the private ownership of industry, but for the monetary system and the financial system. Also it's an obstacle for a pay-as-you-go social welfare system that would need to function correctly a growing population. If the younger generations are smaller than previous ones means simply that more of that capital is inherited by them. (This naturally doesn't go equally.)
Yes, and as long as capitalists are willing to adapt, this is not a problem for them.
The kind of capitalist who just aims to have 100x more than a poor person seems to be more flexible and better off. Because it seems to be always possible that a person can be much better off than the poor, regardless of the state of technology/civilization.
But owning a lot of wealth in absolute terms (such as 1,000 kg of gold or 5,000 km2 of land) seems to be much more difficult with a shrinking market, so fewer people will be able to do so.
Kid, you don't understand how banking works (but that's OK because very few people understand finance and banking in the least).
The FED could have re-capitalized the banks ten times over for what they have done to keep these zombies alive.
When you have a FIAT system, you can do WHATEVER you please (as evidenced by the shenanigans that have been going on since 1971).
Had they let the banks fail, nothing would have happened other than the system would had gone through a much needed re-set (as happened in Iceland). The depositors would have been bailed-out, the debt written-off (what needs to happen!!), and lots of wealthy people would have lost lots of money.
It was total bullshit. 100% grade A prime bullshit.
Hear hear.
Quoting ssu
You've arrived, how lovely!
Quoting ssu
And yet what we see in the UK data is the opposite: birth rate is highest where the mother either has a middle-management position or does not need to work full time, and lowest where women are unemployed or employed full-time in dead-end jobs.
Quoting ssu
The most affluent and the poorest have tended to have more here. It was generally the middle classes who had the least children, which speaks to precisely the concerns I raise in the OP. Aspirational middle class parents want their children to be well-educated home owners. This means focussing resources on usually two children. The rich can afford as many degrees and houses as they want, and the poor hope for neither.
What I think we're seeing is that the middle- and lower-middle class couples are reducing the number of children to one, because they can only afford to school and house one child. It's not the case that those children can fend for themselves: most of my and later generations cannot afford to join the housing market and rely either on inheritance or the Bank of Mum and Dad.
Quoting ssu
Well let's say you run a business and you need to recruit, but your recruitment pool has contracted. This means that the probability of a potential employee choosing you over a competitor will shrink unless you offer more financial incentives to join your business. The same number of recruitments, but at more cost to the company, or else fewer recruitments.
What we might see is a return to human investment from the private sector, such as a lowering of qualification requirements, a return to training, more apprenticeships. But again this is at the company's expense (although apprenticeships, in my experience, offer good value for money).
Quoting ssu
In some ways that's already happening. The shrinking birthrate in the UK has left a small number of taxpayers to foot the bill for a large number of state pensions which, last time I checked, accounted for almost a third of the annual budget.
But a smaller recruitment pool driving up prices and/or increased human investment from the private sector seems to me likely to alleviate the welfare bill.
Quoting ssu
That is not the direction capital seems to take. Here as in the US and elsewhere, capital is moving from the many to the few. The proportion of UK wealth owned by the top 1% is soaring.
There is only one economic system. Socialism is the political process of reallocating the proceeds. And there really is no battle, it's just a matter of the degree of how much the politicians can be corrupted to act either in the interests of capital (by rigging the system) or in the interests of the masses by attenuating the tendency of capital to accumulate (which hurts everybody in the long-run).
I’m not sure how that tells the opposite story. It tells the same story. People largely run from socialism, not towards it. The list of failed socialist states is vast, and the track record of socialism is reason enough to see why this occurs. The state never “withers away”, like Engles promised; it becomes bigger and more totalitarian, it turns to free market (capitalist) reform, or it collapses beneath its own mismanagement.
But as I mentioned, welfare states have trended upon the same course, getting bigger instead of withering away, to the point where the UN advocates offsetting this decline by importing a labor force from elsewhere. Japan’s familialism, on the other hand, may provide a different method.
I don't think that you can possibly explain the whole division between capitalism and socialism in one sentence. It is so much more complex. You say it depends on much the 'politicians can be corrupted' in the favour of the masses or in the accumulation of capital. I don't consider myself as a political expert at all but do not believe that the politicians, from their point of view see it as being 'corrupt' as such.
I don't come from a wealthy background, so was initially drawn to left wing politics, but then moved more in the direction of thinking about the ideas of the 'new economics' as suggested by Fritjof Capra and E. F. Schumacher. These thinkers point to the whole way in which need to go beyond the surface of the left and right, socialism and capitalism, to find ways beyond the basis of the consumer culture. I
t may involve a whole new way of thinking about money and also addressing the needs of ecology, but on a deeper level. Perhaps, we have got to the point of crisis, as many people are going to be plunged into poverty, where people have to unite rather than be caught in the conflict between capitalism and socialism. Perhaps, the distribution of the vaccine in the world may be about ending divisions which have been prevalent.
Again, this isn't how they react though. Long-term falling and plateauing stock prices don't end well. The faith that they'd adapt for the sake of the market seems ill-placed. The actions of stockholders aren't those of stock traders: they're not based on the relative value of the company wrt the market; they are based on the relative value of the company wrt yesterday's value. If that value plateaus, the results can be disastrous even if the business is profitable, especially if it depends on outside financing as many businesses do. It doesn't matter if the competition is failing commensurately or even if the current profit is perfectly sustainable: sustainability and competitiveness are not good enough for a large business to be viable.
In good times for a market, when a company's stock plateaus or falls, that company can rely on borrowing, essentially selling a part of its future growth. However if a long-term contraction is inevitable, that is no longer an attractive investment.
Beyond the obvious incentives of lenders to turn away and owners to cut and run, plateauing and falling stock prices effect employee retention. If the job market is already an employee market due to a contracting recruitment pool, this will exacerbate the problem. Either stock incentives will have to be replaced with hard cash incentives, or businesses will lose employees.
If you want to see what falling prices in a contracting economy looks like, check out the Lehman Brothers.
By whom, if not the state?
Quoting synthesis
Iceland seems a bizarre example to choose if you're claiming that letting the banks fail would be fine. That didn't just poke Iceland: that had a massive impact on other countries, especially the UK. 500,000 people worldwide lost the contents of their accounts in Iceland, precisely one of the disastrous effects I mentioned that you're claiming wouldn't happen. And that was in spite of government efforts to nationalise and underwrite the failing banks, precisely the state intervention you're claiming didn't happen. The Icelandic market fell by 90% and its currency plummeted. The country was brought to the brink of collapse, saved largely by massive cash injections from other countries' central banks and the IMF.
The notion that Iceland is a great example of the market sorting itself out without intervention is curious.
So if a socialist country vents bodies, that's proof that socialism leads to emigration. And if it doesn't then stops being socialist and THEN vents bodies, that's proof that socialism leads to emigration.
Interesting. You have a black box in which whatever you put in, "socialism leads to emigration" comes out.
The enlargement of the middle class has been the real factor as when you talk about a demographic transition, the timescale is far longer than we usually use.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Here I think both I and you have to be careful on just what the reasons are as it's a complex issue. If this would be the (only) case, then countries with free education and housing programs would have different statistics, but I'm not so sure they have. Lifestyle changes are important too. (Isn't there a heated debate in various anti-natalism threads, for example?)
Quoting Kenosha Kid
The market mechanism ought to handle these kind of difficulties. Or then you use migrant labor as the UK did, which had political consequences in the form of a Brexit vote.
But this is in a shrinking middle class. I take your point: you're more considering differences between rich countries and poor countries over a longer time period. However, the historical capacity for capitalism to self-destruct is not what it has been in the last 100 years, and a given country unable to replenish its own recruitment pool isn't much aided by poor countries with high reproduction rates. (I was thinking of introducing the relationship between low birthrate and xenophobia, e.g. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/let-s-talk-about-the-link-between-immigration-and-low-reproduction-rates-1.2926375 , since immigration is the obvious solution to that. Do you know of any data on such correlations? I just assume you have all data at all times.)
Quoting ssu
Yes, I'm only speaking of the UK where free higher education was replaced first by low-cost education at the end of the century, then by high-cost education ten years ago, over a period when house prices inflated 200%. I think the trends in other countries should be compared, but then by virtue of being other countries, different factors will weigh in.
I wonder if the first two bars on that graph are related. "I'm not ready. Ah shit, I'm old!"
Quoting ssu
"The market mechanism" is a tad vague and hopeful. Do you mean that, if there's a competition for resources, there'll be winners and losers? True, but that's market contraction, precisely the sort of self-destruction I'm talking about. Immigration is the means the UK used, but yes Brexit showed that that's not a long-term solution either. Trump too, I guess.
The way it used to be is there was no deposit insurance backed by the government. Imagine how careful you would selecting your bank if this was the case today. Backstopping banks create massive moral hazard.
[quote="Kenosha Kid;492544"Had they let the banks fail, nothing would have happened other than the system would had gone through a much needed re-set (as happened in Iceland).
— synthesis
Iceland seems a bizarre example to choose if you're claiming that letting the banks fail would be fine. That didn't just poke Iceland: that had a massive impact on other countries, especially the UK. 500,000 people worldwide lost the contents of their accounts in Iceland, precisely one of the disastrous effects I mentioned that you're claiming wouldn't happen. And that was in spite of government efforts to nationalize and underwrite the failing banks, precisely the state intervention you're claiming didn't happen. The Icelandic market fell by 90% and its currency plummeted. The country was brought to the brink of collapse, saved largely by massive cash injections from other countries' central banks and the IMF.
The notion that Iceland is a great example of the market sorting itself out without intervention is curious.[/quote]
As mentioned above, I bet the people in Reykjavík are a little more careful these days when doing their banking. This is a wonderful thing. I know that people in the U.S. could seem to care less who they bank with...not such a good thing.
It is the government interfering in the markets that makes capitalism inefficient. If nothing else, and despite the fact that is human beings at the controls, it is a very efficient system. That being said, there does need to be some regulation, but not too much.
Nope, still missing a link I'm afraid. Simplify, yes. Indiviualise...? That's neither the same as simplify, nor does is relate in any way that I can see to 'simplify' Making each individual person solve the problem for themselves might simplify a problem or it might not, it really has no intrinsic bearing at all of the complexity of the problem solving task.
Quoting synthesis
Maybe (though I wouldn't always agree), but we're talking about the needs of a future generation here, not Joe Blow and his wife. Why would he be any better judge of that than the (hopefully well-informed) politician?
The alternative is to make the remaining population so stupid that they'll keep buying the same shit over and over again with the increased wages they're getting form a better employment market...
...I wonder if we can muster any evidence of that happening...
Well, giving people a choice between caution and recklessness is what I'm arguing for. There's no point people being careful if they don't have much choice. Either way, Iceland is an example of how bad things can get when the system is left to its own devices, not how robust the system is.
Quoting synthesis
That ideology was presumably what your Iceland example was supposed to demonstrate. That didn't work.
Quoting Isaac
Same thought occurred, yeah, but as you say that's already happening. I would have thought if they could do it more, they would. How many iPhones can you release in a year before idiots stop queueing around the block the day before release day? :rofl:
Do I recognise that... Live in a community where both male and female mostly are academics... Me and missus have two great children(now in university age), but boy did she go on about having a third in the beginning of the millenia. All the neighbour women managed to wring a third(and some fourth) out of their husbands but I remained steadfast. Having neighbour gettogethers, the neighbour ladies even tried to convince me, and there were evil schemes laid out...
I think Apple are on a mission to find out!
Seriously though, it's long been a pet theory of mine (I don't know about the economic viability of the approach, but I certainly know about about the psychological viability, and in that respect it would definitely work).
It seems to me there are these two factors -
1. the rate at which new, useful technology is invented (associated with the rate at which new needs arise).
And
2. the rate at which products need to be sold to generate sufficient economies of scale to make them profitable, bearing in mind the demand generated by the strength of (1).
That these two completely unrelated factors should just happen to coincide such the firms can continue to profit from new and useful technology seems unlikely in the extreme. Hence the need for something to plug the gap...
...So along comes advertising and built-in obsolescence...
...But who, in their right mind is going to fall for that...
...So along comes Twitter and all is well again...
I suppose an obvious possibility, likelihood even, is that if and when the market contracts, the corporate sector will lobby for reduction in tax, including income and capital gains for high earners and windfalls, increased taxpayer investment in the private sector, and a hacking away at regulations. This in fact seems inevitable now I'm saying it. Advertising could be more effective by being unregulated. Smoking might become healthy again \o/
Looking at Japan, the decline in birthrate appears to have a number of causes, chief among them that, perhaps for cultural reasons, it didn't weather the postwar flood of women into the workforce as well as it might have. Japan appears not to have had much in the way of a postwar baby boom, so has had a declining birthrate for a long time. The female recruitment pool was obviously helpful for employers in this respect, but their exploitation of that seems to be scuppering their own futures.
People are increasingly on low wages in temporary jobs, making orthodox family planning less attractive. The problematic short-termism is again evident: corporations exploiting an increased working pool react in a way that in the short term increases profit but in the long term destroys that pool and part of its consumer base. The latter might not be so terrible except that this downward trend in consumer numbers is global. The private sector seems reluctant to to implement parenting-friendly incentives which is no surprise if they're also unwilling to offer decent wages and job security.
It seems like this has hit Japan particularly hard for cultural reasons. Men have not adapted at all to modern living, and expect women to be full-time workers, full-time mothers, and full-time homemakers. Since this is unfeasible (and grossly unfair), family planning is likewise unfeasible.
https://www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/low-fertility-in-japan%E2%80%94no-end-in-sight
I suppose if I were to support the theory, I would say that the process is still underway. From a social-psychological perspective, these things would, in theory, take several generations to happen so if it were an attractive goal for industry, I don't think there's necessarily any reason to think they've reached the maximum extent of their potential reach in this respect.
What would be an interesting consequence of this hypothetical is that unless all the industry leaders got together at some big s.p.e.c.t.r.e-style conference to set this year's stupidity targets, then the process, as an organic one, would eventually undermine their own intentions. Completely stupid populations create unstable conditions which are bad for businesses.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, I think that's a very real concern. Let's not forget the biggest genocide the world has ever known was commited by British American Tobacco. It never ceases to amaze me what people can be convinced to do by a bit of manufactured peer pressure.
Millgram (of obedience study fame) had a really interesting way of looking at issues like these (the system undermining its own existence). He posited that our economic society has become sufficiently complex that no individual can clearly see the bigger picture of what success in their particular job is actually for. The consequence being that each individual can quite vociferously pursue a take which actually undermines their own position simply because their task (and more importantly their reward structure) is couched in small-picture terms, yet the consequences of their success at it affects the big picture.
More people, more complexity. Everybody has differing needs. Look at the approach of an HMO v an individual health care provider. The bigger the group, the more standardized the solutions. Not so great.
Quoting Isaac
Maybe? if everybody pretty much takes care of themselves, you don't have to worry about taking care of the needs of a future generation. Leave people alone. Do you really believe that you know what's better for everybody else?
It's been a while since I read about the situation there but I do remember that a year or two after the financial crisis peaked, they had written off their bad debt and re-capitalized. Failure is not pretty, but it's an essential part of the system. Do you think everybody should succeed? It is exactly this kind of thinking that has caused much of the problems we have today in the banking system, i.e., trillions of dollars of debt that will never be paid back that is clogging up the system.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, it worked. Again, I would have to go back and refresh my memory about the particulars. There is massive interference, distortions, and corruption all throughout the economic system so it's a miracle that anything still works. To blame what's going on now [economic chaos] on capitalism is like blaming the weapons for war.
What would you do if you didn't have somebody/something to blame everything on? There are a lot of bad actors out there who will take advantage of any and everything possible. That's just the way people are. No system is going to root that out [and as it turns out, the people who chose themselves to be the saviors always end up being more corrupt than the original thieves].
You simply cannot legislate human nature. We are what we are. The best chance we seem to have is in allowing people the opportunity to do the best they can for themselves and their families. The groups who hold themselves out as those with all the answers are con-artists, at best.
I never said socialism leads to emigration. In fact emigration was mostly illegal and movement was restricted.
What I said was think more people try to escape from socialist states than move to them.
I guess I can’t expect good faith, though, can I?
I laughed hard. Stupidity targets sounds so official.
Quoting Isaac
Describes subprime mortgages exactly. Big risks, big rewards, no short-term consequences.
Quoting synthesis
No, that's what I'm arguing for: the ability to let casino banks fail, while giving customers the option of security. My suspicion is that most would tell capitalism to go swivel and stick with lower risk, lower short term return, higher security, state-underwritten banks and building societies. People cast capitalism as freedom of choice, but it depends on a lack of good options, ignorance, and misinformation. Pluralism is real choice.
Quoting synthesis
That seems like a terrible argument for backing the worst actors with consistency.
Quoting synthesis
Which necessitates allowing people to choose security over short-term profit. Removing their ability to choose by limiting their choices to the worst possible does not chime with the above sentiment.
Quoting NOS4A2
Are there numbers for people trying to leave? Canada is pretty socialist. Is there a mass exodus or are Canadians restrained?
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. You can choose a very safe life, e.g., be an accountant, never get married or have kids, don't go anywhere or do much of anything, and drive the speed limit when you do, so on and so forth.
Life rewards those willing to take risks. The key is making them prudent/calculated.
I don't know so well the UK educational system to comment that.
However I could point some things about the housing prices. They haven't just inflated, the simply fact is that UK has had also huge and long enduring immigration boom. Yes, there has been asset inflation especially in a major city like London, but there are also quite understandable reasons for the prices to rise also. One million Polish immigrant workers coming to the UK alongside other EU immigrant do have an effect and building new homes likely hasn't kept pace with the demand. The obvious effect that this has is obvious: prices go up.
Old stats, but they do tell one reason:
Of course first Brexit and the Pandemic have diminished immigration to the UK. Yet here's the catch. If you think that housing prices coming down will be a good thing, think again. If the real estate market plummets, that will have huge consequences for the economy and employment (as houses in the UK aren't built by robots in China). A housing market crash means economic depression.
The fact is that when housing prices are cheap, few are buying and people who don't need to sell won't sell. And nobody is building.
Well, Canada is not a socialist country. It is a constitutional monarchy, liberal democracy with a market-orientated economy. It has no reference to socialism in its constitution or founding documents.
Perhaps we have different conceptions of “socialism”. I’m speaking of countries, past and present, that explicitly or actively seek to achieve socialism, like Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea. When you say “socialism” do you mean state intervention?
What do you think about the nationalisation of land and lending of land like what exists in Singapore? Or advocating for a smart tax system and economic redistribution system which allows the many to benefit from our increasingly efficient productivity capacity? The issue I think is as much about existing assets both in land and capital, not just production.
People say Socialism exists in Canada and the Scandinavian countries and it does but what actually exists is a mixed economy. Instead of saying "Capitalism is the problem and Socialism is the solution", which leads one to the conclusion that for example, Canada might be trying to abolish Capitalism and replace it with Socialism. It'd be better to talk about what industries or services are mixed and basically, where Capitalism is screwing the average citizen and it might be better for the government to provide an alternative.
Automation is one of the big problems we're going to face in the future, where economies are enriched by cheaper and more effective production but at the expense of needing fewer employees. Consumers benefit but not really because millions of quality jobs disappear and all the profit goes to the business owners. At some point, we just need to accept the economy doesn't need everyone and yet everyone needs to be able to live.
I agree with more regulation of the banks and even taking many of the responsibilities and privileges away from the private banks.
Owning a large, highly profitable business seems to be too rewarding, it's great if someone had a good idea and made money off it but the fact that it's billions needs to be addressed in some way. These are just general economic recommendations, in terms of birth rate, I don't know.
Singapore has a declining birth rate too, yet boasts a 90% homeownership rate and far easier access to homeownership compared to Western nations. Canada has a lower birth rate than the US and the UK at 1.5 births per woman in 2018, compared to the US at 1.73 and UK at 1.68 and Singapore is even lower at 1.1. I live in Australia which is at 1.7 and home prices here are incredibly high right now, there is a lower average GDP here than in Singapore yet a similar cost of living, also far fewer Australians own their homes (68% to 90% of Singapore).
Hungary and Romania have the highest rates of homeownership in Europe, at 91% and 95% but have birth rates of 1.55 and 1.76 respectively.
Culturally speaking, millennials need to use their 20s at university, building up their career, the average age of having a first child has increased in the majority of developed countries and by five years or more since the 1960s. If your first child is later then the expectation of it being likely to have fewer children is logical.
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/People/Mother's-mean-age-at-first-birth
Despite the differences between the US and a country like Sweden, the birth rate is about the same. Despite all the differences in social benefits, socialism, crime rates, economic differences and etc. Wealth inequality doesn't seem to explain it either, with both Sweden and the US having high Gini wealth coefficients along with countries like the Philippines and others that have very high birth rates. While I think economic security could dissuade individuals from starting families, across the board, it does not appear to be the cause or a solution for low birth rates because if it was, why would the US and Sweden have similar birth rates? Isn't what you'd like to see, basically the US and UK becoming more like Sweden?
So is capitalism.
Distribution of ownership is all about how to allocate the proceeds. If the people broadly own the means of production (socialism) the proceeds of production are allocated to them broadly. If only a small fraction own everything (capitalism) then all the proceeds go to them and only further entrench their stranglehold on the market.
Capitalism is not a free market.
People didn't come up with unified governance for a laugh. They came up with it to resolve conflicting individual solutions, so you're simplistic conclusion that standardised solutions are less well-adapted to each individual is just trivially true, and irrelevant unless you tackle the problem of conflict between the solutions of particular individuals with regards to shared or disputed resources - which is all government is ever about anyway.
Quoting synthesis
Again, this simply doesn't follow. You've provided no evidence at all that this is the case. what is it about everybody currently living taking care of themselves which somehow magically takes care of the needs of generations yet to come?
Quoting synthesis
Yes. Within my field of expertise, anyway. What makes you think individuals have some sort of clairvoyance telling them what's best for them in the future. I'm genuinely baffled as to how you might think, for example, that a theatre director knows what taxation regime best promotes sustainable growth, or an accountant knows what fuel ratio produces the least long-term change in the earth's atmospheric conditions. Why on earth would they?
You seem to be in an odd admixture of simultaneously arguing for and against choice. Total freedom is great, as long as it's exactly the amount of freedom people currently have now.
Quoting NOS4A2
So "socialist" means "officially socialist at some point in its history irrespective of what it is now" sort of thing? Well then the aforementioned eastern European countries aren't socialist either. There has, for instance, never been an officially socialist country called the Czech Republic. Czechoslovakia, yes.
Quoting Judaka
My instinct was no but thinking about the UK, few corporations own their own buildings now: they were sold off in the 80s for a fast buck. Is, say, a city council a better landlord than private interests? I'd say probably, since they have a wider purview. Then again, funnily enough, my home town has just purchased its two main shopping malls... just as people have stopped using shopping malls, which just goes to show how stupid you have to be to work for the council. But this wouldn't be an issue if it administered all land already.
Quoting Judaka
Yes, this is what the OP is arguing for, that while capitalists should trust the market to make smart short-term decisions, they need to trust the state to make advised long-term ones. The evidence suggests to me that the market is not equipped to handle its own long-term challenges, and should not stand in the way of state decisions that will. Smart redistribution of wealth is part of that.
Quoting Judaka
Exactly where I'm at.
Quoting Judaka
Sure, and as with Japan, cost of housing and education doesn't seem to be the chief factor. The UK pays pretty decent wages by contrast too. I don't mean that the precise manner in which short-termism manifests itself is generalisable, nor does is it necessarily the sole factor. As ssu pointed out, an inability to afford it is rivalled by a disinclination to compromise one's lifestyle when it comes to people not having children at all (although this is not the same as having fewer children), but then what's driving the adoption of these lifestyles?
Quoting Judaka
Agreed, but then the minimum educational qualification to get a job is also increasing as corporations move further and further away from in-house training.
Quoting Judaka
Also agreed. The issues in the UK and their potential solutions are just an example. In the comments, we've largely been focused on the 2008 economic crisis which is a different example with a completely different solution. The thing in common is an attitude: since the market cannot take care of its long-term interests, social policy, be it redistribution of wealth to key demographics or state underwriting of state-regulated banks, should fill that gap. This shouldn't be seen as an infringement on capitalism but a measure to keep it going without post hoc state intervention. More capitalism, just not in isolation.
It certainly hasn't. However when this got too much, the UK got an exemption from immigration from new countries joining the E.U., such as Romania. Immigration has been used to prop up an aging population for some time, more an accident of the baby boom.
This doesn't necessarily lead to an increase in house prices, however, since for the most part these aren't people with a lot of capital. House prices had already tripled recently when I bought my first house, prior to Brexit-baiting influx of eastern Europeans. It undoubtedly increases rent prices some, which in turn drives up house prices, and that first housing bubble was driven entirely by housing developers and the buy-to-let scheme. My experience based on my Lithuanian friends was that this influx was mostly young people who house-shared.
What actually happened was that my parents' generation was the one fixated on home ownership. Their wealth, plus the higher salaries during the "golden age" (Blair and Brown), plus Labour's social mobility initiatives, plus deregulation of the banks all led to a massive snap-up of property. The number of housing developers shot up as people realised they could by one, two, three houses, wait a while, and sell them at huge profit as others raced to do the same. I was part of that bubble: it put me through my degree, PhD and allowed me to travel around the world.
Those who had the most capital invested the most in the housing market. The number of homes for sale plummeted and the number of landlords and the sizes of their portfolios shot up. Higher house prices pushed up rent; higher rents pushed up house prices. Home builders became more speculative and bullying: the number of unfinished developments is incredible. Any deal they made with local authorities they could just tear up, down tools until those authorities caved to new demands. They demanded protected green field sites from government, refusing to invest in brownfield. They demanded deregulation, and got a lot of it, hence the number of box houses on flood plains in desirable city locations.
Successive governments kept promising an investment in housing, but the private sector made it hard to progress. Instead, houses were converted into poor quality apartment buildings and now a one-bedroom flat in my hometown costs more than twice the end-terrace three-bedroom house I bought: shrinkflation and inflation in tandem. Developers switched from houses to poor quality apartment buildings to exploit this new market.
The die was cast long before the influx of Poles and Lithuanians: the housing market, which didn't really exist a few years prior as an investment market, was already on its typical capitalist pyramid scheme course. A study by the University of Nottingham actually suggests that immigration has a negative effect on house prices. Since it is capital that drives up house-prices, an influx of low-capital residents actually has the opposite effect. The places where housing is still cheap is where you'll find large immigrant communities.
I'm not great fan of any system, believe me, but relatively unfettered capitalism is better than any realistic alternative. If it were up to me, I would revoke all corporate charters, cut government by 90% [at least], and everybody would work for themselves.
Being that the above scenario isn't going to be happening any time soon, allow for the greatest amount of choice/freedom possible within the only economic system available.
Systems are designed by the few primarily for their benefit, always has been, always will be. The only variable is the degree of corruption present at any particular time.
Who is "they?" Government is rigged in the interests of those who happen to own the process. Only those politicians who have shown that they can be purchased are allowed to rise to positions of real power. That's why "they" hated Trump. He wasn't for sale. After all, what's a politician's purpose otherwise? S/he is simply the person chosen by the voters to accept the bribes so the elite can have their way.
[quote="Isaac;493117]"If everybody pretty much takes care of themselves, you don't have to worry about taking care of the needs of a future generation.
— synthesis
Again, this simply doesn't follow. You've provided no evidence at all that this is the case. what is it about everybody currently living taking care of themselves which somehow magically takes care of the needs of generations yet to come?
If you just be polite and clean up after ourselves, future generations will take care of themselves. Leaving them with our debt is the ultimate douche-bag move.
[quote="Isaac;493117] "Do you really believe that you know what's better for everybody else?
— synthesis
Yes. Within my field of expertise, anyway. What makes you think individuals have some sort of clairvoyance telling them what's best for them in the future. I'm genuinely baffled as to how you might think, for example, that a theatre director knows what taxation regime best promotes sustainable growth, or an accountant knows what fuel ratio produces the least long-term change in the earth's atmospheric conditions. Why on earth would they?[/quote]
People are not the idiots you think they are. They can actually figure things out and don't really need any more experts to screw things up. Look what a wonderful job all the experts did with the pandemic. This is a perfect example of how all things become politicized and manipulated.
Provide basic information and allow people to figure it out for themselves.
Everybody is always arguing for and against something. There are no absolutes in thinking.
You want as much freedom as is possible. Don't you?
No, they hated Trump because they couldn't trust him to sit the right way round on a toilet, let alone run a country.
Quoting synthesis
So you think ordinary people can figure out climate science, agricultural subsidies, interest rates... Let's see. As an ordinary person, without looking anything up or consulting an expert in any way, what do you think we should alter the fiscal
mandate to reduce cyclically adjusted public sector net borrowing to? What do you think we should do about talik methane emissions?
People in power care about one thing and one thing only...can they do business with you! You really think they could care less about all the other nonsense. These are the scum of the earth...all of them!
[quote="Isaac;493117]"They can actually figure things out and don't really need any more experts to screw things up.
— synthesis
So you think ordinary people can figure out climate science, agricultural subsidies, interest rates... Let's see. As an ordinary person, without looking anything up or consulting an expert in any way, what do you think we should alter the fiscal
mandate to reduce cyclically adjusted public sector net borrowing to? What do you think we should do about talik methane emissions?[/quote]
Isaac, I am a physician. I deal with serious health issues. Do you believe that I should tell my patients what to do or should I explain in language they can understand (and within proper context) everything that is going on and allow them to make their own choices? Which kind of doctor would you choose?
And yes, with the proper education and balanced guidance, regular people can figure out just about anything. You might be surprised at what people can do when given the opportunity.
The Czech Republic is not socialist either. They replaced the word “socialist” in the name Czechoslovak Socialist Republic with the word “federal” back in 1990, shortly before the country dissolved. Their economy has been liberalizing since the Velvet Revolution.
In Slovakia, the same is true. It has also transitioned from socialist economics to the free-market variety and privatization, and it has faired much better now than during its socialist past.
Marx couldn’t predict this transition from socialism to capitalism. Everything from air quality to life span to wealth is better in Easter Europe than when it was back under communist rule.
Yes, which is more freedom than we have now.
Quoting NOS4A2
That was my point.
In the first wave, the response was late not because government is too sluggish to respond to change, but because it was loathe to do anything that hurt short-term profit. Eventually, it almost did the right thing, even shutting down schools and takeaways, and the infection rate was heading in the right direction. This course had worked for many other countries which eradicated or minimised the virus by similar means.
The government took three bizarre decisions. First, they allowed people in and out of the country, even though they knew the crisis was global. There were occasional quarantine rules and travel bans to and from particular countries, but for the most part, international travel was unregulated. As a result, it didn't import the virus once or twice, but over a thousand times over (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/212093/covid-19-transmission-chains-uk-traced-back/). The Home Office's explanation? It "helped businesses to maintain international connections" and "boosted the economy". The result was a second wave from the Spanish variant that necessitated the tier system before the the UK variant evolved and spread. (Likewise the government was ambivalent about national travel, viz. Dominic Cummings.) That commerce trumped safety and sanity means that that variant is now spreading across the world.
Second, despite the infection rate still being higher than that which necessitated lockdown in the first place, the government ended the lockdown and replaced it with instructions to businesses to manage the virus with no oversight of either the businesses or its customers as to whether they adhered to guidelines.
Third, no matter what happened afterwards, they insisted on keeping schools open rather than investing in remote teaching, eventually making school-age the fastest-rising demographic for infection. Because every time a classmate got a sniffle the whole class had to quarantine (because the government also refused to invest in testing), these children have had no education to speak of for a year. The important thing for the government was not that children got their lessons, but that parents could drop their kids off and go back to work during a pandemic. Schools that did not provide this child-sitting function or local authorities who tried to switch to safer, more useful remote methods were threatened (e.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/schools-open-covid-london-tier-3-b1773359.html). The government were clear: parents had to get back to work today, no matter the consequences weeks and months down the line.
By making the short-term interests of corporations paramount, the UK has protracted the harm of the pandemic, leading to a huge number of collapsed businesses (e.g. https://www.business-live.co.uk/retail-consumer/list-shops-fallen-administration-2020-18177619 is just the big name shops). The long-term effects of not handling the pandemic on commerce were easy to appraise. Did they appraise them? Probably not or, if they did, the short-term needs were overriding. Businesses, including airlines, failed anyway despite the short-term expenditure on keeping them going.
The UK's Covid response was another clear case where the short-term concerns of business were diametrically opposed to the long-term concerns of commerce, and where caving to the former created exactly the latter. The pandemic has shown that there is never a good time to have a purely capitalist party in power, and the need for a state that is more interested in the sustainable health of its business than the fastest way to make a buck.
In order to understand capitalism, you need to put aside your socialist sensitivities.
In capitalism, people are expendable. It's about living for an idea, even if the person living for that idea dies in the process.
The purpose of the thread is not to convert people to capitalism, but to discuss the benefits of pluralism in keeping capitalism sustainable.
The system is Nature, not capitalism. Yes, people and every living organism on this planet are expendable. This would seem to be a fairly basic truth, no?
If there was a better system than capitalism, believe me, the greedy bastards that run this world would be using it to their advantage. Remember, the best way to steal is in broad daylight, in full view of everybody.
It would be difficult not coming to the conclusion that empowering the individual is the best hope for mankind. Groups are organized to essentially screw-over individuals, and little more.
This is why you must do whatever is possible to have the smallest government possible. Government is at best, treacherous, at worst, the Devil, Himself.
Which individual? If you mean all individuals, that's a group. Unless those that are not empowered are just a random sample, it's difficult to avoid groups if you want to empower people.
Quoting synthesis
As I recall it, left to their own devices the private sector failed to empower women until equal rights and opportunities legislation forced their hands, and even then they opposed it when they could. Women in the workforce has turned out to be one of the biggest economic boons for the private sector: twice the recruitment pool, which keeps wages low and prices high for twin-income households.
Another example of capitalism failing to act in its own interests.
That used to be what it was like for people across the spectrum. For Engels the state machinery would necessarily whither away. For Thomas Paine the government was at best a necessary evil. But over time it has only become bigger, more entrenched, and its subjects have lost most of their power. The covid response proves their totalitarian aspirations, and the obsequiousness of today’s statists.
Empowering the individual means providing the greatest opportunities to work towards financial independence. All systems (groups) want to do just the opposite, create as much dependence as possible.
People actually empower themselves through persistent hard work.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
The "private sector" is millions of different interests. You speak as if it was just one voice. Women joining the workforce had many issues surrounding (and still does). It would be hard to defend the thought that kids are better off with working moms than ones who are able to stay at home. Complicated issues, for sure.
And (to large part), it was government policy (going off the gold standard in '71 which led to outsourcing and enormous trade deficits balanced with worth-less FIAT currency) that began the trashing of the American middle class in 70's that forced so many women going to work in the first place.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
As previously mentioned, it's a miracle that human beings (in groups) can accomplish much of anything besides beating the crap out of each other.
This is sounding like an argument for not empowering certain people.
People need to empower themselves by choosing that path which makes the most sense for themselves and their families.
So women (since you specified women, not "one of the parents) can empower themselves so long as that empowerment looks identical to being trapped in domestic servitude?
Black is white, up is down, and patriarchal fundamentalist attitudes toward what women should be allowed to do is basically women's lib.
Talk from your own experience. I've read Marx and all the rest. No need to re-hash their stuff. How do you feel about this from what you have experienced in your life?
Historically, women worked, and children were raised by entire villages. That arrangement doesn't work now, so different arrangements are judicious. I'm happy to accept that some of those past arrangements would have put the bulk of the burden of labour on men and the bulk of child rearing on women.
But once again the world has moved on. It is much simpler to have flexible arrangements. Covid might change things yet again, pushing us more toward remote working. The optimum arrangement for raising children is, in other words, context-dependent. The Victorian values you espouse would have been no use 20,000 years ago and are of no importance today. Time mocks absolutes.
Quoting synthesis
Easy enough. I know happy, well-adjusted children raised by single mothers, single fathers, parents where the father works, parents where the mother works, parents where both work, and same-sex parents. I also am all too familiar with the damage done by conservative ideas of concrete family structures. The charity I raise for is Women's Aid. Back in 2015, the UK's conservative government started hacking funding for shelters for women attempting to flee, often with their children, domestic violence, resulting in two-thirds of victims being forced to choose between homelessness and a life of abuse, all in the name of the conservative patented Traditional Family Values.
So far, the One Single Formula for getting it right is making itself highly inconspicuous to me through lack of evidence, like God or trickle-down economics: it's more a religious belief than anything approaching an empirical fact. I am more than happy to see women increasingly empowered to choose for themselves whether to stay at home, work, take it in turns, or go it alone as they see fit, not as conservative men think they should see fit. Like a lot of men these days, I'm also keen to see the burden of labour increasingly shared, and as a result see fathers given the chance to bond more with their children rather than be squeezed out by outdated values manifested in maternal gatekeeping.
We had a big push here for more paternity leave rights in response to how many men want to take more care if their children in early years. Traditional Family Values aren't working for them either. Alas the legislation was so diluted by the time it was realised that we're still waiting for that to pass, but the desire is there.
The great thing about empowerment is that empowers people to do the thing you'd like to see them do. Most women this empowered might well proceed as per Traditional Family Values: after all, it's what appears normal. But the flip side is that those for whom such outdated values don't work don't have to abide by them. We call this freedom.
Studies overwhelming suggest that children raised in two parent homes are more successful in every possible category. It comes down to what's more important, the children or the parent, and it's become quite clear that (in the U.S., at least,) children have been made a much less of a priority over the past generation or two. The mantra was always to sacrifice (not necessarily financially) so your kids could have it better than you did. What happened to change this is under intense scrutiny in the social sciences.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Here's the problem (especially with professional moms). I have known and worked closely with over a dozen highly successful, dedicated professional moms over the years. Every one of them were over-worked and completely burned-out trying to be the super-woman that society tells them they should be.
Almost every one had a horrible marriage with out semi- out of control kids. But they all live in nice neighborhoods, in very nice homes, drove nice cars, and are miserable. This is a huge problem among Western professional women, and I am sure it is common among all women who are trying to do it all.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, and people should have every right to make these choices. If you believe you can have it all, go for it, but remember, live by the sword, die by the sword.
And one more thing. Almost every society that does not make "the family" and its needs THE priority, fails. And it's exactly what you're seeing in the West today.
Well, that doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does. People do have the ability to split when a relationship is bad, which ups the average for parents that don't split. Children have been shown to do less well in school if their parents divorce, but that's not the fault of divorce, that's the fault of bad marriages. The worst off kids are those whose parents are in conflict but haven't yet split. (Musick K, Meier A. Are both parents always better than one? Parental conflict and young adult well-being. Soc Sci Res. 2010 Sep;39(5):814-30. doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2010.03.002. PMID: 20824195; PMCID: PMC2930824.)
Quoting synthesis
The thing I most see complained about in this regard is that, as well as being mothers and full-time workers, they also have to do most of the housework as if they weren't working (feminists call this 'unpaid labour'). It isn't surprising to me, given that people tend to know like-minded people, that men who espouse traditional gender roles also know women who are stressed out. Generally, women do not see work as the thing that needs to give. Single working mothers also have less of a problem in this regard, which again points to the men as the problem. (https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC89089). It's also a situation that is improving over time. Best thing you can do to support a woman who is struggling to juggle work, home and children is to do more of the second two, not forbid the first one. You identify the cause yourself, but didn't know it:
Quoting synthesis
Yep, that'll do it.
Quoting synthesis
It's like the market is supposed to be. Letting each mother choose how best to manage their lives is more efficient than being told by a bunch of men with outdated ideas.
Quoting synthesis
That's absolutely untrue. Distributed parenting has been the norm throughout most of the lifetime of the human race, and still persists today. The children are healthier, more sociable, and more capable.
We've gotten somewhat off-topic. Irrespective of whether working women is best for the children, best for the father's, best for the mother's or best for society, it is absolutely best for the market, and yet the market has always resisted. The market does not act in its own long-term interest willingly: it has to be forced to do so.
If you look at Western society, in general, you see narcissism on a massive scale. Despite all the various reasons for this, the results are pretty clear...make your life about your 'self,' refuse to take personal responsibility, and things are not so wonderful for you.
It's interesting than an entire movement has arisen around this mind-set (the institutionalization of blame) where the market has supplied these folks with all kinds of rationale for their pitiful behavior. And the whiners have piled on in record numbers.
Success in life is about getting your act together by taking responsibility for your own actions and refusing to engage in the blame game. It's hard work and more hard work after that. Life is what it is at whatever time you happen to be alive. Either you deal with it, work hard and prosper or you blame everybody else for your refusal to do what needs to be done.
Success of the market is supposed to follow from the drive toward success of the individuals in it. It is therefore in the market's interest to ensure as many people as possible can do their best. Stark inequality manifest as an unlevel playing ground is not an economically effective way for the society to organise itself. If person A is heavily advantaged to succeed than person B, the market loses out on the potential successes of person B. Likewise if person B cannot afford what person A makes, the market loses out again.
Sorry for late response. Apparently I started it a week ago then forgot to finish. Not really worth a week's wait, is it...
I’d like to share some of my thoughts which I think may be useful in this case.
Firstly on capitalism: Capitalism is based on supply and demand. The more people who want a specific item the more valuable that item is at X quantity. Should the quantity increase (supply) the value lowers. Should demand (population desiring said Product) increase at a fixed X quantity then again the value increases (cost).
This is actually a negative feedback loop that regulates the price of products. Let’s consider the product as “essential” - something necessary to basic human needs for example education, as opposed to “luxury”.
When an essential service or product becomes “out of reach” in price for the general population -because it is essential - this invokes either a). an increase in supply (new companies or institutions and competition) b). Innovation - the development of new ways to decrease the cost of production or increase the utility/ essentialness of the product. c). Substitution - the offering of a different product that can provide similar functions or d). Decrease in price of the product by the established company - if no one can buy your product your earning potential drops and this can threaten the survival of a company.
On failing any of these mechanisms to resolve the price increase (which is unlikely) then d). Policy and regulation reform is a final option: that is to say government/ banking intervention in the form of new laws, cuts to tax, vat, tariffs, grants, interest rates etc which essentially bolsters the buying potential of the consumer making the product again affordable.
The diverse interplay between these is very effective at generating stability for the general consumer population.
Unfortunately capitalism relies on the existence of a spectrum. It requires a minority to be poor, a majority to be middleclass and another minority to be wealthy. Let’s imagine everyone is made middle class (No poor and no rich) then demand greatly increases (because everyone has money to afford something) which increases the value of the product: this value increase leads to capitalising and the reemergence of a wealthy class as well as simultaneously leaving some unable to afford it (poor).
The proper function of an economy really relies on the middle class however as it is the majority. If anything disturbs the buying power of the middle class then the whole economy suffers (for both the wealthy and the poor) e.g recessions, large scale unemployment/economic collapse etc.
An important lesson can be learned from this with regard to population size and cost of living. This is one of “dependence”. The more an individual outsources their needs onto others by using money/ the market, the more dependent they are on the systems health for satisfying their basic human needs.
If we consider resources as finite and population as increasing we can predict that there will be a natural revival of “self- sufficiency” practises. This means relying less on large scale industry and more on home industry or micro-industry.
We are actually seeing this. There is a renaissance of basic craft/ home industry going on in first world countries (third world already heavily rely on this). The utility of the internet in circumventing the need to pay for education to attain these skills makes it a lucrative money- saving endeavour.
So I would imagine that is the Global capitalist system escalates then there will be a cultural shift back to local Independent products; think knitting your own clothing, Ceramics, home cultivation of produce, Crafting furniture, buying locally farmed produce, reusing, upcycling, etc in small groups.
This has a net impact on the capitalist market as companies see people moving away from High end buying and moving towards self-producing. This is a final regulatory system that ensures the price of using the global market is reduced to make it lucrative.
In summary; cultural change has a colossal impact on shaping the market. And these mechanisms are reactionary - they don’t ever stay the same. During the war in the 1900s there was a huge shift from buying to home d.i.y as people struggled to make ends meet.
It’s important to remember that economics is not based on money it is based on mass psychology. Individual decisions and behaviour. Which is ultimately cultural not fiscal.
Even if you thought it to be advantageous, there is no way to equalize outcome. The more people try, the worse things get. What you can do is maximize opportunity and allow nature to take its course. People will do all kinds of things with their opportunity based on an infinite number of reasons that nobody will ever understand.
Thinking that any particular outcome should be lands you in the "playing God" category. If you look around the natural world, you will find basically the same types of results you do in humanity. We are part of nature and will never be able to get around that inconvenient truth.
Demand is created, not pre-existing. The demand for Apple products is manufactured by Apple. The demand for fancy hats likewise. Every sweatshop-made tee shirt with a logo on it. Every new perfume or aftershave. So it's not like companies are just responding to external factors. You can make millions of something that no one needs and sell it to the same people not just at an arbitrarily high price, but over and over again.
This is why the following doesn't hold:
Quoting Benj96
It is not just middle class people buying Apple products. It's poor people getting into debt to have the latest groovy piece of tat. And long term Apple want everyone to buy not just one, but one a year. However they'd baulk at paying their staff enough in the short term to afford one, hence the importance of the debt economy.
Quoting Benj96
I'm certainly in that shift, but it's expensive. Supermarkets, for instance, buy in such bulk that they can afford to insist on an extremely small profit margin for farmers. That profit per pint is negligible: it's barely viable for bulk producers and not viable at all for small ones. It's approaching a crisis point in which farmers will just stop doing dairy. Then the price will soar and fewer people will buy it, leading to losses for both retailers and producers. Another example of how short-term profit leads to long-term catastrophe.
That's not a reason to perpetuate systematic inequality, though. Minimising something bad isn't pointless just because 0 is unattainable. If you tried to reduce your Covid risk to zero, for instance, you'd be Howard Hughesing it within a week! :rofl:
Quoting synthesis
Maximising opportunity entails maximising the number of people with opportunity, not just maximising opportunity for the already advantaged.
Quoting synthesis
Any action ever taken impacts one's environment according to how one thinks it should be. Acting according to how you think things should be is inevitable.
You can not intervene in 8+B people's lives to secure whatever outcome you believe would be ideal, but you can work towards maximizing opportunity and then allowing individuals to make of it what they will. People who are successful are so because they have the motivation to be such. This is instilled by the family, the culture, and most importantly, the individual themselves.
Life is pretty much a bell curve.
This is just right wing propaganda, though. There's no actual truth to it; it's just something privileged people promote to justify the perpetuation of their privilege. Viz:
https://youtu.be/bJ8Kq1wucsk
Right-wing propaganda? No, I believe this is common sense. Do you see everything through your political spectacles?
If you have achieved any success in your life, did it not come from your motivation to succeed? Do you believe that all people who happen to be more fortunate through [whatever] are just handed success? This would be a very naive pov.
The truth is somewhere in the middle, no? Some successful people literally just inherit their money or succeed with an investment or use their parent's connections to land a sweet job, but others genuinely do grind and hustle and those are the ones you gotta admire. There are plenty of examples of both and plenty of successful people who are borderline admirable.
I believe you equate success with wealth. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Most wealthy people I have known over the years are pretty miserable (unsuccessful).
It's common, but no sense involved. Any study you care to look at tells the same story. Another interesting one was Kahneman's study of stock traders. He found no difference between the success rate of wealthier "experts" given better opportunities and those scrabbling at the bottom. The difference was luck, no skill involved. If you get lucky, you're advantaged thereafter. But those lucky traders believed, and their peers confirmed, they had talent.
That's not to say there aren't rags to riches stories irl, but it's a useful, coincidentally sometimes true myth to divert focus from why some people are born into riches and others into rags.
The buildings were constructed by private interests, they are owned by private interests and the rents are collected by those private interests. So who pays the bill? The taxpayer, naturally.
Once again we have corporations unable to perform their functions without massive cash injections (£3.5 billion) from the state, which again should make us question the propaganda that, left to its own devices, the market is efficient.
It is efficient for short-term decision-making but woefully inept at making long-term decisions well, requiring handouts from taxpayers whenever things don't go perfectly.
I appreciate this culture of a market propped up by the state is very UK-specific. I expect in the US people would have gone to jail rather than been given massive piles of cash, although I also imagine people would have been left in flammable housing.
Stock traders?
Are you telling me that you have bought into the narrative that everybody who is successful is so because they were born into it? You are playing the ultimate victim card.
This isn't 18th and 19th century Europe. In the U.S., most people who are successful had to work their asses off (not counting the "some thing for nothing" sock market crowd).
You work your ass off, have half a brain, and you're probably going to do pretty well.
The example of traders wouldn't fit into that, but there are plenty of examples where that's the case, yes. Look at British politics... A gauntlet of Eton-educated buffoons doing what pater expected of them. Or, for that matter, America's political class, or do you think Trump and Bush Jr got their by their bootstraps?
Quoting synthesis
That stopped in the 20th century, did it? Did women know this? That's half the population. Ethnic minorities? Homosexuals? What about people just born poor who didn't have the option of Harvard or Oxford?
That's over with. This is 2021 and you need to move on.
There will ALWAYS be people that have advantages. Put you big boy pants on and deal with it.
"Unfortunately we didn't have any fluent Spanish speakers but in my broken Spanish I was able to discern that they were from Cuba and....
...only fled the workers paradise because equality is such a good basis for an economic system, they had become overwhelmed with happiness!
Ya think?
I think this is why conservativism is always on the wrong side of history. "Yes, we were wrong in our beliefs about slaves and women and race and sexuality until a few years ago, but we're definitely correct now so no more 'improvements' please."
I'm not advocating a socialist utopia. But let's not forget all the medical tourism from the US to Cuba that went on before Obamacare. Cuba was taking care of Americans because Americans couldn't take care of themselves. Suggests a happier medium betwixt, but idiots tend to deal in extremes, in either/or.
Born poor does not equate to useless. If you want something bad enough you find a way to get it. Being born poor means you likely have to work harder to get it, that's all. Harvard, Oxford, or whatever school is not out of reach, although the time frame to get there maybe longer.
It was either/or for those Cubans when they put to sea on a raft made from coconuts stuck together with bird shit. Either they get to a country that doesn't have a political system based on equality, or they die. Same with the Berlin Wall. Pretty much everyone braving the machine guns and barbed wire, was trying to escape from equality. How do you not get that? Equality does not work as a political ideal.
Treating everyone like garbage is equality, but I don't really want to live there eh.
Think about what you just wrote. Are there things in your life that work for you or do you just change everything all the time for the sake of change?
If your thinking is unbalanced, you are probably wrong. Extreme positions create extreme outcomes (which are rarely a good thing).
I believe it reflects why those powerful interests generally resist proportional representation electoral systems of governance, the latter which tends to dilute the corporate lobbyist influence on the former.
(The first-past-the-post electoral system just barely qualifies as democratic rule within the democracy spectrum, and it best serves corporate interests.)
With the momentum of the growing wealth gap and big business gaining greater advantage over the worker, I don’t see how very much can be realistically changed by ‘the little guy’, even through a social pendulum shift.
Unlike with a few social/worker revolutions of the past, notably the Bolshevik and French revolutions, it seems to me that contemporary Western world’s virtual corporate rule and superfluously wealthy essentially have the police and military ready to foremost protect big power and money interests, even over the food and shelter needs of the protesting masses.
It could be excused as busting heads to maintain law and order as a priority. Thus the absurdly unjust inequities and inequalities can persist.