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September 20, 2008 at 15:50:49
Promoted to Headline (H3) on 9/20/08: by wagelaborer Page 1 of 1 page(s) |
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Most Americans are surprised at the collapse of capitalism. I'm surprised it took so long. I was brought up with 19th century beliefs, and Depression era values. My parents suffered greatly as children in the Depression. They expected another depression at any time, and passed that along to us children. I was taught that capitalism couldn't work, because it relied on profits to continue, and that there would always come a time when profits would decrease, since the workers weren't paid the full value of their labor, and so were unable to buy enough back to keep profits coming to the capitalists. But the genius of capitalism that we keep hearing about has kept it going for a century more than expected by 19th century dreamers. Two world wars and the great depression destroyed a lot of productive capacity, and the rebuilding after those disasters made it seem as if capitalism was booming. All you have to do is disregard the human misery caused by these tragedies, and it appears that all was well.
The military-industrial complex created much "value" that didn't have to be bought back by the producers and brought foreign dollars eager to buy the weapons of mass destruction that Americans produced. And the cheap labor and materials that America's military power provided the homeland made US worker's wages go farther.
Cheap foreign labor and endless credit seemed to work. Even though people have been warning that this can't last, it certainly seemed to go on long past the time it should have collapsed. Here's a warning from TWO years ago that it was all about to blow!
Now we're being told that the whole problem is greedy Americans who wanted to buy houses they couldn't afford. No, that's not the problem.
The problem is that Americans were given loans that were then packaged and resold again and again. Obviously, a loan for, say, $500,000, which is resold to speculators until it is "worth" $5,000,000 isn't really worth $5,000,000, because even if the loan resets at a higher rate, the homeowner can't pay that much money. Especially because half of working Americans make less than $40,000 a year. But the world economy has been propped up by this creation of "wealth" for the last 8 years, at least.
Back to basics. How can a people who make less than $40,000/year support the world's economy? No matter how little the Chinese workers make, at some point America can't buy their products.
And how can Americans who can't pay their mortgages pay enough taxes to buy out AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc, etc, etc? The personal debt of Americans used to equal to the public debt (until last week).
These government buyouts are pretending that people who can't pay their credit card bills or their mortgages can now pay all that, plus interest and million dollar salaries to the CEOs, to boot.
So will capitalism finally collapse? And what will replace it?
I vote for cooperative sustainable peaceful relations among the people of this planet. I vote for production for use, not profit and a system that lives lightly on earth, instead of exploiting and polluting it. Our home planet, our only planet.
The alternative is mass misery, possible accompanied by war and/or famine, and a continued destruction of our ecosystem.
It seems like an easy choice. Oh, wait. There's no election that let's us decide.
wagelaborer.blogspot.com
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Don't throw capitalism out with the bath water
I think you are giving capitalism a bad wrap for all the good it has done. Our lives are more comfortable, we are evolving faster ( I know since we can see all those who are not it seems we aren’t but we are.), and better ideas are bound to come from more global perspectives. We are exchanging ides here and now because of capitalism. The problem isn’t capitalism; the problem is the rules and definition of the players. What if you were watching a boxing match? You had a few bucks bet on a fighter. He was winning. Just as you were about to start trash talking to your buddy who bet against you, the ref all of the sudden starts pounding on your boxer and holding him back while the other guy beat him. Then your boxer got punished for hitting the ref. The problem isn’t the boxing match, but the people involved were not restrained by its rules. Capitalism works like a competition. The problem is people started making and accepting rules that don’t really work functionally with the objectives of the game. The problem here in the “good ‘ol US of A” is that there has become such a separation of the people living above a “decent wage” and the people living below it. All the other disparities that come with wage disparity go with it. To fix the system would be simple. Get rid of Minimum wage. Replace it with a minimum percentage for every company. What that would mean is taking the company that pays its CEO $10 million dollars and saying you have to pay your lowest paid employee at least .035%. (numbers are for example only.) But in this case, the company would have to pay each of its employees at least 35,000 a year. Congress wants more money in circulation? Squeeze the system by increasing the percentage. Capitalism would still rein, just the rules would be more fair. by Dwight Black (16 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 50 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Sep 20, 2008 at 7:34:00 PM  (0+)
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Reply: Dwight, you don't seem to have thought it through.
Have you ever watched this little 20-minute video? The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard Capitalism can't be reformed. The reforms you suggest already exist in other countries like Sweden, but even though THEY call themselves capitalist countries, we call them SOCIALIST. The New Deal tried to reform and regulate capitalism, but our Constitution was set up so that those who owned the country would rule it, so it didn't take them long at all to deregulate again. The problem with capitalism is that it values the bath water more than the baby, because water can be owned and sold for a profit, whereas capitalism sees the baby as a useless eater, good for nothing except possibly future slave labor or cannon fodder. Capitalism threw out the baby and kept the bath water. In socialist countries water is a basic human right. Here is it only for those who can afford to pay the water bill. The United States has a higher infant mortality rate than most third word countries. Water is bottled and sold while babies die needlessly because unlike socialists, capitalists don't think it profitable to invest in babies for their future potential. Water should be free. We need to throw out capitalism and capitalists in order to save the babies, to make sure that they have adequate health care, nutrition, and education, even if their parents aren't rich. And we can't fix things by amending the Constitution either. We need to throw that out along with the wealthy elite it was intended to keep in power, and get one that does what our Declaration of Independence said that any legitimate government must do, ensure our inalienable right to have a government over which we the people have power and that represents us, not the wealthy elites and the corporations. We fought a revolution against a corporation--it wasn't fought against King George, it was fought against the monopoly established by his British East India Tea Company. Remember the Boston Tea Party? Read the book, Gangs of America, by Ted Nace. Capitalism, a system of government run for the benefit of capitalists, is also known as fascism. A government run of, by, and for the people, is called socialism. The United States hates governments like that. It has been trying desperately for many years to take back Cuba for the Mafia, and the CIA even used the Mafia to try to assassinate Fidel Castro because he had the audacity to provide his people with free health care and basic economic human rights by not allowing the greedy to have whatever they desired at everyone else's expense. Read Wagelaborer's article again. If the premise is exploitation, then you can never have justice, equality, dignity and respect. When the capitalists outsourced the jobs and shut down the factories in Argentina, the workers reopened them as cooperative, run with bosses, where the workers themselves get the full value of their labor and profits are invested in the community. When the capitalists outsourced the jobs and shut down the factories here, they blamed illegal immigrants. What illegall immigrant owned an auto plant in Detroit? What illegal immigrant ever outsourced ten or twenty thousand American jobs in a single day? And our government responded by cutting unemployment benefits and using taxpayer money to reward the capitalists for oursourcing our jobs. Are you old enough to remember the days when people believed the lie that capitalism created jobs? Capitalism creates nothing. It exploits. It commits genocide to get natural resouces from indigenous peoples, then uses slave labor to turn those resources into thing "of value." It never occurs to them that a thriving indigenous community living in traditional ways that have enabled them to survive for thousands of years without destroying their habitat, might have more value than a car or a TV. I've been told that 97% of America's old growth forests have been cut down. For what? So that Americans could live in houses instead of tepees? Cutting down a living Redwood tree and making it into dead patio furniture isn't "creating" anything. No capitalist ever created a 300-year old tree. I've just submitted a quick-link to this story, Dwight: Remember the Cree Prophecy? Only after the last tree has been cut down Only after the last fish has been caught Only after the last river has been poisoned An excellent example of capitalism is the genocide industry. Our government borrows and spend a million dollars every two minutes to kill millions of innocent people in wars of aggression based on lies, and corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater make billions in capitalist profits. The money is valued by capitalists, but the lives are not. Our genocide industry has already killed more than seven million people in Iraq and Afghanistan alone--that's a million more than the number of Jews that Hitler killed. Don't throw out capitalism, Dwight? We don't have to. We can just watch as it self-destructs because it never was sustainable in the first place. Capitalism has to keep growing to survive and that is the characteristic of cancer. Cancer and capitalism destroy healthy organisms to feed their own unhealthy growth. But after it self-destructs I suggest that we drive some wooden stakes through its heart to make sure it never comes back. You got a zombie plan, Dwight? by Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 4:36:31 AM (0+)
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Reply: Oops, typo above.
It should have said. ....the workers reopened them as cooperatives, run WITHOUT bosses.... Once they get rid of the management parasites, workers are more capable of producing better products because they aren't forced to cut corners or produce inferior goods so that the shareholders can make quick profits. The parasites can't survive without the workers, but the workers are much more productive without the parasites. ;) by Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 4:52:45 AM (0+)
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Reply: Yeah, I have thought it through
There is nothing on earth like the minimum percentage approach. All other attempts try to control dynamic issues with static numbers. It is not socialism because it still doesn't cap the amount one can earn. Minimum percentages only says you have to compensate people that helped you earn it. If the CEO only makes $100,000 p/y he is more then welcome to pay his janitor $3 an hour. But I am thinking his janitor will go work scrubbing toilets at Wal-Mart for 30 grand. If anything It encourages capitalism but all the way down the economic scale. All of the major forms of wealth distribution (capitalism, socialism, communism) suffer from the same inherent flaw. They are ultimately dictated by human nature. Socialism and communism both have a problem with one body determining what the meaning of “fair” is. The reality is that there is only so much “water”. There will always be disagreements about who should get the “bigger equal half”. We have made it this far in evolution by being capitalist. Why would we want to change now? Where in nature does socialism work? You get sick? They push you out of the herd or let the predators come get you. You get sick and slow the herd down, they leave you. While we strive to be better then mere animals, we can not forget the realities based upon our connection to them. by Dwight Black (16 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 50 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 7:49:10 AM (0+)
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Reply: Don't buy it ...
Whenever there's bosses there's misappropriation of production and profit. That also is humane nature. You make the analogy that when one gets sick in a socialist system they are pushed out of the herd, how? It would be more accurate to say that in reality when one gets sick in a socialist system, they can go get health care. It's in a capitalist system that one is left behind to be ravaged. Humane-beings for the most part are fairly placid animals, as most animals are, feed them, provide shelter and beyond that not much else is called for. Most of our "needs" are manufactured, I need to have that widget! Why? Because someone manufactured the impression you can't live without it. I'm not saying that we should all go back to living in caves and living off the land. I like creature comforts as much as the next person. But when products are made for the many, for the profit of the few, not only do those products not last by design, the many are left with nothing but a broken widget that they didn't need in the first place. But let's say that widget was something that regardless of its usefulness was going to get produced anyway. If the workers that made that widget were in control of it's manufacturing and shared in it's profit without having the lion's share going to stock-holders and CEO's, that really produce nothing, pride of product would be instilled, and the making for a better means of production that would limit its negative effects on our environment would be imposed and the community as a whole benefits with the redistribution of wealth back into the community. If said widget would be something that produced more pollution than the environment could handle, under Socialism, the people have the ability to change that by either changing methods of production or discontinue making the widgets altogether for the good of community. Under a capitalist system that widget will get produced as long as it's making a profit and damn the consequences. If people knew half of the truth about what most of the things they use do to our environment they'd think twice about using them, and that includes this computer I'm typing on. Although it's true that laws and regulations can limit that damage done under Capitalism we have seen just what the end result of that is when the corrosive effects of profit manifest themselves into the system and those that manufacture are also placed into the regulatory positions. It is then that the laws become moot. Fact is there is no prefect way to live in this modern world without some form of toll being extracted from our environment or our humanity. The best we can do is limit the toll we extract. Capitalism accelerates the damaged by placing more value on profit than what it takes to get that widget to market and what happens after it's discarded and what it does to the people in general. Bottom line, Capitalism place's more emphasis on profit than people, whereas Socialism will place more value on people than profit. Case in point is this government "bail out" (sell out) of these predatory companies. Who benefits from this? Certainly not the general public. A helping hand is given to businesses that used criminal predatory practices to over-inflate base value, But instead of punishing these criminals, because they've stolen so much, we are allowing these predators to keep their ill-gotten gains, while giving them more of our money to stay afloat, and we still have to pay off the debt these predators produced! It's as though a bank robber stold all the money out of the bank, but instead of arresting him our govenment is giving him the keys to the bank and combination to the safe, after they've promised him that we'd re-fill it with what little money we have left. Just how did this come about? Capitalism, which now has failed and has morphed into some demented form of Communism/fascism, Capitalism's ugly brothers. In Nazi Germany it was government that took over corporations, here it was corporations that took over government - the results are the same. How can something be too "big" to fail? If it's too big, break it up! Isn't it suppose to be the other way around? Aren't we suppose to looking after the little-guy? Not is this system, the little-guy gets crushed. I say to hell with these predators. Let them fail. And if we are to start buying up corporations let's socialize health-care and all means of production and let those companies that produce nothing but profit die. by Mr M (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 66 diaries, 2845 comments [654 recommended, 27 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 10:47:19 AM (0+)
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Reply: I wish I could resist
Actually what I was saying is that in nature, there is no socialism. You simply get "pushed out of the herd". That is capitalism. My point is that capitalism is the Darwinism of wealth distribution. "Not much else". We are the epitome of gluttony. We here in the states have DOT, FDA, ATF, EPA and other organizations to tell us which "widgets" we can and can’t produce no matter what the profit margin is. Capitalism also doesn’t drive the ingenuity to fix the problems that we encounter as we evolve. It also often lets only a select few decide what is defined as "good" and what is "bad". Remember if we were to stop buying all those widgets we don’t need, there would be an awful lot of people out of work. All of this came about because of an ill-advised approach to one problem. Capitalism needs consumers to succeed. (Socialism and communism need some people to accept that they have to work when others don’t to succeed.) Nobody would enter the kind of business practices that these companies did with out security of some sort. That security was conveniently provided by "the ownership society" policies. I agree there should be a run on hanging rope. by Dwight Black (16 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 50 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 4:01:34 PM (0+)
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Thought through- cont.
Wage reform: Part 1- The Difference between you and Bill Gates. Wage reform: Part 2 – "Basically" you and Bill Gates are the same by Dwight Black (16 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 50 comments [1 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 7:50:35 AM (0+)
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Capitalism exists with democracy and equality.
We have never had capitalism except as a fairy tale. We have always been saddled with crookism instead. Crookism is based on advantage, force, and fraud. by John Hanks (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1760 comments [39 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 9:35:35 AM (0+)
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What Capitalism Gives Us
I didn't argue that a certain minority of people on this planet since World War 2 haven't had very comfortable lives. I argued that it was wrong for some to have sweet lives while raping the environment and killing other people to provide them. And that it will stop when capitalism inevitably crashes. Again. Capitalism, to quote William Greider in One World, Ready or Not, is like a wondrous machine running over the planet, throwing off enormous mows of wealth and bounty while it leaves behind great furrows of wreckage. It is no more sustainable to continue drilling, logging, industrial fishing, destroying the topsoil, polluting the rivers and the oceans, dumping poison into the atmosphere and turning Earth's resources into products that are used once and then trashed, then it is to borrow trillions of dollars to make it all possible. And it's wrong to destroy the environment and kill millions of people and animals in order to continue our wasteful lifestyle. Sure, I like having a house with hot and cold running water, electricity and all the food I can eat. I was voting for these amenities for all, but without destroying the earth to do it. Do we need McMansions, SUVs, 5,000 calories of food/day and light-up shoes for our kids? Is it worth killing and destroying for extravagant "lifestyles"? I still vote no. by wagelaborer (6 articles, 1 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 307 comments [34 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 10:10:46 AM (0+)
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Power structure vs Strength in numbers
The people in power are no longer held accountable because they have rigged the entire system. Angry Americans have no access to them. They live in distant places. They have armed security guards all the time. They never even meet regular folks except during election season for photo-ops. Before the military industrial complex, people had access to their leaders and the leaders knew they better do right or else they would get their ass kicked. What we have now are elitists who believe that they are superior to people of lesser incomes without Ivy League degrees. Plain and simple we are expendable to them. They don't care about the planet because they know they can always get the best of what's left after they kill or let the rest of us die. In reality the power rests with the people. Americans have been brainwashed into thinking marches and writing letters can change things. The only thing that will change elites is taking their money and/or forcibly removing from power. The people have the numbers but the elite are masters at turning us against each other based on race, income, gender, sexual preference, etc. Until Americans realize that we have been tricked into hating our neighbors while the rich make off with our tax money, nothing will change. Americans are so selfish and individualistic I seriously doubt if the needed change will happen. We have the strength of numbers on our side if we ever decide to use it to our advantage. We may not have much time left because the elite want to depopulate the Earth so the resources remaining can be stretched farther for them and theirs. by Nfamous (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 104 comments [48 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 10:38:04 AM (0+)
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Reply: In a word ...
Eugenics by Mr M (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 66 diaries, 2845 comments [654 recommended, 27 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 10:57:11 AM (0+)
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depopulation
There is a difference between population control and birth control. Population control is top down, involving coercion, and possibly mass murder. Birth control is individual and empowering. You control your fertility and family size. Birth control leads to stable populations if the economy provides security and food for all. by wagelaborer (6 articles, 1 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 307 comments [34 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 1:00:46 PM (0+)
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Reply: except in China
except in China where people are only allowed to have 1 child by Ty (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 888 comments [2 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 3:36:02 PM (0+)
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Reply: china
That's population control. by wagelaborer (6 articles, 1 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 307 comments [34 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 3:47:39 PM (0+)
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Capitalism buys the noose for it to be hanged by.
A rewording of what Marx quipped about rampant uncontrolled capitalism would do. The soaring heights of greed would cause the populace to revolt and bring the whole criminal venal pirate enterprise down. Then after the workers of the world would have set up and run their own factories for themselves and by extension everyone else. By the way Hitler didn't take over the corporations he gave them free reign in his new reich. Krupp and BASF and the others got slave labor and no restrictions on how they would produce as long as the reich's leaders got their cut. Mussolini's Italy melded the corporate/state the best in that way. What you spoke of happened in Lenin/Stalin's Russia where they could use slave labor and pollute without restraint, they just didn't know how to market to the very poor. China is going to go from Mao to Friedman without missing a beat or changing their authoritarian style of governance. Even the lowest worker must be paid a living wage for the cost of living they are in. To pay someone $3 and hour when you need at least $10 to live is criminal. But legal in our benighted country. And selling our jobs overseas, including high tech high paying jobs is also criminal. All this mess must stop or the corporations and their owners will own most of the wealth. They almost have that now. As bad as during the Gilded Age and just before the Big Crash of 1929. However the 'good' part will be we will be too poor to purchase much of anything much less mindless consumerism just to consume. The poor don't buy much. They are doing a good job of eliminating the middle to lower middle classes. [I was in that low range of $16,000 a yr by the time of my medical crisis--I am disabled now.] by nightgaunt (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 448 comments [27 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Sep 21, 2008 at 1:41:10 PM (0+)
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