A Problem I See With Pure Capitalism

[BCPVP]

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The lower prices were combined with collusion with the railroads to charge competitors higher rates, to make competitor's businesses unprofitable.

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Do you believe there is a difference between being charged a cheaper rate and having your competition charged a higher rate? And so what if they got a cheaper rate? They were giving those railroads a high volume of traffic, which meant the railroads could more easily cover their variable costs and charge less for their services. I ask again, should companies not be able to negotiate the terms of their business dealings with other companies? Must there only be one flat rate for everyone?

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Even if you think that Standard oil had good intentions. Are you really trying to advocate that we allow monopolization of markets to occur

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Did you even read what I wrote? Standard's market share grew to 90% but then began declining all the way up till its antitrust trial. If these railroad rebates were so bad, shouldn't Standard have cornered the whole market? How do you explain the decrease if monopolization is all but inevitable with price bargaining?

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Why do you think OPEC exists?

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OPEC is a government enforced cartel. It has little to do with pure capitalism. But cartels are inherently unstable and even OPEC is not immune.

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My point was never that cheap foreign labor doesn't sometimes make goods cheaper.

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Your point was that companies moving offshore hurts consumers. If the price is lower due to lower costs, then obviously the consumers are not being hurt.

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But how about Microsoft which uses Indian customer support personnel, Indian programmers, etc. Who competes with it?

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But you seem to know some economics, so you know perfect competition in real world seldom exists.

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Perfect competition never has and never will exist. It is a ridiculous standard with which to hold the market to. Unfortunately, it's also the economic reasoning that antitrust legislation is based off of.

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I'm not ignoring it. I said that I am Pro-free trade. Free trade is a NET win-win for both countries. Just because I think we should look at how wealth created by free trade is distributed in this country, doesn't mean I'm against it. I think your visualizing me as some hippie WTO protestor, i'm not.

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I'm not trying to accuse you of being a hippie, but your arguments sound very much like the populist, anti-free trade. If that's not how you feel, what do you think should be "done" about companies moving offshore?

[Dr. Strangelove]

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I anxiously await Borodog's contributions to this thread.

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I stopped here, because you clearly don't understand what "capitalism" is.

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You're going to make Andy sad. And when Andy is sad, I'm sad.

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I am always annoyed by people that say things like: "The problem that I have with pure capitalism is that in any system where everyone kills and eats babies . . ."

It annoys the [censored] out of me.


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I get the [censored] annoyed out of me when people say they have an irrefutable axiom that explains complex human interactions and thousands of years of recorded human history, but then claim they have no obligation to demonstrate the axiom's validity empirically because their axiom is irrefutable.

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[Mickey Brausch]

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Isn't this the game theory chestnut that if everyone else is following the rules you will benefit by breaking them, but if everyone breaks the rules you're better off when everyone including you follow the rules?

[/ QUOTE ]If everyone is breaking the rules, then the rule effectively becomes to break the rules. Therefore if you're following the rules, then you are breaking the rules. Which means that you have to break the rules in order to obey the rules.

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[Hoi Polloi]

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Capitalism is a system based on private property in all orders of goods (producer as well as consumer) and freedom of exchange, facilitated by a commodity money. Period.

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If this is the case, why is it called capitalism and not property-ism or ownership-ism? Another way of stating this definitional problem would to point out that money is not a commodity. Rather, money is what allows everything else to become a commodity, that is, reducible to units of exchange. But what then is the difference between money, capital and property?

On a side note, in what sense can property, let alone private property, exist without law? Can law exist without government?

[Hoi Polloi]

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...Thai's are never confrontational. They also never want to "lose face". So, getting arrested would mean a terrible disgrace to that person and their family.

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Shame is a powerful social control. Confrontation may be avoided but ostracism and other shaming behavior must be rampant.

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Many people have bars on their windows to prevent theft, and cars are always watched by security in parking lots when you go out to eat, etc..

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What would motivate people to expend resources on these precautions in an environment free of petty crime, I wonder? Is seven months without fluency in the language and culture perhaps not long enough to understand even a simple country like Thailand?

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I think this may go back to the same reasons of fear of embarassment, etc..

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Analysts often cite the high tolerance for embarrassment and failure in the U.S. as a precondition for our thriving entrepreneurial culture. In other words, where public failure is not seen as something to be ashamed of, entrepreneurial risk-taking is more likely. In places like Silicon Valley, these analysts point out, previous failure is viewed as badge of honor or battle scar, if you will.

[Hoi Polloi]

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Speaking as a person that did some "time". Personal freedom is an important right to hold sacred.

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This is probably why we see such a low rate of recidivsim among 1st time felons in the U.S.

[Hoi Polloi]

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It exactly does.

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What can you possibly mean by a restriction-free environment? Are pre-agricultural humans capitalists? Is religion a restriction?

Surely capitalism does not equal a state-of-nature or "noble savage" condition. Does any capitalist thinker (and I don't mean Borodog) suggest that markets can exist without regulation of some kind?

[Hoi Polloi]

If anything capitalism is the most antithetical system to the very notion of pure. Capital requires that everything, and I mean everything, be reduced to an exchange value. In other words, there are no essences or purities. At bottom everything is no more or less than some multiple of the unit of exchange.

Now this is neither here nor there, but the ideas of so-called pure capitalism being bandied about here are quite ungrounded. Borodog even defines money as a commodity--wtf?

[luegofuego]

what a huge [censored] hijack this whole thread is.

also, david, in such a system, yeah why wouldnt u steal his toilet seat? there is absolutely no reason not to in this hypothetical situation because the system has failed u. u have no incentive to protect a faulty system. i dont know why u would overlook variables such as fences or more importantly risk of retribution, but ok.

btw the theory that maximizing self gain leads to the good of the many is certainly not inheritantly capitalistic - the whole idea behind dialectical materialism (marxism, class struggle) is pretty much dependant on it.

[BCPVP]

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Borodog even defines money as a commodity--wtf?

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com·mod·i·ty
–noun, plural -ties.
1. an article of trade or commerce, esp. a product as distinguished from a service.
2. something of use, advantage, or value.

Certainly money is something of use and has value. It's also an article of commerce as it is used to exchange goods.