h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't think we see naked socialism or naked capitalism anywhere. We see examples where particular societies lean one way or t'other but the days of clearly identifiable national traits are fast disappearing. Good thing, bad thing? I dunno.

Going back a bit, I actually have tremendous admiration for immigrants who up-sticks and then work their backsides off in their new surroundings. (I forget his name, but the Asian chap kicked out of Kenya with a suitcase & £50 was able to build an empire in Britain. Every packet of crisps you eat - the bags were made on his machines). It's possibly one of the benefits of capitalistic societies that they are given a framework where this is possible. Whereas some may decry a system that appears to have most people vying for the scraps from the rich man's table, I quite like the system that says everyone can aspire to their own table.

Which is fine...provided the social balances remain in place. There are certain things that shouldn't have to be aspired to: they should be communally funded public goods. That's socialism, isn't it?

You call it communally funded social goods and therefore socialism, I call it cost of supply and compatible wth capitalism. It's all semantics really

Where the difference comes in is that socialism would try to keep these basic essentials as cheap and as plentiful as possible whereas capitalism tries to keep it as low as possible. But the two aren't incompatible.

I would have described the two thus,

The acceptable face of capitalism seeks to reward those who 'can' and 'do', whilst providing for those 'who cannot'

The objective of socialism is to centralise everything, and distribute according to need.

The latter takes no account of those who 'could' but 'do not', whilst the former takes no account of difference between 'cannot' and 'do not'

An oversimplification I know.

Novo

Since I am actually anti-capitalist, I'd better try to answer novo's question about alternatives, but I'm going to try to make it short so that I can get some work done today.

My short answer is that I'm in favour of an economic system called 'participatory economics' or parecon for short. Too complicated to explain in brief (maybe I'll write a guide entry on it some time?) - so I'll just link to two sites. The first is from the other place, the second is the page of the guy who came up with the idea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics
http://www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm

Although parecon seems to me like the best alternative from what's out there at the moment, being anti-capitalist doesn't commit you to any particular alternative. Realistically, an alternative to capitalism is a long way off in practice (if it ever happens at all), so planning the minutiae of how it will work is a bit pointless. In any case, one of the lessons of the Russian revolution (or for that matter, the imposition of capitalism after the end of communism) is that if you attempt to impose a revolutionary change from above it always ends badly. (Did you know that 36 oligarchs now own a quarter of Russia's wealth?) A change to an alternative to capitalism ought to follow a fairly long period of public debate about what it should be like. From this point of view, systems like parecon are useful in that they show that 'another world is possible'. In the meantime, pragmatic anti-capitalists favour incremental improvements in capitalism - such as better social welfare, reforms that decrease inequality, etc. - especially those that are consistent with socialist (or in my case anarchist) ideals.

Ed,

"Given its impersonality, Capitalism is an inevitable economic phenomenon."

That's true to a certain extent. Capitalism of some sort or another is probably inevitable at some point in a given society. It's not inevitable that we can never move to an alternative, and it's not inevitable that it has most of the features that our capitalism has. For example, in our capitalist society, ideas, radio frequencies, sounds, land, the air, etc. can all be owned in one way or another. That's not inevitable.

Blackberry,

"At present the burden of taxation is increasingly falling on middle-income workers"

No time to check this, but I think if you take into account all the different forms of taxation (e.g. VAT as well as income tax), the poor pay the largest percentage of their wealth/income in taxation, steadily falling off with the rich paying the lowest percentage. That is, the opposite of what income tax is supposed to be.

Well yes, but that is because VAT is flat rate tax.

I think Blackberry is really only expressing how the majority of middle-income earners feel. They don't get the sort of benefits that the poorer ends of society do and they don't have the flash accountants lawyers and the like to find the loopholes as the rich do.

Busy night shift!

I think a lot of this may come down to scale. I dropped out of Economics 101 because the prof said after the first semester that all of the basic *laws* we had learned didn't apply to the real world very much because of the sheer size and complexity of the system. Thus Supply and Demand was tempered by legislation and the Free Market wasn't. It wasn't until I read Freakonomics this year that I got interested again (I do recommend it, written by Levitt and Dobner).
I believe that Marxism would work on a small scale if it wouldn't have to deal with the world economy. I also believe that Capitalism doesn't work in the world economy unless it is as heavily burdened with legislation as it's most legislated member state. Let's see what global corporations would do with Sweden's economic system and legislation brought to the international table! I'm sure that none would accept it, but unfortunately there is no international body with enough teeth to even enforce something less drastic. The protests at the G8 summits are not against capitalism (for the most part), they are against the lack of social regulation of capitalism at the international level. Living next to the US in a relatively social democracy has shown me that much if not all of politics on the grand scale is about the wants of corporations. Those corporations are only too happy to operate outside of their country's rules and regulations, doing so by being driven by the Stock Market system that pushes for nothing but profit.

Er...Akshully, Freakonomics is largely shite. Leavitt forgets how much variance is unaccounted for in multivariate statistics. A much, much better readable book on economics is Free Lunch by (googles) David Smith

Thanks, I'll pick that up. Not being up on my statistical analysis and economic theory, all I could do was enjoy it.

The chapter on the drugs business was entertaining...but hardly surprising (people don't think that dealers actually *own* their flash motors, do they?). As for the rest...I suppose I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been spluttering outrage at the disgraceful methodologies. It really is worth learning a bit of stats. It's not difficult (hey - *I* can do it!), and it teaches a lot about how to think about the world.

So, anyway...have we reached any conclusions yet?

The consensus seems to be that capitalism needs to be tempered with social mechanisms. Correct? In other words, unbridled capitalism *doesn't* work.

Some, of course, hold the political belief that it does. I find that strange. I see capitalism as an impersonal mechanism, rather than a philosophy. But it's seldom a good idea to allow impersonal forces free rein. Take biology. We can't live without it. We'll always have it with us. But we hold it in check with medicine.

So...how do we want to manage capitalism? For the good of society, or or the good of the luckiest individuals?

...or *f*or the good...

Sorry - my keyboard's ucked.

Manage capitalism? You might as well try to lassoo a horse with spaghetti. You don't manage capitalism, you make sure you're in a position to reap the benefits.

Can you actually name a system of of unmanaged capitalism?

If capitalism can't be managed then I question whether it really is a valid way of organising our societies.

I suspect Russia just after the collapse of Communism was completely unmanaged. Encouraged by American political theorists state industries were sold off very quickly and now we have 25% of Russia's economy being own by something like three dozen people. Crazy.

Of course we manage capitalism- taxes, anti monopoly regulations, insider trading restrictions, tariffs, incentives, the list goes on. It's just deciding to what end that management seeks. Some rules and regulations are for the good of the system and those who profit the most by it but some are to pull in the reigns a bit and help redistribute the wealth. Again, I feel it's a matter of scale, the Casbah isn't Wall Street and a lemonade stand isn't Microsoft. Asking if all of those *work* is a bit silly, Capitalism works...and it doesn't.

It 'works', but so do candles. Does that mean we shouldn't have bothered inventing lightbulbs?

What alternative would you think would work better?

Oddly but in a related way, our government just brought in legislation that would ban inefficient ligh bulbs within the next six years. Not a bad example of legislating capitalism for the good of the people. I know China could just ban them outright and inforce that ban, but why would they? What would be their incentive? Perhaps western style democracy combined with capitalism is the worst of systems but perhaps no one has imagined a better one that works as well.

Arnie - who's running the Iraq war, government or Haliburton?

You mom?