you got off on the wrong foot and lost me after that. there is no problem with capital or capitalism. i can't believe people who call themselves traders don't get this...
that's funny. I thought traders better than anybody know that systems, even robust systems, stop working at one point or another. I am not implying Capitalism is about to fall apart. I am implying that it does have problems. Some of them not clearly seen yet probably. ( hope we can discuss later the subject of fiat money) That one I alluded to first was: Will the rich get richer and the poor poorer to the point were the majority of the population revert to socialism as it is happening throughout South America. Look at Venezuela. The guy was democratically elected. Is the capitalist system in the US doomed to produce too many poor people which could bring the system down eventually ? Is this a problem we will have to deal with in the future ? If so, how can we start fixing now, if it is fixable at all ?
Nitro, first of all you haven't demonstrated how putting work and effort into something implies value for others. Value is not some physical property sitting there waiting to be observed and measured, it is not inherent in anything. Something that is valuable to you is not necessarily valuable to me. Secondly, Menger revolutionized economics by explaining prices through marginal utility stemming from the subjective theory of value. The wikipedia article doesn't really go into the heart of Boehm-Bawerk's devastating critique. The fact is that under free enterprise the worker recieves his marginal value product (what he contributes to the product); however, the price of that labour is discounted because at any given stage of production, the worker is being paid, but the good is not what will be finally sold to consumers, for this the entrepreneur-caitalist (saver) is compensated with profit and interst income respectively. What do you mean by capitalist societies? A) Capital refers to tools used in production, it is almost inconcievable that any society would not use some form of capital. B) The so-called "natural rate of unemployment" which is what you're referring to I guess, is a completely fallacious Keynesian construct. The tendancy in a free-market is for no factor of production, including labour, to go unemployed. The truth is that it is the government which causes sytematic unemployment in the labour market through price controls, and other forms of intervention.
I am not a professional philosopher and I am not going to give you a very sophisticated answer (for that I will give you a link) but let's do a thought experiment. The world currently does not put much value into garbage collection. This is usually mandated to the (local) government because governememts are really good at getting low paid workers to come and work for them. So, imagine that one day, garbage collectors decide that they are not going to collect garbage any more. I don't want to get into the reason why they choose to do that. Let's say that there is some weird disease called garbage disease that is going around and no one wants to do it. But you can invent your own reason. I ask you now, has the value of having your garbage collected gone up? How can you even discuss the apriori value of something where human effort is involved, since the units themselves are not deterministic? The modern trend in economic theory is to seperate the mathematics from the ethics - economics is supposed to tell you only how to do somethig as cheaply as possible given all the inputs. It leaves ethics to the realm of saints. But how can you do that unless you have properly weighted all things that are relevant to a society properly? For example, before pollution credits were being recommended that they be entered as part of the mathematical equations that relate value to price, there was no way to value the damage to the environment and the health effects on all of us. Take this at the limit - in a closed system like the earth, don't you eventually have to reach a point where ethics enters the equations? Let's take an extreme example: Let's say that 99% of the worlds workers were coal miners. In that world, we certainly would monetize the health effects of people dying from lung cancer and the health costs associated with that and would price appropriately the cost of doing that business. Where do we monetize having children work for a dime a day for Nike in Malasya or wherever in our economy? Does price and value mean anything to you in this case? Do you need to be a professional philosopher and talk jibber jabber to see the mis-pricing of value in these cases? However, I will give you an example that what you are saying is also true. Take milk versus oil. A gallon of milk costs about $3. A gallon of gasoline costs about the same. Now, all I have to do to get milk is to go and buy a cow and start pumping. In order for me to get a gallon of gasoline into my car, I have to first find it by using very sophisticated machinery, then I have to use more sophisticated machinery to dig it out of the ground, then I have to transport it, then I have to use very sophisticated machinery to refine it, then I have to transport it again to the gas stations, then I pump it into my car - so clearly value is in the eye of the beholder, since a gallon of gasoline and a gallon of milk are worlds apart from each other in terms of price to produce. Clearly, price and value in this world are wacked. Professional links : http://oll.libertyfund.org/Essays/Bibliographical/Barry0312/SpontaneousOrder.html http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/menger.html nitro
Hi nitro, "Learning without thinking is labor lost; Thinking without learning is perilous". Many were victims to this truth over the past centuries. In truth, nobody is or should be a "professional philosopher". Of course, you encounter many, many quacks in many fields calling themselves "PROFESSIONALS". (I know, nononsense doesn't have to tell you this ) Getting to the answer on why Europe has lived such a terrible experience since the last 250 years as compared to the US. Both started out from the same know how. Many Europeans voted with their feet coming to the US to escape hell leaving EVERYTHING behind. Why the current obviously worrying degeneration of the US political fabric? What will come out of this ominous development? To (begin) answering these questions, posting url references doesn't help. You need to do as you suggested. Read the masters: These will put you on your way: HUMAN ACTION: Ludwig von Mises LAW, LEGISLATION & LIBERTY: F. Hayek THE ROAD TO SERFDOM: F.Hayek ANIMAL FARM: George Orwell (an impeccably pedigreed Marxist) Interestingly, these above writers have all lived through European hell scenes, sometimes having narrowly escaped bloody extermination by social philosophy imbued rascals. Marx never experienced this kind of turmoil. He lived as a very much pampered self-styled irresponsible beggar through his cozy "capitalist" 19-th century. As you have some interest in mathematics, remember Henri Poincarre saying to his students: "If you want to become a good mathematician, it is sufficient to read the masters." Be good, nononsense PS: Human Action? something to look at: http://breughel.8m.net/cgi-bin/i/beggars.jpg http://breughel.8m.net/cgi-bin/i/dullegriet.jpg http://breughel.8m.net/cgi-bin/i/babel.jpg
Optionpro my dear friend, the history of latinamerican countries are very very complicated.. most countries down under are just a bunch of land with full of people with no law or education at all most of them.. venezuela in the past 20 years became the most corrupt country in the continent. I spend 1 year in south america, there's beautifull natural views, great people's, a lot of history,greats food, But if you want to compare socialism vs Capitalism let's do it the right way in the 3 world there's no real capitalism or real socialism.. its just about corruption, no law and no system.. (maybe Chile is diferent) chavez??? mmmm he's one the best USA partners.. he just gave 50 billion dollar bizz to exxonmbil 2 o 3 years ago at orinoco. and another 30 billion dollar business to shell company in 2001.. he's a joke.. maybe a just another washington puppet Juaquin Balaguer, maybe the greater political philosopher in the last 50 years in latinamerica once said: "Politica, el arte de lo que no se ve" (Politics is The art of what you Can't see") take care
Good post. I just want to mention my favorite politician is General Pinochet. He knew what had to be done.
Hi domi, You could not have said it more accurately. Without law, only terror, misery and exploitation. The capitalism/socialism nonsense has in a sense been invented and developed over the last 250+ years by the practitioners of your "el arte de lo que no se ve" in order to amuse the "useful idiots". Europe passed entirely away under the reign of occult criminal brotherhoods. How do they exert control? Parliament? Let's laugh Hell no! Real control is exerted through the ole masonic-judicial-police-"que no se ve"-apparatus. USA, watch out, the "el arte de lo que no se ve" -artists are well on their way to do you in. A bit food for thought: At present the ENTIRE bunch of nations calling themselves civilized, (pretend to) look back at Roman Law. In fact it is a required topic in all law schools around the world (except for some European know-nothing universities were they did away with it not too long ago). Did the Romans ever bother with capitalism & socialism theory? No. They vanished for about 1000 years mainly because of their fooling around too much with "el arte de lo que no se ve". Want to get a bit deeper into law, economics and civilized society: read Hayek: "Law, Legislation & Liberty" (3vols). Wachet Auf Ruft uns die Stimme, Be good, nononsense PS: I like: "Where a government is afraid of the people, there reigns liberty; Where a people is afraid of the government, there reigns tyranny" (Jefferson?)