top 10 arguments in favour of capitalism debunked.

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Kurgan
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02 May 2014, 11:51 am

thomas81 wrote:

Kurgan wrote:

All great nations were built by capitalists,

Capitalism is only a couple of centuries old. You are arguing there were no 'great nations' before capitalism?

These great nations had no economic growth of their own, and thus grew (much like the USSR) by stealing from other countries.

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Kurgan
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02 May 2014, 11:55 am

thomas81 wrote:

GGPViper wrote:

9. Free markets increase economic development.

True.

I have 500 million reasons why this is true. They are all in Chinese, though.

8. But aren't markets a rational means of organising economic life?

See my response to (9). Apparently more rational than alternatives... also see my response to (1)
.

You should really stop using the Chinese analogy, it is very weak.

As I already laid out in a previous thread, the Chinese model has not been conducive to a more equitable society. Quite the contrary. Its only served the gravitation of wealth to the top, at a great expense to those that this graviation is dependent on.

Life in China is horrible for ordinary people and not something western countries should want to emulate.

Remember the nets?

Still beats working in a Soviet concentration camps or doing slave labour for Ceaucescu in the hot summer sun. If we take into consideration that Mao was responsible for the greatest famine of all time, then most Chinese workers are probably better of today.

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02 May 2014, 1:57 pm

Capitalism is the child of the Protestant reformation. Marxism is the child of capitalism. Without Luther and Calvin neither would have existed.

RushKing
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02 May 2014, 3:27 pm

GGPViper wrote:

5. But don't you buy things from corporations? Don't that make you a hypocrite?

The video provided no explanation here other than invoking Godwin's Law.

4. Capitalists put risk in their businesses! Surely, they should own them!

... another Godwin's Law.

... and here is a good one from the video: "There may have been economic risks for setting up slave plantations"

3. But living standards improve overall, even for the poor!

... Apparently, the author of the video doesn't care about the living standards of the poor. See my response to (9).

... and *another* Godwin's Law...

Godwin's Law =/= Logical fallacy

If we value liberty and sustainability, and conclude that capitalism is tyrannical and anti-ecological, raising "living standards" is not a justification. There isn't only one way to raise these standards.

While Nazi comparisons may seem overused on the internet, Cameron could have used many other examples. You are using G's Law as an excuse to ignore the meat of the refutation.

Quote:

1. Capitalism is the only system that's possible. There is no alternative!

"By alternatives, I do not mean some centrally planned Leninist State. I mean libertarian socialism, in which the workers - not the government - own and control the means of production, and the surplus producing workers control the surplus. The anarchy-syndicalists of the Spanish managed to create a working alternative to capitalism, taking the Spanish economy under worker control, expanding the health care system and improving literacy rates."

... the Spanish Anarchy-Syndicalists, like the Paris Commune, failed miserably in the end...

Oh, and this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

Libertarian socialism is an alternative to capitalism. You haven't linked the collapse of Anarchist Catalonia, to anarchism as means of organization.

AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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02 May 2014, 4:35 pm

In my United States, people who call themselves libertarians typically bat from the right side of the plate politically.

And so, just for a change of pace if nothing else, I think libertarian socialism is well worth discussing.

AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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02 May 2014, 4:46 pm

From the film, the author first challenges the claim 'Capitalism promotes innovation!' And it seemed like the guy had three main arguments:

A 2013 Gallup poll found only 13% of employees felt engaged with their work.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/world ... -work.aspx (and the obvious question, what kind of self-selection effect. Who participated in the survey and who didn't?)

The drawing of the guy playing the guitar and the claim that people are more innovative when they believe there's an intrinsic reason for what they do rather than simply making money.

And the claim that schools are generally regimenting institutions.

===============

These seem like pretty good points, especially the last one. But I don't know if they completely carry the day.

From some things I've read, I think globalization has generally been a success and has lifted a lot of people out of poverty. However, if corporations had been better behaved, it might have been even more successful.

PS I generally favor a mixed economic system.

Stannis
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02 May 2014, 9:45 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCzlYQUUcBg[/youtube]

khaoz
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02 May 2014, 10:19 pm

Raptor wrote:

To quote a phrase: "Money talks and BS walks."

"Money doesn't talk, it swears." Having been a business owner I can attest to this. Especially at Christmas, when its nice and busy, people handing me money to buy something look as if they would rather be chewing on my jugular with fangs. No matter how much money I have ever had in my pocket or my bank account I was not happy. To be successful at business you have to be a vulture. Treating other human beings with disdain in order to make oneself rich. Nothing noble or virtuous about that life. Might just as soon be a dog in an alley.

AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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03 May 2014, 6:51 pm

As Stannis posted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCzlYQUUcBg

This isDavid Letterman on fracking. A comedic overstatement. But . . . it's not too far from the truth!

Why isn't there good oversight? Why aren't we doing a good job of regularly checking the ground water for chemicals?

===========

All the same, globalization has lifted many persons in India and China out of poverty and into the middle class. I'm sure some have even become rich and more power to them.

Would work even better if these corporations tried to be good citizens.

DevKit
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04 May 2014, 2:08 am

thomas81 wrote:

The_Walrus wrote:

[
It only does so if you assume that reducing poverty is the only goal of development. Inequality brings a whole raft of new social problems. It is definitely a good thing that China has managed to raise so many out of poverty, but saving people from starvation is undermined somewhat if they just throw themselves off of a building, or spend their life dealing with depression, or working 18 hour shifts in horrible factory conditions.

This, pretty much. The goal of economic development should not be zero sum as GGP Viper or those who support his view would have us believe. The point about the suicide nets is an important one because how much worse could things have been before if they have only started appearing with the new ubiquitous corporations?

As Walrus says, wealth creation for its own sake is meaningless if those who its supporters claim its supposed to benefit are chattled to manufacturing lines or call centres for most of their lives. Wealth creation can only have meaningful social efficacy with a number of extenuating qualifiers, including but not limited to-

* That a significant proportion of affected population are able to access this wealth with demonstratable associated benefits in improved health and education.
* That affected workers are receiving dignified working conditions and pay
* That there is tangible evidence that improvements in living standards are both sustainable, and progressive with improving work conditions, pay and/or reducing hours

I fear that China fails on all three fronts here. I don't think India should get off lightly either. We are seeing analogous rampant exploitation there which is only amplified because of the horrible caste system.

In India call center jobs are considered prestigious positions because they are much much better than what would have been previously available to that person. India provides us with some better examples of class warfare. Monsanto going in and forcing farmers to buy their seeds every year and steeling water rights is a better example, and that is an absolute worst case scenario involving what is arguably a very evil company excuse the cliche.

If anything the call centers in India prove you to be wrong sir. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRlYxIRU5YQ It gives them a better way of life and provides for families better than anything else the people on those phones could be doing. Who are you to judge?

trollcatman
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04 May 2014, 9:06 am

In what way is China a capitalist country? In this list of countries by economic freedom China scores 136th out of 177 countries. They may be somewhat less unfree than in the past, but what they are doing still has nothing to do with capitalism. This map may give some idea of where to move to if you like the free market (hint: it's not China):

Kurgan
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04 May 2014, 9:32 am

A big middle finger to anyone who calls Russia capitalist as well.

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Stannis
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04 May 2014, 2:50 pm

A short clip for Viper to watch
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u067PRj_Qy0[/youtube]

Stannis
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04 May 2014, 2:57 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u067PRj_Qy0[/youtube]

Fogman
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04 May 2014, 4:22 pm

Capitolism is much like Democracy. It's a bad system fraught with errors and abuses, but at the same time, the alternatives suck even harder. Communism turned all the former Russian territories and many eastern European countries into s**tholes, of which many are still recovering 20 some years after the fall of communism, and some are not. --Ukraine, Belarus, and to a great extent Russia, anybody?

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thomas81
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05 May 2014, 9:32 am

DevKit wrote:

If anything the call centers in India prove you to be wrong sir. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRlYxIRU5YQ It gives them a better way of life and provides for families better than anything else the people on those phones could be doing. Who are you to judge?

I'm not judging the people who work there, I am judging the people that run these companies as well as the convenient idiots that enable their awful business practice.

Considering I used to work for a call centre, I have fairly unique insight with the way in which these places maintain stagnant wages, impose unrealistic targets, turn a blind eye to bullying middle management and run roughshod over the employees right to an organised union infrastructure. I would say that puts me in a fairly qualified place to judge.

Yes, the company i used to work for also released snippets of beaming happy workers, but it was all a PR excercise to elay criticism and extrospection. The reality for employees inside is very far from the image they portray.

Companies like this aren't the champions of India's development, they are its millstone.

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