Forum Post: Capitalism has become too efficient
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 22, 2011, 11:22 a.m. EST by MrMiller
(128)
from Sandy, UT
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Do any of you realize that capitalism has created our low wages simply by being too efficient? There needs to be a solution for the middle, working class to have higher wages while still keeping products priced low. This is what I have come to realize as the ultimate catch-22.
how about production for use and not for profit - we would all work less and enjoy life more
Interesting thought. I've mentioned something similar on here before in the form of large non-profit co-ops or buying clubs to provide food, clothing and the basic necessities but never thought about it at the manufacturing level. Probably the same concept in principal as you would still need a method of distribution.
yes, not sure how we would transition but it looks to me like this will be forced upon us one day soon by resource scarcity. naomi klien's movie "the take" is a really good doc about worker take over of factories in argentina
Yeah. Overall, I would just like to see a system where we could live without people telling us that if we don't consume, our neighbor will die. I've already bought all sorts of stuff in the last year, thinking that I could do my share to boost the economy and I've actually run out of things that I even want to buy at this point.
we all end up working too much and owning too much and not living enough, the problem is right now if we stop buying so much the jobs will go away so we have to transition to a different way of allocating work
Exactly my point. And don't even get me started on all of the ivory tower people that yell at us and say that we should work 100 hours a week and have no social life just so we can get ahead.
this is the best 45 minutes i have had on this site since i started a few weeks ago - nice post! up until now at least 4 dumb conversations for every one that made sense - we agree! there is a movement in england called the transition movement - looks interesting - also a book called "deep ecology" i think that explores what different people are doing around the country. we are all chasing our tail to make someone rich - and even the rich are working too hard and not happy - dopey system that they keep pushing on us
I have many other posts I would like to make, but I get discouraged by thinking that it won't do anything. I study psychology and economics for a hobby, even if that doesn't necessarily mean that I understand it like a professor. Thanks for the post.
here is max neef - let me know what you think - i think he is brilliant! they won't let me send the whole thing - here is part - you can find the rest i am sure if you like him AMY GOODMAN: So, to avoid another catastrophe, collision, if you were in charge, what would you say has to happen?
AMY GOODMAN: And if you’re teaching young economists, the principles you would teach them, what they’d be?
AMY GOODMAN: Go back to three: growth and development. Explain that further.
impossiblehamster.org, go there!! You won't regret it. Growth is not infinite. Otherwise, we would have to either tear down buildings nonstop or build on top of them.
looks good - i have been going along the same lines for years now - it is all so obvious but "there are none so blind as those who will not see"
That's why there is a big debate as to where the growth will even come from. Will it come from some mysterious new industry? Or will it just not appear and we will all just die?
the professors don't understand how the real world works so don't give them too much credit. what have you read - do you know chomsky? post away - you never know who is reading - you get to one person and you have done something - i am always looking for good sources of info - i am going to find an interview with max neef and send it along to you - see what you think.
Send away. Yes, I like Chomsky, but, gasp, he advocates for some aspects of socialism!! But he in actuality advocates a sophisticated blend of 3 different economies. He knows what the fuck he's talking about. He hasn't been brainwashed and conditioned to fear words just cause you're supposed to. I get so sick of the media slandering the left or the right, especially since they are such loaded terms. They mean many different things to many different people and change depending on the current state of affairs. It's sad that people don't realize that.
What would motivate people to create new and innovative products then? Pharmaceutical companies are not looking for cures to diseases simply for the betterment of mankind, but to earn a return on their investments as well. If we only produced what we needed, when we needed it, we would not be able to advance much further than we are now.
do we need new products - seems to me we have enough junk in the world - do we need more ipods and video games and flat screen tvs - aren't they contributing to the destruction of the planet? haven't we advanced far enough - what do you need that you do not have? i wonder how much money the inventors of the wheel and fire made. look at the literature of the pr industry - they talk about creating artificial wants and needs - we live better than the kings of old - we need more time to live not more things to play with.
How about a cure for Cancer, maybe an AIDS cure or HIV cure would be nice? How about cleaner energy, would you like to get off of fossil fuels? Maybe there is a better way to help irrigate lands in third world nations to help them grow more crops. Point being, there are still many innovations and inventions out there that can truly help mankind.
yes - and many people willing to do that for nothing - just look at ows or any movement for change over the past 200 years
I would like to work for free doing all sorts of stuff, provided I have food and shelter, but then I would just be called a job killer. Another catch-22. What a fucked-up society we've created.
I don't think free labor would be required in fact it would lead to failure because of competition. It is really a question of whether people want to continue down the road of failed entitlement programs or try something radically different that empowers people and gets them back to work in order to provide for themselves.
Throughout history non-profit self sustaining modules have practiced in small scale in the form of communes and they usually fail although their has been a resurgence in the past two decades. The problem is the lack of support for start-up, limitation of freedom and the close proximity of individuals that lead to conflict resulting in their demise. Monasteries are actually the best example of goal oriented community based organizations and the longest lasting ones usually sell their wares (beer) in order to survive.
No, I think wages would be necessary for any solution to be workable and sustainable.
yes - how we transition is a big question - we are a mess - agreed
I highly doubt that the OWS protestors are going to cure Cancer and I also do not believe that there are enough people willing to do the research and work for little to nothing to make a large enough impact on the world. While social and political change is possible through organized protest (something OWS is lacking), creative and disciplined innovation takes a bit more than slogans and shouting. Then comes the part regarding education. Who are to educate these new innovators as there would likely be no need for schools if we were to come to a developmental halt? People would be home schooled as all they would need to know is already knowledge the current generation has. And if you think people are working on alternative energy for nothing more than the benefit of the world, then why do they seem to keep needing more and more money from the government? It is because no one is willing to flip the bill for them other than Uncle Sam.
i do not agree but no time to try to refute your argument - go on thinking that the only reason people do things is for money - this is probably not the movement for you
I never said I liked it, but it is human nature.
human nature is all sorts of things - greed is only one aspect - do not allow yourself to be brainwashed by the capitalists. history is full of examples of people giving their lives for others - joe hill come to mind?
This is why I'm so upset that new forms of energy and such are left to the free market. We have such a huge problem on our hands, namely, that of getting off oil before it's too late, but, somehow, people still seem to think that the free market is going to magically step in and save us. Actually, every day could be the last, since nothing about getting oil from other countries is guaranteed.
It actually has no choice but to step in. As oil becomes more scarce, would the oil companies be content knowing that they would go out of business soon, or would they start to develop alternative forms of energy themselves to save their companies? I would not be at all surprised to one day see Exxon batteries in electric cars or Chevron solar plants generating energy for cars running on Mobil electric motors. The problem is, that they will wait until the very end of the oil life cycle to really start a push for new energy means as they already have a cash cow working for them.
" Pharmaceutical companies are not looking for cures to diseases simply for the betterment of mankind, but to earn a return on their investments as well. "
Yeah, and with government subsidies, too. This is part of what's wrong with this system.
I think all subsidies should end. We subsidize oil to, supposedly, keep costs down while giving them tax breaks and that has done little to nothing to control the costs of oil. Same with farming and Big Pharma. The government is in the business of trying to pick winners and losers in the market while claiming we have a free market, which is far from the truth. If we had a truly free market, the large banks would have collapsed and then been broken up into smaller, more easily sustainable, banks and TARP would never have happened. Of course, that would have caused a lot of financial and economic pain, but it can be argued that the banks never would have gotten to the point of "too big to fail" if it weren't for government action in the first place. A free market would not (theoretically) let those banks get so large as they would have actually had to compete with other banks in the first place. They were allowed to get so big because the government ensured they had no competition.
I sort of agree, but many of the products that are so beneficial and needed by people are way too overpriced, because of the profit factor and also the money that is needed in order to recoup the money spent on research and development.
Very true, again, I go to the the pharmaceuticals. If company A spends $10 million and 5 years researching and developing the cure for, say, restless leg syndrome, they have a 20 year patent on the drug. That means no generics and no competition. They have to estimate how many people will use the drug for the next 20 years and how much should they charge to make their money back, plus enough profit to justify the development and to be used to fund further research. The problem begins when profits become (I don't want to say excessive) to increase at a rate greater than the market rate says they should be. We pay for value of service, but when someone has the market cornered, then they can charge much more than is needed and we have no choice but to pay it. It is this greed that is pissing us all off, but unfortunately, there are many who defend any and every business practice, ethics be damned.
Yes, and you bring up another point that I want to make, which is, at some point, there are little remaining markets to be cornered, except on very complex products and these are the ones that take many people to make, and yet, there is ALWAYS still someone at the top raking off too much money.
It is unfortunate that so many boards of director's put so much stock in a CEO who has little to nothing to do with the day to day operations of a firm, but they feel the need to offer these ridiculous salaries for these guys to sit around and run meetings. With all of the vice presidents and chief officers that firms now have, the CEO is little more than a figurehead to be held accountable when the SHTF. The people who actually add the most value to a company are hardly recognized and work for scraps compared to the people that take credit for their hard work. The disparity is killing us and many don't see that that is exactly what Marx said would be the catalyst for a workers revolution. While I am in no way shape or form a Marxist, you have to admit there comes a breaking point and we are getting dangerously close to it and I don't see any of those with the ability to stave off the eventual revolt doing anything to prevent it.
This isn't about who has what. I'm just highlighting the fact that in order to create low-priced goods, the average person must, in consequence, be payed low, even if there is an abundance of stuff.
We could have higher wages and higher priced goods, if we bought made in the US products and kept control over illegal immigration. In Alabama, they are facing the fact that without illegals, the prices of produce will rise as they will have to pay actual (gasp) citizens a fair wage for their work. But guess what, that means that those people would be able to afford the produce as they will make more than the illegals were. The same for any other industry that hires illegals, it artificially keeps prices low and helps keep wages low. For an employer who hires US citizens to compete with the guy who hires illegals, he has to keep wages low to be able to keep prices low, so the illegals help keep many people in poverty through interfering with the US market. It is unfortunate that many people are not willing to go through the temporary hardships for the long term gains, but when people feel pressure to be PC, they actually end up hurting us all in the end.
China became the leader in manufacturing because of a government push to do that. We have this silly notion of free markets and just letting things happen with no government intervention-------well look where we are ! I say that we have that idea, but we also have a whining 1% who expect bailouts and subsidies for themselves but call the middle class lazy hippies when we ask for some of our tax money to be spent on our issues.
Capitalism is too efficient - thats one way of putting it I suppose.
I think what we need is a more restrained form of capitalism. Unrestrained capitalism leads to greed. Its good for the few, but not for the many.
A properly restrained capitalism promotes the individual pursuit of prosperity while restraining greed.
The pendulum has swung too far towards the promotion of greed for the few, at the expense of the prosperity of the many.
Policies that can promote greed or restrain greed - regulation/deregulation, tax policy, policies that encourage corruption (campaign finance), anti-trust laws. There's probably alot more. But this is a start. This is what needs to change. In order to move the pendulum back to a healthy balance.
Well you realized wrong. The fact of the matter is that we don't have free market capitalism (unadulterated competition). What we have is corporatism, the fusion between government and a select few mega corporation. The solution is pure free market capitalism, separate the legislators (Government) from the corporations.
why do you think tuition are so high and many at OWs are complaining about student loans? Because the government GUARANTEES loans to students, the schools can charge whatever they want as they know the demand from students will always exceed the supply of colleges. The solution is not more government regulations. you have to realize that governments ARE the select few corporations, why empower them more.
More government is very seldom the answer.
Some here advocate not paying back their loans, but like health care and health insurance, the defaulters cause the prices to increase on everyone else to make up for the lost funds. Loan defaults hurt everyone involved with that bank or school or hospital, but some people can't seem to see the bigger picture.
I agree, but who are the people who are benefiting from the skyrocketing costs? In many cases, it will stifle business creation, since less capital will be had to reinvest, but there are, of course, the other people that merely invested their outrageous surplus of money and expect a high return and I cannot tolerate that, but they naturally don't see it that way.
Investing of surplus cash is what is needed right now as too many are simply sitting on a lot of money that could better serve us all if it was back in circulation. The skyrocketing costs don't really benefit too many as it is simply a means of recouping what was lost through the defaults.
I think there is opportunity that you have to go after. There is more opportunity in the past 100 years than there has been in the history of man. Capitalism presents that opportunity. Here is the real problem.
Capitalism in a nutshell
Crony Capitalism in a nutshell
You're right, which is why I get so angry when people continuously extol the idea that capitalism is great for the average person. They CAN get wealthy, but they can also lose everything and no one will back them up, which is not the case for government-backed crony capitalism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
ZEITGEIST: Moving Forward video
"We need a rescue plan for the middle class." Where have I heard those words?
High costs to make and low prices to sell. And how do you expect to achieve this stretching of the fabric of reality?
I would like to implement an electronic payment system, which I have been advocating for some time now. That way, we can continuously alter the economy when we need to innovate and do something when it won't make a profit or if we don't have the money. The people with more education will of course get payed more and such and we could start to do things in our country without worrying if our money will leave the country. I have thought this out and I still think it's a good idea. There are many more aspects of this line of thinking, but that's just a broad overview. We have the technology to do this. I think that people simply have failed to remember that we now have the technology to make a better economy, but we haven't transitioned from the old way of doing economics.
So you're saying the government controls both what we pay and what we are paid. You are saying that we should cut off all economic dealings with the outside world. And you like the idea of the Dark Ages style of living because......
I didn't say that, but the fact of the matter is that we need to separate our economy from the rest of the world. Every one who reads any news at all knows that our trade deficit is the thing that is perhaps ruining us more than anything else. We could even decide to have a national currency and an international one to separate the processes. We simply shouldn't allow our economy to fall apart because of the fact that when we stimulate our economy, our trade deficit skyrockets, which is also why it would be a bad thing to pay people more at this point in time, because they would just spend that money on yet more foreign goods. And who says it has to be the government? We could just form a committee of economists or some shit or just democratically decide ourselves, but, above all, education should be the overriding principle deciding the pay level of the average person. We need our society to flourish, and education is key.
Unfortunately, I've known way too many dumb asses with way too many degrees. A formal education doesn't measure squat about your ability to produce. I produce way way more than those lazy fucks and I do it with a high school diploma. If you're going to say I MUST have a degree in order to get paid more, you can go fuck yourself as I'm heading to Canada.
Secondly, there is now way in hell we're going to cut ourselves off from the world economy. Exports and imports are intertwined. I happen to like a lot of things made in other countries. And I like the prices I pay for them. You will not solve the problems in this country by further pushing the heel down on the necks of the impoverished in other countries.
I guess you have a good point, but I'm just trying to balance the conversation for the people who say that there will be no incentive to work anymore and do better things for society. Everybody knows that innovation happens when there is an incentive, which is a great thing about capitalism. I also don't always necessarily understand why our economy helps other countries when all we do is give them monopoly money most of the time, but then again, I'm not an economist, so I'd better shut the fuck up.
The $2 a day to the kid in Malaysia is better than no dollars a day. There was an article in business week I think about 2 weeks ago about how they're trying to end child labor in South America. Unfortunately, the kids want and need to work. That's how they eat, that's how they get money for school fees. So although ending child labor might seem like a noble act on the surface, the effects of doing so would probably make life for those kids much worse given the circumstances of reality.
We do not have true capitalism here though, so your argument doesn't apply. It can be argued that true capitalism would raise wages as companies would have to compete for employees which means an increase in wages or benefits. The federal minimum wage guarantees that there is no fighting among certain employers when it comes to wages as they all have to offer the same low pay without competition. Now, I am not advocating deregulating the economy, but it is disingenuous to say capitalism is to blame when we have never even seen it in the US in our lifetime.
I think it is that there is only a certain amount of money on the globe. Greedy people think they should have it all. Capitalism is a good system if we could all learn to share a bit more.