Can Capitalism be positive for the public?

[Gym Beglin]

I'm trying to understand how money-obsessed companies, or people, can run public services in a fair way and for the majority of the population to agree with that as a principle, can you help me?

 

It's pretty obvious that there needs to be a sea-change in the way in which we talk about politics, and political parties, and elections.  

 

When you go to the ballot, you're not choosing which 'party' you want to be in control, you're choosing between capitalism and socialism.

 

The sooner that poor people are better educated about this very stark, very obvious, choice, then the sooner we can see the back of the Conservatives forever.

 

<_<

[VladimirIlyich]

You are not choosing between Capitalism and Socialism at all,you are just choosing how hard you want to be bummed by it. Its basically a case of no lube and anything the Tories can get their hands on or a bit of lube while you are being distracted by something else with Labour. Socialism is not even part of the choice.

[Jose Jones]

Socialism and Capitalism are both just abstract concepts anyway. You should be voting for the underlying values behind what is being offered and the details of the implementation.

[Jairzinho]

I'm trying to understand how money-obsessed companies, or people, can run public services in a fair way and for the majority of the population to agree with that as a principle, can you help me?

 

It's pretty obvious that there needs to be a sea-change in the way in which we talk about politics, and political parties, and elections.  

 

When you go to the ballot, you're not choosing which 'party' you want to be in control, you're choosing between capitalism and socialism.

 

The sooner that poor people are better educated about this very stark, very obvious, choice, then the sooner we can see the back of the Conservatives forever.

 

<_>

 

Not really.

 

You're choosing between Keynesianism and Neo-liberalism.

 

It's not just the poor, pretty much everyone is deliberately kept in the dark about economics and politics. Cunt establishment media gonna cunt.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Can Capitalism be positive for the public?

 

Yes.

[Section_31]

It's become a bit of a modern fallacy that if you don't agree with the current model that you're a communist.

But capitalism has existed just fine for thousands of years, it's only in the last few decades that it's become so utterly destructive. 

Raegan and Thatcher unleashed capitalism and removed all methods of restraint to the point where anything and everything is for sale. Entire countries in the West have been hollowed out, cities in ruins, infrastructure in ruins, populations decimated, because money has been prioritised over employment. 

 

For capitalism to work properly it needs one of two things, either moral restraint, or state restraint, but it needs some kind of oversight. 

 

We used to have a degree of moral restraint. People, be they bankers or politicians, still tempered their decisions with what was best for the country, because their wealth and their success was entwined with ours, now it's not and they'd sell anything off to anyone. Contrast a county like Norway, where they funnel oil money into the coffers of citizens. Can you imagine that happening here now? The mere thought of it actually makes you laugh. 

 

Failing moral restraint you need state restraint. You need strong apparatus to enforce some kind or regulations and punishment for wrongdoing, but this too, has been eroded and destroyed, because that's just what the people at the top want – they refer to it as red tape. 

 

Our culture is led by finance and the people at the top of that particular tree only care about immediate gain. 

 

I remember going to briefing once from a top bod at a media company I worked for, he said the company's south wales newspaper operation had been 'decimated' because the company had raised newspaper prices and closed local offices. I asked him did they not think that might happen when they took those decisions to which he said 'they don't care what happens in five years' time, their attitude is 'we've got your money now'. I've seen this attitude replicated at every single shareholder-driven business I've worked at, including the one I'm in now. 

 

If you told that story to someone at Harvard Business School they'd think you were insane, if you told it to Alan Sugar he'd throw a cup at you, if you told Adam Smith he'd burn his book and run off to live in the Amazon. 

 

This isn't capitalism, it's shortsighted financial imperialism.  

[Section_31]

 

 

 

[Jairzinho]

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_short_history_of_neoliberalism_and_how_we_can_fix_it

[Hades]

For the love of God, can Section please read some Marx.

[Gym Beglin]

It's very clear that party manifesto's carry no weight.  Parties openly throw out their manifesto's upon being elected, and so it's obvious that casting your vote on the strength of a manifesto is not clever.

 

You also can't cast your vote based on the figurehead of the party, because you're electing a party for 5 years, not a person, they can change.

 

So what's left?  

 

It has to be an idealism, a philosophy, that you base your vote on.

 

Tories want to dismantle 'the state' and replace it with privately-owned mechanisms that are owned by shareholders interested only in financial gain.  That's obviously a retarded model, and only idiots, or fucking idiots, would have voted to employ such a model to run public services.  Or, rich people who can afford to solve their own problems, be they health or anything else, by going private.  

 

Labour, and you're going to have to ignore my broad strokes here, want the state to be owned by the state.  So we're talking British Rail, we're talking investment in infrastructure for all, we're talking a review of our entire democratic structure to make it more fair, more transparent. I'm making some of these up, but a true Labour movement would do this, eventually.  They have to be beholdent to socialist principles if they want to retain the socialist vote, and if they don't do it then another party will step in, be it UKIP or the Greens, or Lib Dems.

 

There are variations on socialism, but the basis of it lies in not being a greedy bastard and letting the world burn so you can squirrel away a bit more money.  Not sure what country those fucking idiots think will be left to live in at the end of their brilliant idea, but it'll be akin to Cape Town circa 1984 at this rate, so good luck with that.

[setreal]

 

It's become a bit of a modern fallacy that if you don't agree with the current model that you're a communist.

But capitalism has existed just fine for thousands of years,

 

Erm...what?

[Section_31]

Erm...what?

 

The exchange of money for services as the main motivator for work, no? 

[Section_31]

For the love of God, can Section please read some Marx.

 

Why don't you stop reading Marx, stop raindancing, open your eyes at the world around you and come up with your own ideas instead of this political bible bashing. 

[Rico1304]

For the love of God, can Section please read some Marx.

I knew it! I bet you sit in the basement singing 'Right Here Waiting' tears rolling down your face.

[Jairzinho]

The exchange of money for services as the main motivator for work, no? 

 

The concept of wages or anything approaching a competitive market didn't really exist until about the 16th century though. The buying and selling of stuff alone doesn't really qualify as capitalism, Shirley?

[Gym Beglin]

The exchange of money for services as the main motivator for work, no? 

 

I don't think that's a capitalist 'thing'.  Socialists earnt money as well, they just weren't cunts with it.

[Rico1304]

Why don't you stop reading Marx, stop raindancing, open your eyes at the world around you and come up with your own ideas instead of this political bible bashing.

 

That's you on the list. Better watch your back come the revolution.

[Gym Beglin]

I remember growing up, you measured a families wealth by how many cars they had, or if they had Sky.

[Section_31]

The concept of wages or anything approaching a competitive market didn't really exist until about the 16th century though. The buying and selling of stuff alone doesn't really qualify as capitalism, Shirley?

 

Suppose it's all open to interpretation but I take your point. For me, socialism is tempered by the fact you do what's best for you and what's best for the collective good, but since the dawn of human civilisation people have exchanged their labour for money/payment as their prime means of motivation, that's how I view capitalism - I do for you, you do for me. 

[SasaS]

Not really.

 

You're choosing between Keynesianism and Neo-liberalism.

 

It's not just the poor, pretty much everyone is deliberately kept in the dark about economics and politics. Cunt establishment media gonna cunt.

Or you are choosing between different mixtures of principles from both theories. Which then mostly go out of the window anyway at first sign of trouble.

 

And I don't think anybody fully understands how economy works.

[Section_31]

That's you on the list. Better watch your back come the revolution.

 

In quite a few of these threads people get scripture thrown at them and I don't understand why someone else's interpretation of the world is any more valid than yours or mine. 

 

Cameron got a first in PPE, he could probably quote Marx et al in his sleep but he's still quite clearly an imbecile who, if you pointed a gun at his head, couldn't begin to tell you an original political thought. 

[Jairzinho]

Or you are choosing between different mixtures of principles from both theories. Which then mostly go out of the window anyway at first sign of trouble.

 

And I don't think anybody fully understands how economy works.

 

Nobody needs to fully understand how the economy works. People simply need to understand that neo-liberalism works for the top 0.1% of society and is fucking shit for everyone else, and to therefore stop voting for parties that are committed to neo-liberalism.

 

That would be a pretty good start. 

[cloggypop]

Even Peter Hitchens has given up on it.

 

PETER HITCHENS: Privatisation! Free trade! Shares for all! The great con that ruined Britain

 

By Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday00:31 03 Apr 2016, updated 14:11 03 Apr 2016

 



 

+5

 

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I am so sorry now that I fell for the great Thatcher-Reagan promise. I can’t deny that I did. I believed all that stuff about privatisation and free trade and the unrestrained market. I think I may even have been taken in by the prophecies of a great share-owning democracy.

 

I thought – this now seems especially funny – that private British Telecom would be automatically better than crabby old Post Office Telephones. 

 

I think anyone who has ever tried to contact BT when things go wrong would now happily go back to the days of nationalisation. Soviet-style slowness was bad, but surely better than total indifference.

 



 

+5

 

I am so sorry now that I fell for the great Thatcher-Reagan promise. I can¿t deny that I did, writes PETER HITCHENS

 

And it’s all very well being able to buy cheap goods from all over the world, as we fling our borders wide and abandon the protection of our own industries that everyone says is so wicked and will make us poor and backward.

 

How I miss the old names of trusted brands, and the knowledge that these things had been made for generations by my fellow countrymen.

 

But the new broom swept, and it swept pretty clean. In towns I know well, car assembly lines, railway workshops, glassworks engineering plants, chocolate factories vanished or shrank to nothing. 

 

A journey across the heart of England, once an exhilarating vista of muscular manufacturing, especially glorious by night, turned into archaeology. Now, if it looked like a factory, it was really a ruin.

 

Someone usually pops up at this stage and says that we still manufacture a lot. If you say so, but then why are the drug-dealers so busy in our new factory-free industrial areas, and why can I never buy anything that was made here, except from absurdly expensive luxury shops? 

 

Why are our warships made of foreign steel? Why are the few factories that do exist almost always foreign-owned, their fate decided far away by people who don’t much care about this country?

 

And why is our current-account deficit with the rest of the world the worst it’s ever been in peacetime, and nearly as bad as it was during the Great War that first bankrupted this country a century ago? 

 

If it’s all been so beneficial, why do so many of the containers that arrive in British ports, full of expensive imports, leave this country empty?

 

Sure, some things have got cheaper, and there are a lot more little treats and luxuries available. 

 

The coffee and the restaurants are better – but the essentials of life are harder to find than ever: a good life and an honest place; a solid, modest home big enough to house a small family in a peaceful, orderly landscape; good local schools open to all who need them; reasonably paid secure work for this generation and the next; competent government and wise laws. 

 

These have become luxuries, unattainable for millions who once took them for granted.

 

And now the remains of our steel industry are vanishing, not because nothing can be done (any determined government could save it if it really wanted to) but because we’re all still worshipping that free-market dogma that captivated us 30 years ago. 

 

I never thought I’d yearn for the National Coal Board or British Steel or, good heavens, British Leyland. But I do begin to feel I was fooled into thinking that what was coming next would be any better. At this rate it may soon be much, much worse.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3520932/PETER-HITCHENS-Privatisation-Free-trade-Shares-great-ruined-Britain.html

[Hades]

What a moronic bigot. It's his own squesant countrymen that have turned housing and schooling into a commodity.

 

[SasaS]

Nobody needs to fully understand how the economy works. People simply need to understand that neo-liberalism works for the top 0.1% of society and is fucking shit for everyone else, and to therefore stop voting for parties that are committed to neo-liberalism.

 

That would be a pretty good start. 

There is no such thing as neoliberalism working for the top 0.1%, most economies are to a certain extent neoliberal and I don't think any are purely neoliberal. You seem to believe that there exists a set of economic beliefs which are completely wrong and fraudulent and through some kind of super conspiracy perpetrated by the 0.1% these beliefs are then imposed on the 99,9% who are completely clueless as to what is going on.