capitalism- is it workingFollow

im in an AP class so your close

Every time the Halloween event rolls around in FFXI, I run to San d'Oria and start baking dozens and dozens of pies. Then I put them up on the AH for like five times the normal price, and /wave to the other crafters as I go. The pies sell, because everyone wants them for the event.

I'm taking advantage of the situation in order to make more money. Is it wrong? Does that make me greedy?

If what I did was wrong, then what's the solution? The people who aren't outright socialist, but who like their ideas, would say that we need price controls to prevent people from being gouged. Do you know what that would do? There would be no more pies on the Auction House. People want them a lot more than normal, but since prices can't go any higher, the crafters wouldn't have any incentive to make them. People would be buying and selling pies on the black market, which is kind of silly to think about but it's true.

A communist would say that because people need pies, someone needs to make them. Uh-oh. I've levelled my cooking skill, so looks like I'm it. Next time I log on, I have to synth X stacks of pies, and if I don't I get sent to Mordion Gaol. The fun just went right out the window.

You know what? I had fun in that event. I got to meet lots of other crafters, and we all had fun synthing pies and making truckloads of gil. And everyone else had fun too, because they were able to buy the sweets that they needed for the event. Heck, I gave pies away to some people who asked, and to my friends of course. I could afford to, because I was making so much money.

That's how it works in a pure, capitalist system. Because when you get down to it, all capitalism really is, is the idea that people should be able to spend their time and money however they like. If "capitalism" isn't working, then that's not a problem with the idea -- it's a problem with the people, and what they're spending their time and money on. And while putting a gun to their heads and making them spend their money on the right things might seem to make things better, it's not going to solve anything in the long run.



QFT.

All of us, in all the MMOs we play, are all "greedy." Every day, we log in and we grind. We level our skills, we level our crafts, we farm gil / gold and spend it on shinies. That's not evil, and it never has been. The question is what we do with the shinies once we have them.

Some guy was /shouting in Whitegate, earlier, about how he thought people were too greedy. People should share, he said. I told him I thought that was a great idea. "Who have you helped out lately?", I asked.

How 'bout you?

Edited, May 27th 2007 7:10pm by Murrquan

Edited, May 27th 2007 7:10pm by Murrquan

Almost Preschool?

No, his computer's handwriting recognition isn't quite right. That P was supposed to be an R.

Prolly too far out of this conversation at this point but:



That's certainly the case for some people, but on the large, I'd say that the country benefits more from the taxable income than it does from Reagan acting in another movie :p

Naturally there are limits though. Someone isn't going to invest a billion dollars at a chance to make a hundred.

Capitalism isn't evil because Gordon Gecko said so; Greed is good.

No, but seriously, what other system are you going to use? Communism? Don't make me laugh. It's a great system....in theory, but fails miserably when put into actual application.

Greed IS good. It provides motivation. If you're living in a communist state, what's the motivation to work harder than the next guy if you're guaranteed the same standard of living no matter how hard you work?

Greed drives people to get more. Sure, it also drives people to exploit others, but you have to look at the alternative..it's not any better.

Since you think capitalism is so bad, why don't you suggest to us a better system?

First off. Red. I don't disagree with you about "tempering" capitalism. My issue was with your implication that socialism was required to do this. It's not, but many who like socialism like to claim that it is. Hence my point.




Hah! So you're basically saying that communism (and to a lesser degree socialism) would work as long as no one knew what they were missing if only they'd adopted capitalism instead...

Not exactly a ringing endorsement now is it?

The problem with people like you is that you get centipedes in your ****** about all the bad stuff that major corporations are doing to the environment/people, and then you go play FFXI, made by a huge gaming company known as Square Enix on an OS designed by Microsoft. You probably drive a car too, most likely made by a corporation. I would even guess that you own a gaming console made by a huge baby-raping conglomerate like Sony or Nintendo. Every time you breath a sigh at all the bad things corporations are doing, you exhale greenhouse gases like Carbon dioxide and water vapor. Judging by the fact that you own a computer you probably live in a house made of wood, thus reducing our forests and contributing to global warming by taking away trees that turn carbon dioxide emissions into oxygen and sugars.

All in all, I'd say you're guilty, guilty, guilty.

No, it means adapting it so that it more or less functions in our society.

I hearted the freedom speech, though.

I could have sworn I posted in this thread somewhere....

I think the distinction between "negative" and "positive" tempering is completely silly.

You keep saying I want to impose socialism on capitalism, and it's non-sense. I'll try to make this short, but here is how I see it:

Capitalism and the free-market are two different things, and you are confusing them. What you are talking about is the free-market, not capitalism as a whole.

Some goods and services are private, some are public. I don't think anyone can argue about that. The public ones are provided by the government through taxes, like security, the police, the firemen, schools, etc, the private ones by companies through the market.

The free-market system is extremely efficient for private goods and services, in that it provides a framework for competition and efficiency. It assumes humans make rational and informed choices about how to spend their money, and provides the mechanisms for them to do so as efficiently and productively as possible. And the sole driving mechanism in this system, the sole consideration, is financial. There are no morals, no politics, no philosophy, no religion, in a true free market. In a true free market, all drugs would legal, so would prostitution, since people would simply make the choice to spend their money this way.

So, it's quite obvious that while the free market is great to efficiently produce and sell apples and oranges, there are certain areas where there needs to be other considerations than financial ones, especially if they depend solely on what people choose to spend their money on. For these areas, the governemnt takes control of it through taxes, and they are public. And because these are not subject solely to financial considerations, you can choose to waste money in order to uphold some principle, or value, or societal need.

It's therefor obvious that while the free-market is a great tool for certain things, it is also completely inhuman, and is driven solely by profit. Left to its own device, it leads to monopolies and to sometimes extreme consequences. Hence, we have "tinkered" it, for exemple through monopoly comissions.

All of this should be quite obvious to anyone really, and is much more accurate than the "negative" and "positive" tempering nonsense.



It's not a question of capitalism, but of pulbic and private. Of what is subjected to the free-market, and what isn't. The fact that in the US, some people can't afford basic medical need despite having a job, simply because the system of insurance means that vulnerable people are inherently disadvantaged, is a failing of the free-market. If schools were private, you know as well as I do that rich kids would go to the best school, while poor kids go to the crappy ones, and that would be another failing.

It's crazy to assume that such a simple system can be perfect for societies as complex as us. Some problems are more efficiently dealt with through reason and forethought, rather than finiancial considerations. Some things are better off public, some private. This distinction, as well as how, and how much, we tinker with the market are the really important questions.

WORKS OK FOR ME....

No. It's not. That's why you have a problem with this. It's also why you're a supporter of socialism. You don't see the distinction.

Preventing a negative result is just that preventing a negative result. If you think of this like a numberline it's pretty clear. No amount of preventing a negative number will ever increase the number I have right now. If I start at 10, and then something comes along to decrease my number, but then I prevent that decrease I may avoid ending up at a lower value, but I cannot possibly under any circumstances increase that number. Adding a positive value *can*.

You can see this, right? It's a pretty basic concept. Imagine you have a balloon with air in it. You could do all sorts of things to prevent the air from leaking out, but no amount of that prevention will *ever* increase the amount of air in the balloon above its starting point. Regulation of industry to prevent negative market effects (such as pollution, prostitution, alchoholism, and others we've mentioned in this thread) does not "make things better". It prevents things from getting worse as a result of the free market mechanism.


To "make things better", you enter the world of socialism. That world says that we need to take control of various functions within the economy and redirect its actions away from purely economic pursuits but into social ones as well. That's a completely different thing. And I'm not even saying it's not often a good thing. However, it is critically important to understand that you aren't just regulating or "tempering" capitalism when you apply socialism. You are in fact creating something completely new and doing something "extra" (often using wealth generated by capitalism, but that's not always required).


I just can't figure out how to make this any clearer for you. IMO, the reason this distinction is often muddled is exactly because those that want to employ more socialist ideologies deliberately confuse the two. If they can convince enough people that there's no difference between passing regulation to prevent an industry from polluting and taxing that same industry so they can spend the money on free housing for the people, then they can get what they want without people really realizing that one does not derive from the other.


Pollution is a result of industry (in this context driven by capitalism since that's the topic). Thus, it is useful and relevant to work to prevent the generation of pollution by that industry by regulating it. A lack of free housing is *not* a result of industry or capitalism. It's a natural state in fact. Providing free housing is an extra social bonus that you may choose to provide. However, it's important to understand that this is *extra*. You aren't fixing anything that's broken when you do it. You are making a choice to spend the wealth your society generates on providing this new (positive) thing. It's disengenous to imply that providing free housing is some sort of "tempering" of capitalism.




And this is exactly why the lack of distinction which you've apparently been taught and have swallowed completely is so dangerous.

How on earth can you say that things generated by the free-market are defined by the government? If the government is defining those things, then it's not a free market...

That's the danger. See. If the government only regulates said market (to prevent negatives), then the government never defines what is built, what is bought, and what is sold. It simply acts to prevent those processes from causing harm. Once you equate that with "creating un-harm" (for lack of a better term), you can justify using the government to tell the free market what products to make rather then just encourage them to make them in ways that don't cause harm.


What's staggering to me is that I'm reasonably sure you wont understand what I'm saying here either.



That's the methods socialism uses. But it's not the stated goal of socialism. Socialism does those things in order to produce a "better society". You're stating what socialism does, not why it does it (or the stated reason why, since it's not uncommon for those behind the scenes to have their own reasons to increase the government's power).



Of course they are benefits. I never said they aren't. I'm thinking you just plain don't comprehend at all the point I'm making here. I'm saying that none of these things are in any way a component of "tempering" capitalism. They are things we may choose to pay for or not. There is a huge difference between choosing to provide police and military forces (presumably paid for via taxation of some kind) and passing legistlation to restrict the amount of pollution that a tire manufacturer can produce while building his product.

One of those "tempers" capitalism. The other is purely about the government providing benefits to the people. A discussion of what sorts of benefits the government can and should provide is a completely different discussion. My entire point is that we don't create a police force (or any of those things you listed) in order to somehow prevent the abuses of capitalism.

Get it? That has nothing to do with tempering capitalism. But what many socialists like to do is convince themselves (and as many others as possible) that unregulated capitalism would produce horrible results (a reasonable assumption), so we must have regulation of capitalism, and since preventing a negative is the same as creating a positive, then we should increase the number of "positives" the government does in order to "temper capitalism".

It's a contrived position based on incredibly flawed logic.



Hah! You think?

How about the concept that you believe there isn't a distinction between them specifically because those who've taught you that want you to arrive at the conclusion I listed above for the reasons I listed above. They want you to see adding additional government programs as no more then a bit more "tempering" of the evils of an unbridaled free market. And they've apparently succeeded brilliantly with you since you can't even concieve that this might just be a flawed argument.





Hah. But it's perfectly ok to have blind faith that your government will always "do the right thing" with all the wealth and power you've given it. Look. The point of making the distinction between preventing negatives and adding positives is that private citizens in a free market will always behave in consistent ways. They will always act to increase their own wealth. Thus, a bit of regulation to ensure that the process of acting to increase your own wealth does not produce negative results does not cause negatives to occur (cannot, in fact).

If we make a mistake in this model, it's not a huge problem because our regulation is all aimed at "limiting" the secondary effects. So if something we thought was positive turns out to be negative, we're still going to prevent it from being too harmful.

If we endorse a process of creating positive results and we make a mistake, there's no theoretical limit to the amount of damage that can be done. If we decide that a course of action is "good" and empower the government to do that thing, and the result ends up being negative we have nothing to temper that damage. This is because we've changed the nature of how we do things. We don't limit, but expand. Just as with the balloon example above, no amount of preventing air from escaping will cause the balloon to become overinflated and pop. But if we decide that adding air is identical to preventing it from escaping, we most certainly can.


That's the danger. And while I'm not opposed to the use of socialistic processes within our society I'm a firm believer that we should never lie to ourselves about what we are doing and why. It's incredibly dangerous to conduct a course of action that is empowering the government while believing that all we're really doing is restricting the free-market somehow. That's an absurd and incredibly dangerous redefinition of what's going on and it bothers me to no end that so many on the left not only have come to accept that redefinition but can't even see it for what it is when you point it out to them.