Theft is not capitalism. Murder, genocide, and other horrible things are not capitalism.
Which is especially unsettling considering that we stole it from the Indians fair and square because they didn't know about flags.
What am I dealing with here? Did I step on one of your sacred cows or introduce an impressionistic abstraction holistically that violated your linear fixation on precision in definition, or both? But whatever, I am sure that in a capitalistic system we will find a way to give the Navaho the finest of Hopi land.Theft is not capitalism. Murder, genocide, and other horrible things are not capitalism.
What am I dealing with here? Did I step on one of your sacred cows or introduce an impressionistic abstraction holistically that violated your linear fixation on precision in definition, or both? But whatever, I am sure that in a capitalistic system we will find a way to give the Navaho the finest of Hopi land.
Your assignment for today is to tell me all about the rules of flags. How is it that planting a flag confers property rights that can be bought and sold. I want to know how mayflies get to own things. I want to know how ownership and the illusion of self came about? I'm planning to corner the market on air. How dare you breathe.
Did you think my intention was to define capitalism? Is it possible that what I was referring to is that the capitalist real estate market can only exist once ownership of the land is established by means as absurd as the planting of a flag. Capitalism is the rules we establish to handle claims on goods that were originally stolen to prevent them from being stolen again. You put lipstick on a pig and kissed it. Without some deeper perspective you might just fall asleep in capitalist prison.Here I thought I was going off of the definition.
Did you think my intention was to define capitalism? Is it possible that what I was referring to is that the capitalist real estate market can only exist once ownership of the land is established by means as absurd as the planting of a flag. Capitalism is the rules we establish to handle claims on goods that were originally stolen to prevent them from being stolen again. You put lipstick on a pig and kissed it. Without some deeper perspective you might just fall asleep in capitalist prison.
By the way I don't believe that for you capitalism isn't a sacred cow.
That's a terribly illogical and sequentially unordered thing to say. You test my capacity to stretch my thinking to grasp your meaning. Congratulations. Your dedication to the truth as you see it and your, to me at least, obvious struggle to be logically fair makes you very endearing to me personally. I like you and think that awareness that one can get caught in certain types of mental ruts can help to break them. I also am not terribly worried about appearing or perhaps even being pretentious. I feel I mean well so I go with the flow.Seems like you are planting your flag on my thoughts...
I didn't realize there was a waiting list.
Most of the lefties in here support China and N. Korea, you shouldn't be surprised.I didn't realize there was a waiting list.
That's a terribly illogical and sequentially unordered thing to say. You test my capacity to stretch my thinking to grasp your meaning. Congratulations. Your dedication to the truth as you see it and your, to me at least, obvious struggle to be logically fair makes you very endearing to me personally. I like you and think that awareness that one can get caught in certain types of mental ruts can help to break them. I also am not terribly worried about appearing or perhaps even being pretentious. I feel I mean well so I go with the flow.
I know it’s a lot to expect you to be receptive, but I can Handel disappointment and rejection. I don’t think good intentions change to anger when rejected. I noticed in the news today on Google that it is satisfied with their pin head firing. I would love to be able to save you from the inevitable consequences of that kind of context blindness.So long as you think you mean well lol. Also, a pretentious person does not think they are pretentious.
exactly which posters here support north korea? name names, link posts. put up or shut up.Most of the lefties in here support China and N. Korea, you shouldn't be surprised.
exactly which posters here support north korea? name names, link posts. put up or shut up.
Theft is not capitalism. Murder, genocide, and other horrible things are not capitalism.
Pure, unrestrained capitalism inevitably leads to those things. To it's purist distillation, there is no other reality that capitalism creates. Adam Smith understood this very well, which is why he championed hard restraints on the machinery of capitalism.
So by its singular definition, these are all features of capitalism, not bugs. The wonderful market economy is but one tool of a capitalist theory of economic policy. They are not the same thing. It seems that many people remain blissfully ignorant of that.
No. You are a smart person, so I will explain.
"Capitalism - free enterprise or private enterprise an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, characterized by the freedom of capitalists to operate or manage their property for profit in competitive conditions."
There is no part there that should lead to anything that you are said. There is not a feature of capitalism that.
Now, onto Adam Smith. I believe what you are talking about comes from the Wealth of Nations. I believe the relevant pages are 369-372. In that section he says this...
"It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple honest conviction, that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, and absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."
This is where it gets fun. The context of this is regulation. Smith is saying here that the public and firms have different and conflicting interests. Those firms will want to deceive and or even oppress the public. They can only do this through government though, as there is not a way to do this with a free market, unless all competition has been destroyed. The only way competition can be destroyed is through regulation or government action. Thus, he says that any regulation must be carefully examined to not kill competition as competition is what protects the public. Its not that Capitalism allows for the abuse of the public, as its inherent to the firms that work in markets. That is why all economic structures are prone to this, and why regulation in some form is always needed.
It would thus be incorrect to say that Smith thought that capitalism would lead to what you said he thought it would lead to. What Smith did say was that the inherent interests of the two parties are not parallel and as such regulation should be very well though out.
https://books.google.com/books?id=pl1KAAAAYAAJ&num=19
As someone who grows more libertarian everyday, natural monopolies can be a thing even in the absence of government. If you examine market theory, there are many impediments to perfect competition. An obvious one these days would initial capital expenditure. An example relevant to the namesake of these forums might be something like a CPU. Designing a modern and competitive CPU is insanely expensive and thus insanely risky for new entrants. Thus, their capital costs will be higher than established players like AMD and Intel. One might even blame consolidation in these markets (which lead to duopolistic situations) on their massive capital outlays.
You also run into issues of expensive transactions when dealing with the Coase solution to externalities, although technology might make that solution easier. You have holdout problems, etc. You also have situations of inelastic supply/demand (someone asking for an entire person's worth to rescue them while they are dangling off a cliff for example). We already have laws that deal with enforceability of these types of contracts though.
More subtle would be a doctor/patient relationship. The doctor likely has far more knowledge than the patient (asymmetrical information) and can make the buyer's (patient's) demand inelastic by telling them they have a tumor that must be removed NOW, that sort of thing.
That all being said, markets have done far far more to lift more people out of poverty worldwide than governments have and we should always strive to have as small a government as possible with as little market intervention as possible. And where possible, the government should encourage market efficiency rather than attempting to plan a resource distribution.
I could go into examples of how there are ways around all of those things, but ill ask you this to save time. Name a monopoly that formed in a free market. I don't mean a monopoly like the way most use the term either, I mean a real economics monopoly.
Now, there will always be an asymmetry to knowledge in a society that is efficient.
That said, that does not qualify as a monopoly as any 3rd party that perceives the inefficiency has the incentive to move in and make a profit off of that. The only thing excluding firms would be knowledge, and not a monopoly forcing people out of the market.
In your doctor hypothetical, in a capitalism society, there are likely 2nd and 3rd opinions that can be sought. In a society where there is top down control, those are inherently excluded as they would be inefficient. If people are being told information that is wrong, others will fill the void to capture some of that waste. So in your hypothetical, capitalism is the best option.
You'd have to first define free market. You assume that monopolies can only exist in the presence of regulation but, of course, to comply I'd have to find a market that exists completely sans regulation. I can name monopolies that have formed in systems with perhaps less regulation than now (Ma Bell) but I don't know if you'd accept that as an answer. In other words, the way the question is framed makes it impossible for me to answer unless you want me to delve into highly questionable scenarios like immediate post-Friedman shocks or dissolution of government (Somalia).
The fact that asymmetrical information will always exist I agree with, but it does mean that markets will never be perfectly efficient.
I never said information asymmetry exclusively results in monopolies. If anything, I'd have to imagine that monopolies form due to a combination of factors including government intervention, capital costs, transactional costs, and a couple others that probably have an impact but maybe less so.
AMD and Intel pretty much have a duopoly in the CPU market not necessarily because of government protection (which in this case I guess would be patent protection) but because the capital requirements to compete are so extreme and risky. Markets with lower barriers (most software products are like this) are much much more efficient and have far more competitors even in the face of software patents.
True, which is why this lie was of the form "you need an operation now to survive". The trick would be to use the asymmetry to cause the buyer's demand to go inelastic and thus cost the buyer rationality (no comparison shopping).
To be clear, I'm not saying that command economies are preferable or more efficient, merely pointing at that markets also contain inefficiencies.
No no, it was not a trick question. Now, take all of those monopolies and then see that all of them formed because of government regulations. Ma Bell was growing and buying up things, but because of agreements with the government.
Customers could not pick and choose, because agreements with government (local and otherwise) prevented competition.
The point is that monopolies fight competition by using the government, because, naturally the free market creates competition.
Even when the barriers are high, if there is profit people will find a way. Maybe not in a few years, but in the long run which is usually well within a lifetime they over come this.
You have to define efficiency then. There is a cost to having information be less asymmetric and a cost to trying to find the right balance. Markets are often the best and least costly way of finding the balance.
Another way of saying that is markets are the most efficient way of doing things. You can point to where things are not perfect, but in whole the system is as efficient as possible.
This is what I was talking about when I said a real monopoly. Intel and AMD are facing competition right now. No doubt they could be facing more if there were more profits. AMD and Intel are the vast majority of the market, but there is more to a monopoly (and duopoly). Nobody is restricted or prohibited from entering the market by AMD or Intel.
There is a cost to entering, but not because of either of those firms. Remember that monopolies are more than the majority of the market activity.
Its not really an inefficiency though. The cost of having another market type would be greater, thus its as efficient as possible.
All of this said, the claims that capitalism lead to horrible things is still wrong.
We do have a poster here who supports North Korea. He hasn't posted in this thread yet. I'll have to see if I can recall his name.exactly which posters here support north korea? name names, link posts. put up or shut up.
They formed for a multitude of reasons, government is merely a component.
These sorts of monopoly agreements can exist between private parties as well. My old landlord had an agreement with a local telco to provide exclusive services for their properties. In exchange, the telco would wire buildings for free. The result to the tenants was substandard, a monopoly telco without gov't involvement.
I don't doubt this, but it's also not the only dynamic creating and sustaining monopolies or duopolies.
Perhaps, but I'm still waiting for that startup to topple Intel/AMD or AMD/nvidia or Boeing/Airbus (in fact, this industry is going in the opposite direction with Boeing's purchase of Embraer). I'm not claiming these companies don't use government to their advantage, but the government is not the only reason we don't see competition here. There are probably multitudes of engineers out there that could build a competitive CPU, for instance, but little capital risk appetite to fund them.
I never stated otherwise.
Markets are most efficient the vast majority of the time, I'm not arguing that. But that doesn't mean they are perfectly efficient, nor does it mean I couldn't imagine a more efficient system even if that implementation would be impossible in the real world. Just as Coase had to make the assumption that negotiation had no transactional cost when framing Coasian bargaining as a Pareto superior outcome (or at least framing an argument for regulation), it's also possible to imagine a more efficient system.
While true there is no government or legal restriction as such, the restriction is, in effect, gathering capital cheaply enough to compete. The established players don't necessarily have to "block you" (although Intel has actually been found guilty of engaging in these sorts of practices), but by virtue of their size and success can effectively limit your options. I, for instance, would be very wary in investing great sums of money into a startup designed to take on Intel or AMD. AMD has already demonstrated how difficult it would be to make a profit as the small fish in this space and Intel almost certainly has access to cheaper capital than I do meaning they could always outspend me to a solution by simply hiring all the resources away.
While technically true, it ignores that the cost to entering these markets is basically set by the existing capital investments in those markets. It would be really hard, say, for someone to revolutionize lithography or bypass it altogether without insane sums of money and effort. Remember, you have to compete with established players that can throw billions of dollars at these problems while maintaining a profit. It makes competitive investment very risky. Not saying it *won't* happen, but this is about the sliding scale of efficiency and not binary impossibilities.
I can't think of anything in life that's as efficient or perfect or large or small or fast or slow as possible. Humans do the best we can, but our best is usually pretty far from *the* best, at least temporarily. And yes, just because humans are imperfect doesn't mean this or that resource distribution is as efficient as possible. Efficient? Sure. More efficient than command-based solutions? Given our experiences, absolutely. As efficient as anything we could imagine? No.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.
I'm not disagreeing with you there.
i remember one kid who was here years ago, but that's hardly most and i don't recall if he was a liburuhl. don't think he posted much in threads other than korea ones.We do have a poster here who supports North Korea. He hasn't posted in this thread yet. I'll have to see if I can recall his name.
More than a component if all monopolies have used it no? It would be different if a monopoly formed without government, but the fact that everyone has used it seems to indicate something important.
Its sorta is and sorta is not. The cost of moving apartments is so low that people could easily move out and seek better options. So the service might be substandard but in the long run the free market will reduce profits for that landlord.
That would create the incentive to have someone buy them out or another company come in to offer their service. A very different story at the city, state, or federal level.
Other things are needed, but, government is required.
You are watching it happen already. Nvidia and Arm are both big threats to Intel in the long run. You see this over and over in the tech world.
And, fearing a loss on an investment does not make anyone an monopoly.
Then please explain what you mean when you say inefficient.
You have to define efficiency then. There is a cost to having information be less asymmetric and a cost to trying to find the right balance. Markets are often the best and least costly way of finding the balance.
Its possible to imagine in theory, the problem is in execution. What capitalism does best is to take people's desires and channel them into something productive. If we have personal rights that prohibit theft, then capitalism is the best way to get wealthy. That also means if you want my money, then you have to make something I want to give you my money for. If someone else makes something I like more, they get my money and not you. That means you might have people both working on the same problem, but, someone trying to organize everything from the top would cost far more than letting the market decide.
The Coase Theorem fits well with this, because, if you don't have perfectly low transaction costs, then you can reach a Pareto state.
Then explain how AMD is currently competing with Intel. The reason its so hard to get into the Chip market, is because there is so much profit that people spend a lot of money on research. The cost today of making something equal in power to say a P4 is much lower than it was when the P4s first came out. But, as markets grow so do their demands and as such to keep ahead you have to spend money on research.
Think of it like this. Intel kills all other chip makers. They then stop doing R&D and keep making the current chips for 20 years. Then, after 20 years, how cheap would it be to make something that is 10% faster?
What is actually keeping you out of the market is competition. Each time Intel has gotten complacent, a competitor has come up with something to catch up. AMD has done this time and time again. The reason its AMD is because there are efficiencies by going through an established company, but its not required.
Best and efficient in terms of economies is all subjective due to our limited perception. We can imagine many things, but the reality of life has a habit of shrugging them off.