Capitalism is wasteful

[Machismo]

Capitalism is often wasteful. Socialism can be very wasteful, and promotes complacency as a whole. It's also more restrictive of freedoms.

[NED funded]

How the fuck does the scientific method tell you how many chairs people need?

[Machismo]

What happens when you have to many low level workers. Don't worry our plan is that immigration will fix it by doubling to tripling their number to diminish their value even more.

Well, that's what freedom and capitalism are all about. If you don't like it, start your own company.

[Wilfire]

How the fuck does the scientific method tell you how many chairs people need?

How the fuck do price fluctuations tell you how many chairs people need?

[NED funded]

How the fuck do price fluctuations tell you how many chairs people need?

Its on your post? Im curious on a method to predict and coordinate something as production of chairs.

[Wilfire]

Its on your post? Im curious on a method to predict and coordinate something as production of chairs.

The only thing that price tells you is that people want more chairs at a given point in time. You don't actually know how many chairs they need or if they will want more chairs in the future. So you fire up the engines of capitalism, make bankers rich by borrowing money to produce more chairs, then make bankers even richer when the demand for chairs collapses and you have to borrow money again to start producing something else.

[Temp name]

The only thing that price tells you is that people want more chairs at a given point in time. You don't actually know how many chairs they need or if they will want more chairs in the future. So you fire up the engines of capitalism, make bankers rich by borrowing money to produce more chairs, then make bankers even richer when the demand for chairs collapses and you have to borrow money again to start producing something else.

And if you don't have the price to judge by and just have a guy planning, he won't expect the sudden influx of chair requirement or have a proper way to figure out how many you need, so you'll either not make as many as you need, or make more, and it'll probably take longer to get the chairs made since they'd never give just 1 guy the authority to make that decision, so you'd have a bunch of "smart" people arguing for weeks if we even really need chairs, or of it's just a blip in the market.

[Vampyrr]

Capitalism is awful but no country runs on a pure capitalist system. In a pure capitalist system money is all that matters, no money for food or medical? Well you better just die on the street then.

[Ghostpanther]

News flash. Humans are wasteful. The whales which have died due to a bunch of plastic in their stomach's, did not get it from only Capitalism countries.

[mojojojo202]

Its on your post? Im curious on a method to predict and coordinate something as production of chairs.

Well, that's what freedom and capitalism are all about. If you don't like it, start your own company.

If everyone started their own business not only would it cease to be capitalism... it would be more accurately described as market socialism...

[Rendark]

Capitalism may not be a great system but it's the best we have.

[Machismo]

If everyone started their own business not only would it cease to be capitalism... it would be more accurately described as market socialism...

Not everyone would need to start their own company, because people agree with others all the time. That, and many people don't want to open up their own companies, or are too lazy.

[zenkai]

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 has a lot of flaws but its better than anything else out there, no one if fleeing capitalism countries to try to get into socialist ones, in fact it's the other way around.

[Ungeir]

How the fuck do price fluctuations tell you how many chairs people need?

You are probably trolling, but I'll humor you anyway: They don't. The way a market economy keeps the supply of chairs matched with the demand is through the actions of individual actors, each of whom has their own way to predict how many chairs they can produce and sell. But it's even more complicated - chairs aren't just chairs. Many different kinds of chairs are needed, and different people have different preferences when it comes to aesthetics, quality, materials, etc. In a market economy a hugely complex interplay of actors and mechanism make it possible to have a lot of different chairs to choose from, makes it so that new chairs are innovated, etc.

If the supply of chairs becomes "wasteful" and outstrips demand, the prices drop until it's no longer feasible to produce chairs, thus correcting the imbalance and wastefulness. This is not perfect, nor is it instantaneous. There are numerous other imperfections in a market economy - some from (reasonable) government interventions and regulations, some from accumulation of capital and resources and some from random chance. A market economy, of any flavor, will never produce a perfect match of supply and demand. But such a things doesn't even exist, as supply and demand are dynamic and constantly changing. Equilibrium will never occur.

Also note that many socialist societies use various forms of market economy due to the way it eliminates the many problems with central planning. It's perfectly possible to have a socialist structure with a variation of market economy as the primary mechanism of economic planning and resource allocation.

A planned economy is madness in any but the most dire time of crisis and catastrophy. Apart from relying on the centralization of knowledge to a degree which is impossible without insane inefficiency and risk - it also places even more power in the hands of the few than a capitalist economy. Remember that a planned economy requires centralized allocation of jobs, too. Who gets to be the boss? Who gets to be an artist? This kind of system has historically always devolved into tyranny in short order - if it didn't just collapse in short order.

You are conflating free markets with laissez-faire capitalism. Every single socialist state that isn't a totalitarian dystopia has been based on a market economy, with various interventions, regulations and redistributions built on top. A planned or command economy has never been shown viable in anything but times of war and calamity - and even then often had terrible repercussions.

TLDR - planned economy as you seem to want it has never produced anything but totalitarianism - all democratic and prosperous societies in modern times use market forces as basic drivers of the economy, even the socialist ones.

[Aphrel]

[QUOTE=Wilfire;51033676]snip.QUOTE]

The problem is twofold.
First of all trust, this one guy with a phd making the decisions has some serious power to fuck ppl over. And even agreeing to what the "demands" of some goods are wont be easy, there is a seriious byrocratic clusterfuck to go throu.

The 2nd problem is the USA, the moment you and your country decide to embrace communism they will sanction you and pressure all other countries into doing the same aswell as fucking you and your country over in every way immaginable.

This will result in that your country will be seriously fucked. And as always in countries that are fucked, corruption will run rampart, because thats what happens in desperate times regardless of economic modell.
Then they will point at you and say "look how failed an ideology communism is"...

[Reaper0329]

Let's all agree we should die out and led the molluscs take our place

This is something I can get behind.

[Endus]

I see a lot of people making some pretty basic errors. The primary one is about basic definitions; "Capitalism", as a concept, is not about free market activity as a price-setting and distributory system. Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production, and specifically, the ability to profit off said means of production. Market activity predates capitalism, and capitalism has no ownership of the concept.

Another seems to be an inconsistent application of principles. How would you pro-capitalist types feel if, say, the local mayor took 5% of the gross tax revenue in your city, and pocketed it? He's taking a "profit", no? That's the system you like. But when it's an elected official, you don't? He's corrupt and a snake and he's stealing from you? Why isn't the same argument applied to private ownership? Note that I'm asking about basic principles, here. I fully understand that private vs public is legally different, but that's a justification after the fact for the inconsistency on the principle.

People also seem to think the choice is about free markets (capitalism) vs central planning (socialism). That's really not the case. It's not that this framing isn't an ideological battle, it's just not "capitalism vs socialism". It's "liberalism vs totalitarianism".

Just as an example, consider a hypothetical Liberal Market Socialist nation, for a moment. "Hypothetical" because market socialism is entirely feasible, it just hasn't been used in practice, because the above conflict has swamped all discussion, from all sides.

A liberal market socialist system would see;
1> Companies owned by citizens, not the State. Said ownership would (in this argument) be employee-based; all employees own some number of shares in the company, with some restrictions on how wide the spread can be (25:1 as the widest gap from executives to janitors/clerks, say, to provide an example). Salaries also exist; this is separate. These are voting shares, not just ones that pay dividends, too.

2> The market is allowed to run as freely as any in the modern era. Some necessary checks and controls by the State would exist, because without them abuse tanks the economy, but no more than exist in any modern Western nation.

3> No shareholders/stock markets/etc. Profits are shared among those who work to produce them. Yes, this creates a lot of complex differences that I'm glossing over, because I'm not writing a comprehensive book; let's just note that I acknowledge that they would exist, but am generally in favor of the end result.

Free markets. Focus on individual freedom, to a greater extent than modern capitalist systems can (by ensuring individual profits from your own labor, providing greater economic freedom to workers). Not a drop of "capitalism" in the concept; it's 100% socialist.

[AeneasBK]

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

I only mention this because you put "Winston Churchill" afterwards but wasn't the quote about democracy rather than capitalism? Sorry if you were using that to make the point and I'm being dumb.

[Independent voter]

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.

Socialists have the exact same problems that capitalist do only socialism is ran by dull bureaucrats who make lots of mistakes.

"Why did the central bureau send me chopsticks? This is a soup restaurant."

[Dracullus]

Then buy a ticket to Venezuela and experience your paradise. People there don't waste anything, they even pick food leftovers from trash!