Capitalism is wasteful

[Wilfire]

Let's imagine a situation.

The economy needs x amount of chairs made in a year to satisfy the demand for chairs. Capitalists don't know this in advance since they only have one signal to work with: price. Once the economy feels a scarcity of chairs, their price will go up and incentivize the manufacture of chairs.

While the economy is not feeling a scarcity of chairs and their price has not yet gone up, money is being put to more productive uses. When the economy inevitably realizes that it does, in fact, need chairs, it's already far too late because all of the money is tied up in more productive ventures. That's where the financial system comes in.

Banks, CEOs, CFOs channel money from less productive industries into the chairmaking industry. Chairs are made and everyone is happy. Or are they? While the money was being channeled through banks, paychecks were handed out to their employees and their bosses. That money could have gone to people who were actually manufacturing real goods or providing real services.

Here's the deal:

Capitalism is inefficient as fuck and it has a whole class of leeches (bankers) profiting off this inefficiency. If the economy was centrally planned, a well-educated person with a PhD would have used scientific methods to foresee the need for chairs and money would've been distributed to chairmakers in the first place instead of hoping that the market will regulate itself.

It's stupid to claim that capitalism is efficient when it needs leeches (bankers) to service it lest the entire system collapses. How many people's labor is wasted working in the financial industry creating nothing of value and how much money is wasted on paychecks for those people?

Let's put things in simpler terms:
Communism put a man in space.
Capitalism OBLITERATED the middle class to give the rich banker man a private yacht.

[Surfd]

Capatalism is wasteful, yes.

The entire rest of your screed was pure garbage though, and pretty clearly demonstrates you have absolutely no clue how a Capitalist Economy actually works.

[Zaktar]

The delusional ramblings of someone who I'm guessing has never actually tried to accomplish something meaningful in their life. The chair example is hilarious. Communism proposes what: a planning committee which sets the number of chairs each year? I'm sure that will end well for people who want to sit. Results speak for themselves - capitalism isn't perfect, should never be used in place of an ethical compass, and yet is a necessary component for any entity which wishes to be economically relevant.

[hynx]

gross over simplifications to further one agenda and suppress another. poverty has shrunk drastically, globally, for nations who adopted capitalism. communism is very nationalist too. very very much so. capitalism at heart is a globalists ideal to incorporate a form of trade, cooperation (albeit with a cutthroat front) and mutual benificial endingarrangement. communist coutries wouldnt and dont give 2 shits about non citizens. they dont contribute so why help them?

[Seranthor]

.

Start your own chair manufacturing company and run it however you want, keep your company's money in your matress, and stay away from banks when you need help with start up costs, coverage for a rainy day, or money to expand.

But wait... in your system you dont own the means of production, or your company... which means you are a wage slave of the government.

[Biomega]

If the economy was centrally planned, a well-educated person with a PhD would have used scientific methods to foresee the need for chairs and money would've been distributed to chairmakers in the first place instead of hoping that the market will regulate itself.

The main problem with this is that it doesn't work. There's too many variables to accurately predict demand, so a system with feedback loops that can respond to fluctuations tends to work out better overall.

Capitalism is far from perfect. Not to mention that "capitalism" in and of itself is merely an umbrella term for a large variety of highly complex economic systems, all with their pros and cons. It is, however, by and large a workable system that seems to be among the best we have managed to successfully implement so far.

It's stupid to claim that capitalism is efficient

Which is why nobody reasonable makes such an unequivocal and facile claim. Absolutes in general are usually a sign of poor rhetoric or faulty understanding. It's a system of trade-offs and relative values. Is capitalism more wasteful than communism in some aspects? Probably. Is it less wasteful in others? Also probably. Blanket statements tell you preciously little of actual substance.

Let's put things in simpler terms:
Communism put a man in space.
Capitalism OBLITERATED the middle class to give the rich banker man a private yacht.

I get the feeling you're not actually interested in having an actual debate, but oh well. At the risk of feeding a troll: does communism have certain things going for it? Yes. Does communism have very problematic aspects about it? Also yes. Is capitalism the be-all-end-all of economic systems? No. Does communism as an alternative provide a simple solution to all our problems? Also no.

I don't have an easy answer to the problems of either capitalism or communism. Which is why I haven't collected my Nobel Prize yet, I suppose. In terms of practicability, capitalism seems to prevail for now. Not without flaws, and not without highly precarious, highly objectionable practices. The answer, as usual, is continued critique and political give-and-take to try and balance things out as best we can. It works better in some countries, worse in others. And it's not always capitalism that is to blame when it doesn't, and it's not always capitalism that is at the root of systemic social and economic issues; but it also isn't innocent in that respect, far from it.

My suspicion is that what would really get us forward is a more fundamental reform in our modes of thinking, that transcends industrial mentalities from a century ago entirely. But that's even more Utopian than working communism. For now.

[Temp name]

Let's put things in simpler terms:
Communism put a man in space.
Capitalism OBLITERATED the middle class to give the rich banker man a private yacht.

Let's ignore that capitalism put a man on the moon..

Oversimplifications like this won't help your case. Capitalism is a flawed system, but not the most flawed.

[sam86]

gross over simplifications to further one agenda and suppress another. poverty has shrunk drastically, globally, for nations who adopted capitalism. communism is very nationalist too. very very much so. capitalism at heart is a globalists ideal to incorporate a form of trade, cooperation (albeit with a cutthroat front) and mutual benificial endingarrangement. communist coutries wouldnt and dont give 2 shits about non citizens. they dont contribute so why help them?

its nice to know that poverty is 'low' when we also know that we are literally either 1 or 2 degree global from f8cking earth forever with no hope of repair
let's also ignore that in entire human history, for first time ever in 2016 or 17 90% of world wealth is in control of 1%, a rate that never happened before even in most dark ages, back then there was more fair than now
don't get it wrong, right now we advanced a lot in compare to any other time in history, but we advanced in 'both' directions, we got things better than ever, and also worst than ever, however the bad things will literally end earth, while the rich CEOs will just leave earth and inhabit mars or something, hence how 'the meek shall inherit the earth' will actually happen

[Jshadowhunter]

Let's put things in simpler terms:
Communism put a man in space.

It also put men in gulags for the wrong-think.
And several million dead.

But hey, what's a few statistics in a way of achieving utopia.

[hynx]

its nice to know that poverty is 'low' when we also know that we are literally either 1 or 2 degree global from f8cking earth forever with no hope of repair
let's also ignore that in entire human history, for first time ever in 2016 or 17 90% of world wealth is in control of 1%, a rate that never happened before even in most dark ages, back then there was more fair than now
don't get it wrong, right now we advanced a lot in compare to any other time in history, but we advanced in 'both' directions, we got things better than ever, and also worst than ever, however the bad things will literally end earth, while the rich CEOs will just leave earth and inhabit mars or something, hence how 'the meek shall inherit the earth' will actually happen

the rich are equally fucked on earth. we literally do not have terraforming technology, and space travel in a generational ship to reach a new planet will ruin humanity in that aspect, as cosmic radiation will kill us before we reach a habitable planet. not to mention again the closed ecosystem aspect in space, and the lack of gravity absolutely destroying proper fetal development in a generational space ship. even with ways to create artificial gravity using actual physics and not saying "oh thats just grav plating" bullshit sci fi mumbo jumbo, its not even remotely enough to to offset the damage of merely being pregnant in space. try harder for that apsect, try hard. and yes capitalism is the driving force that focused on abundance which allowed for people to sell their surplus to others who could use it to improve their lives, whether its more food for their family, clothings, what ever it was the driving factor for trade development to improve the lives of all society. even a homeless man today, has a better life than an honest middle to lower class farmer from the 1400's. the homeless person may not feel the value, but factually they have a better life simply due to the existence of social programs that were afforded, thanks too; guess what? ABUNDANCE of the western world, alone. as for global warming, stop being so scared of nuclear power, and push for it. its much less disasterous than conventional energy sector power supply, wind power is a disaster to birds, solar is a disaster because of lithium strip mining, and hydro literally reshapes the ecosystem, and ocean tidal hydro is very expensive, with extremely poor return and very high maintenance. some nuclear plants in the US even run on depleted, decommissioned nuclear weapons. something to think about with that. not to mention gen 4 reactors actually produce less energy output as they get hotter, and lose containment, self mitigating the now considered, extremely rare potential critical failure disaster scenario, and even in the event of a critical disaster failure every year globally, is still considered less loss of life compared to current on job deaths in in conventional fossil fuel plants, in a 10 year period

[Super Kami Dende]

Better to have too much than too little.

I'd rather see people be able to waste food, than starve under the idiocy of Communism or Socialism.

[PC2]

Let's put things in simpler terms:
Communism put a man in space.
Capitalism OBLITERATED the middle class to give the rich banker man a private yacht.

You know the USSR collapsed, right? Putting a guy in space is cool, but what's better is not collapsing afterwards.

[Jshadowhunter]

You know the USSR collapsed, right? Putting a guy in space is cool, but what's better is not collapsing afterward.

That's the problem with this kind of idiots.
They're shortsighted. They only put impressive achievements on a pedestal of things that no longer exist, but completely ignore reasons why they fell apart.
It's kinda the same thing with my country that's a socialist shithole. Oldies preach how things were better back in golden days of SFRY, completely ignoring the economic collapse (as all socialist states do) causing the member states to declare independence, which lead to war... and then these "Yugo-nostalgics" preach how they wanna go back to the asholes who declared war on us for wanting to be independent.

[Kokolums]

Here's the deal:

Capitalism is inefficient as fuck and it has a whole class of leeches (bankers) profiting off this inefficiency. If the economy was centrally planned, a well-educated person with a PhD would have used scientific methods to foresee the need for chairs and money would've been distributed to chairmakers in the first place instead of hoping that the market will regulate itself.

Here is your fatal flaw.

1. You are assuming capitalism at its most corrupt.
2. You are assuming a centrally-planned economy that is run without any corruption at ALL.

You have NO idea how to prevent corruption in your centrally-planned paradise. And because you don't, the end result is some aggressive lout will be in charge for decades instead of some well-educated PHD, and that person will corrupt your central planning to funnel ALL the things to himself and his cronies and leave nothing for everyone else.

That's why central-planning fails.

[igualitarist]

Yep, lets make bureaucrats control the supply of every goods produced in a coutry, i am sure they will be able to deal with that with their phd's.

I mean, have you ever seen how big is the supply chain just to produce a simple pencil ? I guess you haven't, because you would't propose such bullshit otherwise.

[Nynax]

After 2016, and all we've learned about Russia's social media activities...I can only assume one thing of any post that's pro communism with references to Russia or the USSR...sorry, but them's the brakes.

Maybe you're leget, OP. But, as others have noted, your post is missing far too much nuance and demonstrated understanding to be, for me to think otherwise.

[mojojojo202]

You want an example of capitalist inefficiency, go look at the US dairy industry.

The price of raw milk is too low to be economically viable so the government subsidises the industry massively to ensure some semblance of a supply of a very important raw material. Now almost all dairy farms are entirely dependent on subsidies and the industry massively out produces demand. Obviously milk can't be kept so the government turns it into dry products or millions of tonnes of cheese neither of which anyone wants. The government is then left with 2 options, stockpile, or give it away for free in foreign aid or food subsidies for the poor (note: actually giving people food is very much the lesser motivation here).

It's total fucking nonsense and disproves the validity of supply/demand economics and the very notion of the 'wisdom of the market.

[Ghazan Julio]

Let's imagine a situation.

The economy needs x amount of chairs made in a year to satisfy the demand for chairs. Capitalists don't know this in advance since they only have one signal to work with: price. Once the economy feels a scarcity of chairs, their price will go up and incentivize the manufacture of chairs.

While the economy is not feeling a scarcity of chairs and their price has not yet gone up, money is being put to more productive uses. When the economy inevitably realizes that it does, in fact, need chairs, it's already far too late because all of the money is tied up in more productive ventures. That's where the financial system comes in.

Banks, CEOs, CFOs channel money from less productive industries into the chairmaking industry. Chairs are made and everyone is happy. Or are they? While the money was being channeled through banks, paychecks were handed out to their employees and their bosses. That money could have gone to people who were actually manufacturing real goods or providing real services.

Here's the deal:

Capitalism is inefficient as fuck and it has a whole class of leeches (bankers) profiting off this inefficiency. If the economy was centrally planned, a well-educated person with a PhD would have used scientific methods to foresee the need for chairs and money would've been distributed to chairmakers in the first place instead of hoping that the market will regulate itself.

It's stupid to claim that capitalism is efficient when it needs leeches (bankers) to service it lest the entire system collapses. How many people's labor is wasted working in the financial industry creating nothing of value and how much money is wasted on paychecks for those people?

Let's put things in simpler terms:
Communism put a man in space.
Capitalism OBLITERATED the middle class to give the rich banker man a private yacht.

"Capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others." -Winston Churchill

[igualitarist]

You want an example of capitalist inefficiency, go look at the US dairy industry.

The price of raw milk is too low to be economically viable so the government subsidises the industry massively to ensure some semblance of a supply of a very important raw material. Now almost all dairy farms are entirely dependent on subsidies and the industry massively out produces demand. Obviously milk can't be kept so the government turns it into dry products or millions of tonnes of cheese neither of which anyone wants. The government is then left with 2 options, stockpile, or give it away for free in foreign aid or food subsidies for the poor (note: actually giving people food is very much the lesser motivation here).

It's total fucking nonsense and disproves the validity of supply/demand economics and the very notion of the 'wisdom of the market.

Thats why government influence distorts the economy, thats not a flaw of capitalism, thats a flaw caused by an agent outside the market system (the government).

In a pure capitalist system less efficent milk producers would just go broke.

[Mormolyce]

Fun fact: Adam Smith hated landlords and other forms of "rent-seeking", which is ironically mostly what we think of when we talk about "capitalism" today.

"Real capitalism has never been tried!" kek.