The Capitalism Problem

[Bill Ryan]

Dear Friends, I've been wanting to start this thread for quite a while, but have never been sure quite how to.

It's not about communism, or socialism, or anarchy of any kind. It's about the core problem that I see everywhere: that the 'capitalist' system, so deeply embedded worldwide (which includes the profit motive, win-lose competition between nation states, and the gambling casino of the global markets)

• Is destructive;
• Greatly fuels the hardwired human weaknesses of greed and corruption;
• Is profoundly unfair and immoral in more ways that are easy to list;
• Encourages the expansion and empowerment of multinational companies that (if they were human!) would be branded as psychopathic; and
• Is just a poor, poor system that sooner or later will bring the whole world down (including its very fragile ecosystem) — in one way or another.

Please discuss. Am I alone in what I feel I see?

[Isserley]

Of course you are not alone in your thoughts!

Jiddu Krishnamurti said: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." This reflects the idea that modern economic and social systems are not only dysfunctional but actively harmful.

Society rewards greed and self-interest, falsely equating them with natural human behavior. Regardless of the political and economic system, inequality is evident absolutely everywhere since everything is monetized which prevents people to live fully.

Industries like Big Pharma, Big Media, and Big Education serve to medicate symptoms, distract from root causes, and promote conformity rather than critical thinking.

People are indoctrinated from their earliest youth in the wrong direction of serving the god of materialism. The corruption of moral values ​​through all possible channels prevents spiritual growth in people and we can list it until tomorrow.
I console myself that it has to be this way because we are in the Kali Yuga period.

[sdv]

You might find this article from the Think BRICS substack informative. It explains BRICS philosophy, how it resembles what created wealth for all in America before the oligarchs took control, and how some America states have and are trying to get back to that system:

https://thinkbrics.substack.com/p/al...oposal-and-the

I am at a loss to identify key excerpts to post as the entire article is so important. It seems that some Americans are waking up. The enemy is not China or BRICS. The enemy is within. And, yes the USA is an example of unbridled capitalism being anti human, anti development, anti prosperity for all, and ultimately anti freedom. It has resulted in the tyrannical rule of the oligarchs and all that goes with it. What went wrong in America? The article looks at legislation and policies, but why did Americans buy into this, which would ultimately destroy freedom and prosperity and happiness for 'the masses'. Great that you started this thread, Bill, where we can perhaps duscuss 'what went wrong' and 'why did Americans go along with it?'. Can we fix capitalism or should it be ditched altogether?

[ZenBaller]

Collective entities and concepts like capitalism only reflect personal states of consciousness. Capitalism is simply the social reflection of the human ego which tries to survive by sucking the energy out of its environment, instead of tapping into its true spiritual nature.

[shaberon]

Well, in the most literal sense, you are talking about a word that was invented in a ca. 1850s opinion, which was later taken up and used as a "thing" within the London School of Economics.


In America, we already had the argument, although it was expressed in terms of Agricultural Economy (Jefferson) vs. Wall Street (Hamilton). So firstly the Jeffersonian faction (which has even been called democrat-republican) was basically thrown away and the modern Democratic Party is a new breed of Capitalists. Wall Street, on the other hand, continues to directly manifest into the current Republican Party.

In Europe, the prevailing counter-argument was Austrian, or Physiocracy. And you will note that the outcome of World War One was the dissolution of the only peer rival to the LSE, that is, the Central Bank of Austria. At the same time, the emerging US Federal Reserve is practically a line-by-line copy of the Reichsbank, which, oppositely of Austria, is being assembled by taking in the old banks of Prussia, Frankfurt, and so on.


And so instead of those ideas that an economy is made of human beings and stuff, we get a system that emphasizes making money off of money.

The typical person can't participate in that.

You'll be exploited by it. The intention is to pay you less while advertising how well off everything is. This is about how much me being alive means to the current manager:

Trump once again dismissed concerns from millions of Americans grappling with a cost-of-living crisis, insisting instead that the economy is the strongest “in history.”

According to Reuters, during the 30-minute Oval Office interview, Trump held up a thick binder of papers that he claimed documented his achievements since returning to office. When asked about rising grocery prices, the president gestured to the binder and said he simply needed to do a better job of promoting his accomplishments.

I, personally, have to find a middle avenue, because tackling this boondoggle in its own right is an immediate and direct concern, while trying to tell millions of Americans that "Capitalism" is unnecessary and disposable will break the cohesion. Like if it would suit me personally to launch a "Bolivarian Party", right now it is supported in the context of anti-imperialism, but its second pillar nationalization of infrastructure is not something that is a good fit for, I would say, the American crisis right now. A little further down the road, I think we need to find a way to bring it up, and so I appreciate this thread being started so we can figure out a way to do it that is educational and might minimize the knee-jerk rejections.


In my interest of finding any social contract I would like to participate in, I will say that I accept or prefer the existence of a government, because it has one primary role:



Protecting the weak from the strong.


In a "state of nature", this has the obvious physical meaning, of preventing armed gangs from harming simple folk. It, apparently, has to be explained that it also means within the system itself, the little people (labor) must be protected from power (capital).

Moreover, this is really the story of good and evil in humanity, found in the ancient writings everywhere there is writing, it is in the Abrahamic faiths and the Indic traditions, and I have heaps of ways of elaborating this. Instead of going into it right now, I'll say it's an important topic and perhaps some of us can come close to a common understanding.

[happyuk]

I think the problem isn’t so much capitalism or any other 'ism' I think the problem is human nature operating under various incentives.

Greed, envy, tribalism, short-termism, and self-deception are not inventions of markets and predate capitalism by thousands of years.
You can find them flourishing just as enthusiastically under feudalism, socialism, communism, theocracy, or monarchy. Change the system we operate under, and the same human brains will soon learn to game that system too—often just as destructively.

If you create incentives that reward short-term profit regardless of long-term damage, you will get reckless behavior. Always.

As an example of what I mean by incentive-driven corrupting behavior. Think how many of the brightest PhDs in mathematics, physics, and computer science are being pulled into finance—not to cure disease or build better infrastructure, but to shave microseconds off trading algorithms. Enormous intelligence and energy are devoted to activities like high-frequency trading—essentially legalized front-running by positioning yourself a few nanoseconds ahead of everyone else just so you can clip a tiny amount from millions of transactions. The benefit to civilisation is zilch.

You see this in law, where intelligence is spent in legal chicanery rather than genuinely resolving disputes.
You see this in politics, where talent goes into media and tribal manipulation instead of good governance.
You see this in corporations, where careerists prevail instead of products being improved.

What you're seeing is human beings respond rationally to badly designed incentives.

[Ewan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
Please discuss. Am I alone in what I feel I see?

No.

How-Capitalism-will-Destroy-the-World

[DNA]

And there in lies the argument of the enemy.

For all of their human trafficking, adrenochrome drinking and satanic glorifying there is the singular point that over population will result in the death of all life on the surface of the world unless a drastic reduction in human population is undertaken.

Say what you will but they have a point here.

[DNA]

You guys should read UFO contact from Acart by Wendell Stevens. A first person account of someone abducted out of Brazil in the 1940s..
He was taken to another planet and treated pretty well for 8 days.
For the record I believe it is a real account.

Why would I mention it here?
Because Acart isn't that far ahead of us.
Their government was crooked and full of sociopaths just like ours.
Think capitalism gone just as wrong as ours is today.
And then comes a Nikola Tesla type character.
A very advanced scientist who remained off the radar.
This scientist invented a weapon he used to manipulate and threaten the government to install him as ruler of the world.
He then implemented a new social system that worked very well.
Very well.
So well in fact that the people flourished and the population expanded exponentially.
At the time of the contact in the 1940s their population was in the 20 billions on a world no bigger than ours primarily desert.

So you see... A positive pro human government existed and then the planet got totally over populated.



This is the first-person narrative account of one of the earliest known abductions of an Earth human being by extraterrestrial space-travelers in modern times, and transportation of the victim from this planet to the home planet of the abductors. He was carried in a 30 meter diameter multi-level deep-bowl disc-shaped spacecraft from that other planet. After his arrival, he was kept there and was shown around the abductor's planet for eight days while they examined and interrogated him, and prepared a ship to bring him back. He was then safely returned to the abduction location near his home on the outskirts of Sarandi in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil."--front flap

[Anchor]

I think the problems of both capitalism and its polar opposite come down to the idea and practice that "knowledge is power" and managing advantage through deception.

People say the US has capitalism, but it is a poor fake.

The "markets" are based on managed deception.

That isn't a feature of capitalism any more than it is a feature of socialism - it is a feature of the deep state's tool of manipulation.

Neither system will work until the degree of truth and integrity in the majority rise, and the perception of the majority rises along with it so that deceptions are exposed.

Both capitalism and socialism - even in the extremes - can work if everyone knows the truth.

Right now I prefer honest capitalism as it seems to enable one to operate with fewer constraints and allows for "rugged individualism".

I see the perfect system as anarchy (as in 'an archon' or 'without rulers') where natural law prevails under love and wisdom and where each person takes the needs of their brothers as measure for their action.

Markets would exist with proper price discovery. Abundance would not be suppressed as it is today. The golden age.

[Jad]

Here is a video that falls nicely into this thread. It’s a really interesting conversation about how our economic systems were build from the ground up to keep us in debt.
If I can summarize everything in one sentence our Capitalism would be described as: “Socialize the losses and privatize the gains”

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rZL3U1etEW4

[shaberon]

Posted by happyuk (here)
I think the problem isn’t so much capitalism or any other 'ism' I think the problem is human nature operating under various incentives.

Yes, of course this must be originally true, and remains true in non-capitalist countries. We would want to compare progress by various approaches in these systems, to try to figure out what helps build a better world. The first reaction is Capitalism probably greatly amplifies this:

If you create incentives that reward short-term profit regardless of long-term damage, you will get reckless behavior.

Although the example of high-speed traders does not pertain to me, as a person with a science degree, that same situation is why I do not work in a scientific field. I found no industry that was doing anything other than as per that description. I won't sell out to help anyone make weapons or something that is going to harm the environment.

My neighbors have just been tabbed about $75 million to try to filter the PFAS "forever chemicals" out of their groundwater, scientifically developed and taken as capitialistic profits for 3M, while generously providing contamination that will then be socialistically distributed across the taxpayers who weren't given a choice about getting contaminated.


So, we are asking about something that was technologically impossible until the late nineteenth century, when modern financial systems partnered with international (or, nationless) corporatism, which is then able to tell governments what to do. And we find that very similar problems of industrialization happened in England and the United States, and through the unification of Germany and Italy. We effected a permanent change wherein we cannot function without very many specialized modern things, contrasted to the Amish. I wouldn't know what to do without this modernized setting. That's why I think we could never be genuine at Shamanism, whereas in Bill's travels he has encountered who knows how many people that would not know how to live like me.

I don't require capitalism to have modern things.

I would say I agree with the idea that "sin" is old enough to pre-date the knowledge base. As a student of the Rg Veda, I found it very clearly has certain values it seeks to implement in society, rebuking:


Greedy merchants, hoarding, profit motive

Money lending with anything more than a tiny fee

And correspondingly, a person stuck in Debt is called Dead, which it is very sympathetic to, and takes on as a spiritual struggle.


As humans, we are still largely dealing with the same thing, although the knowledge is obviously ancient, our application of it under the current regime is in question. The fact that it "drives innovation" folds into the "planned obsolescence" of these innovations. That alone drove Winchester out of business, because it made things of lasting quality, and so people didn't really need a new one. People who like those rifles can get one from their grandfather or buy one from the 1960s. That rifle ceased performing capitalized endeavors although it could be marketed an unlimited number of times. But most companies are handling something that will soon be changed or replaced. What if I don't want a smart appliance?


This is how it went in Las Vegas as read from Kathmandu:

'Worst in Show' CES products include AI refrigerators, AI companions and AI doorbells

The promise of artificial intelligence was front and center at this year's CES gadget show. But spicing up a simple machine like a refrigerator with unnecessary AI was also a surefire way to win the "Worst in Show."The annual contest that no tech company wants to win announced its decisions Thursday. Among those getting the notorious "anti-awards" for invasive, wasteful or fragile products were an eye-tracking AI "soulmate" companion for combating loneliness, a musical lollipop and new AI features for Amazon's widely used doorbell cameras.Shouting at a 'bespoke AI' fridge that also hawks grocery productsSamsung's "Bespoke AI Family Hub" refrigerator received the overall "Worst in Show" recognition from the group of consumer and privacy advocates who judged the contest.

"Everything is an order of magnitude more difficult," she said of the fridge that also uses computer vision to track when food items are running low and can advertise replacements.

The judges have no affiliation with CES or the trade group that runs the show.They say they make the choices based on how uniquely bad a product is, what impact it could have if widely adopted and if it was significantly worse than previous versions of similar technology. The judges represent groups including Consumer Reports, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and right-to-repair advocates iFixit."We definitely intend some shame," said iFixit's director of sustainability, Elizabeth Chamberlain, in an interview. "We do hope that manufacturers see this as a poke, as an impetus to do better next time. But our goal isn't to really shame any particular manufacturer as such. We're hoping that they'll make changes as a result of it. We're pointing to trends that we see in the industry as a whole. And a lot of the things that we're calling out, we picked an individual product, but we could have picked a whole category."Amazon's doorbells once again ring privacy alarmsAn array of new features for Amazon's Ring doorbell camera system won the "Worst in Show" for privacy for "doubling down on privacy invasion and supporting the misconception that more surveillance always makes us safer," said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Amazon's doorbells once again ring privacy alarms

An array of new features for Amazon's Ring doorbell camera system won the "Worst in Show" for privacy for "doubling down on privacy invasion and supporting the misconception that more surveillance always makes us safer," said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Among the new Ring features is an "AI Unusual Event Alert" that is supposed to detect unexpected people or happenings like the arrival of a "pack of coyotes.""That includes facial recognition," Cohn said of the new Ring features. "It includes mobile surveillance towers that can be deployed at parking lots and other places, and it includes an app store that's going to let people develop even sketchier apps for the doorbell than the ones that Amazon already provides."Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Deskbound AI 'soulmate' companion is always watching your eyes

Winning the "People's Choice" of worst products was an AI companion called Ami, made by Chinese company Lepro, which mostly sells lamps and lighting technology. Ami appears as a female avatar on a curved screen that is marketed as "your always-on 3D soulmate," designed for remote workers looking for private and "empathetic" interactions during long days at the home office. It tracks eye movements and other emotional signals, like tone of voice.The group says it is calling out Lepro "for having the audacity to suggest that an AI video surveillance device on a desk could be anyone's soulmate." Advocates acknowledged the device comes with a physical camera shutter but said they were unsettled by its "always-on" marketing.Lepro didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tech lollipop gets dinged for environmental waste

Lollipop Star attracted attention early at CES as a candy that plays music while you eat it. Its creators say it uses bone induction technology to enable people to hear songs - like tracks from Ice Spice and Akon - through the lollipop as they bite it using their back teeth. But the sticks can't be recharged or reused after the candy is gone, leaving consumer advocate Nathan Proctor to give it a "Worst in Show" for the environment."We need to stop making so many disposable electronics, which are full of toxic chemicals, require critical minerals to produce and can burn down waste facilities," said Proctor, who directs the Public Interest Research Group's right-to-repair campaign.

A spokesperson for Lollipop Star maker Lava Brand didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

A treadmill powered by an AI chatbot fitness coach raises security concerns"Worst in Show" for security went to Merach's internet-connected treadmill that boasts of having the industry's first AI coach powered by a large language model that can converse with the user but also proactively adjust the speed and incline based on heart rate changes. All that collection of biometric data and behavioral inferences raised concerns for security advocates, but so did the fine print of a privacy policy that stated: "We cannot guarantee the security of your personal information."China-based Merach didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Talking coffee makers and making e-bikes hard to fix

German tech company Bosch received two "Worst in Show" awards, one for adding subscriptions and enhanced voice assistance from Amazon's Alexa to coffee-making with a "Personal AI Barista" espresso machine and another for a purported anti-theft and battery lock feature on an e-bike app.

Cory Doctorow, author of the book "En****tification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" and himself a "Worst in Show" judge, criticized Bosch's "parts pairing" to digitally connect an e-bike with its parts, like motors and batteries, in a way that flags a part if it appeared on a database of stolen products.Even if Bosch doesn't seek to prosecute its own customers for routine repairs, Doctorow said it could always change its deal with them later, in line with his theory of the decay of online platforms as companies exploit the customers they earlier won over.

Bosch countered that the "Worst in Show" commentators were misleadingly suggesting the company is forcing consumers to utilize features that are optional and, in the case of the espresso machine, already popular.Bosch said in a statement Thursday "that earning and keeping trust with our consumers, especially in the areas of privacy and cybersecurity, is at the core of our company's values. Both Bosch Home Appliances and Bosch eBike Systems protect their consumers against unauthorized tampering or control through a comprehensive security concept, using encryption and authentication."

[shaberon]

Posted by Anchor (here)
People say the US has capitalism, but it is a poor fake.

Both capitalism and socialism - even in the extremes - can work if everyone knows the truth.

Right now I prefer honest capitalism as it seems to enable one to operate with fewer constraints and allows for "rugged individualism".

Can you explain what you mean by fake and true? Who is operating with fewer constraints?


Semantically, what I mean by Capitalism is an entity, the Bank of England.

That is "to include" its add-ons, such as the systems of the United States and that part of Europe generally called Liberal Democracy.

Secondarily, world systems such as the Bank of International Settlements, which arguably by dealing around the world, interface with non-capitalistic economies with an intent of converting them.

I see the perfect system as anarchy (as in 'an archon' or 'without rulers') where natural law prevails under love and wisdom and where each person takes the needs of their brothers as measure for their action.

That sounds like Bakunin.

This is also a term with semantic variations; Anarchy as a political platform has the context absence of a privileged ruling class, meaning a rejection of Oligarchy. It is because of this traced through the field of linguistics, that brings me to challenge Capitalism in modern English.

I don't promote it or don't say I am an anarchist because the word actually does have other meanings other than the way I use it.

On most of these things, I am rarely referring to philosophies like Adam Smith or Karl Marx, but to the tangibles such as cash, businesses, and laws. And so if we have an example of Fake Capitalism, is there a real one, or is it an idea?

The language is, of course, not mine to define; my usage is derived or is not original to me. You might be able to say it comes from the study of Oligarchy, which has a rather fixed meaning.

[norman]

It's not a pretty picture any way we look at it.

The dark monolithic gravity blob has captured modern capitalism like a meteorite (or small planet) that's crashing in, unavoidably. Central banking is as collectivist as it gets. The 'bankers' are the collectivists. That's why they spent a century beta testing political ideologies, systems and camouflage for their end game intention.

The "isms", all intellectual manifestations, are mostly the camouflage parts of that operation.

The "problem" isn't any of the isms, it's the (post flip) intellectualisation of life.

The bitter truth is. The emperor that Bill is declaring naked is what we call barter.

Barter began at the start of all this faithless and ever increasingly intellectual deceitful madness at whatever physical or spiritual point we became flipped away from living in pure faith, and became the blind following the ever increasingly inbred blind

As I began, it's not a pretty picture any way we look at it.

If fixing all this seems humanly impossible, you might be starting to get the message, or might be slipping into faithless nihilism.

I do understand the intellectual dilemma even if I don't stand in it, but I won't sit here swordfight arguing whether one persons 'god' is a self delusion or another persons' survival of the crookedest escape route is an extinction level fiction.

Even faithlessness has it's own intuition, does it not ?

[Nasu]

You’re not alone Bill. Like many human traits, my own feeling is that capitalism is simply an extension of trading, something we have done since the dawn of time. That said, like most everything else in our so called civilisation, it has expanded to match the size and scale of our modern tribes, in simplistic terms we’ve industrialised trading. As such, fields now have to be huge in order to make the farmer a living, same with mining, etc etc, each new expansion having corespondent environmental and societal problems.

Every part of our society has conformed to this model of unsustainable ever expanding growth, including us, the people. Not all, but many would define themselves by how financially viable we are, how much money do we make, or how much we have made.

The worst part of this internal capitalism is the gradual acceptance over generations of an ever growing tithe or tribute or tax. The simple equation being our income minus our tax and expenses equals our current value. And thus the game is afoot. Depending where you live, you will be working for approximately five or six months of the year for tax, then the remainder of your work and effort you may enjoy. So we become financial units to be measured and monitored by our respective governments or corporations that also serve them.

The one good thing about this model in my view is that it offers us an opportunity to test it, as we are. It has for example helped create other models that in my humble opinion have some great potential for social change in very positive ways, two examples being Trusts and cooperatives.

As a model goes it cannot last, that much I hope we can all agree on…..x….. N

[sdv]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FAnV9lwokOE

Note that the video is not AI generated. It is worth reading the extensive explanation underneath the video of how the talk by Eric Li was edited and why. Excerpts from the long summary:

While both China and the United States reaped immense wealth during the globalization boom, only one country saw that wealth uplift its broader population. China, the speaker argues, grew its GDP nearly tenfold and raised median income eightfold, all while rejecting liberal democracy and market capitalism. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy also expanded significantly, but its median incomes stagnated or declined. Where did the gains go? According to this perspective, they were captured by capital, not labor—fueling widespread disillusionment from Paris to the American heartland.

China’s alternative model: a state-driven system where political authority remains firmly above capital, in stark contrast to Western capitalist democracies. The speaker contends that China’s success stems not from conforming to the global liberal order but from rejecting it, offering a model of “globalization without globalism”—one that prizes national sovereignty, cultural integrity, and infrastructure-led development. From the Belt and Road Initiative to anti-corruption campaigns and poverty alleviation, the talk outlines how China has navigated crises that were expected to derail it and is now transitioning toward higher-value industries amid structural challenges. Meanwhile, Western nations—faced with internal discontent and elite backlash—appear to be dismantling the very global institutions they once championed.

Note that in the USA, the 100 wealthiest people have a tremendous influence not only on government policy, but who is elected for public office. In China, the wealthiest people have zero influence on who gets elected for public office positions and zero influence on policy and the implementation of policy.

[DustOff72]

Posted by Nasu (here)
You’re not alone Bill. Like many human traits, my own feeling is that capitalism is simply an extension of trading, something we have done since the dawn of time. That said, like most everything else in our so called civilisation, it has expanded to match the size and scale of our modern tribes, in simplistic terms we’ve industrialised trading. As such, fields now have to be huge in order to make the farmer a living, same with mining, etc etc, each new expansion having corespondent environmental and societal problems.

Every part of our society has conformed to this model of unsustainable ever expanding growth, including us, the people. Not all, but many would define themselves by how financially viable we are, how much money do we make, or how much we have made.

The worst part of this internal capitalism is the gradual acceptance over generations of an ever growing tithe or tribute or tax. The simple equation being our income minus our tax and expenses equals our current value. And thus the game is afoot. Depending where you live, you will be working for approximately five or six months of the year for tax, then the remainder of your work and effort you may enjoy. So we become financial units to be measured and monitored by our respective governments or corporations that also serve them.

The one good thing about this model in my view is that it offers us an opportunity to test it, as we are. It has for example helped create other models that in my humble opinion have some great potential for social change in very positive ways, two examples being Trusts and cooperatives.

As a model goes it cannot last, that much I hope we can all agree on…..x….. N

Yes, your point about the natural human tendency to trade things and own things might be the central theme of capitalism. But as Adam Smith noted, free market capitalism can function only within a moral and ethical society.

What we have today for the most part is crony capitalism at the hands of capitalists who are immoral. While there are examples of moral capitalists, and I have known a few in my life, most humans are greedy and cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

[Nasu]

Posted by DustOff72 (here)

Posted by Nasu (here)
You’re not alone Bill. Like many human traits, my own feeling is that capitalism is simply an extension of trading, something we have done since the dawn of time. That said, like most everything else in our so called civilisation, it has expanded to match the size and scale of our modern tribes, in simplistic terms we’ve industrialised trading. As such, fields now have to be huge in order to make the farmer a living, same with mining, etc etc, each new expansion having corespondent environmental and societal problems.

Every part of our society has conformed to this model of unsustainable ever expanding growth, including us, the people. Not all, but many would define themselves by how financially viable we are, how much money do we make, or how much we have made.

The worst part of this internal capitalism is the gradual acceptance over generations of an ever growing tithe or tribute or tax. The simple equation being our income minus our tax and expenses equals our current value. And thus the game is afoot. Depending where you live, you will be working for approximately five or six months of the year for tax, then the remainder of your work and effort you may enjoy. So we become financial units to be measured and monitored by our respective governments or corporations that also serve them.

The one good thing about this model in my view is that it offers us an opportunity to test it, as we are. It has for example helped create other models that in my humble opinion have some great potential for social change in very positive ways, two examples being Trusts and cooperatives.

As a model goes it cannot last, that much I hope we can all agree on…..x….. N

Yes, your point about the natural human tendency to trade things and own things might be the central theme of capitalism. But as Adam Smith noted, free market capitalism can function only within a moral and ethical society.

What we have today for the most part is crony capitalism at the hands of capitalists who are immoral. While there are examples of moral capitalists, and I have known a few in my life, most humans are greedy and cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

Very very true. But so what?

Is there another form or model that can come after capitalism?

Or is it binary, capitalism or co communism?……….X……….N

[shaberon]

Posted by norman (here)
Central banking is as collectivist as it gets.

The oldest central bank is not in England, but Sweden.

In older times, debt was a king's personal debt. To go to war, you'd have to pay for it yourself. This kind of central banking was not capitalist or necessarily "collective", as it meant a national currency for Sweden.

And so I think what we have observed is a change to the way central banking is done.

War debts shifted from being a matter of personal responsibility, to something strapped across a collective or state, capturing a whole population or economy.

England is a little different because BoE began as the exclusive handler of government finances. Otherwise, a king could be taking loans from small private banks.

"Collectivism" is the opposite of "nationalism", in the sense that a nation is a culture, a population sharing much in common. Such as, my state was created by the Revolutionary Oath. It means 100% compliance or we throw you out. And that was basically because there was only one culture.

Currently, it's a "collective", an imaginary line drawn around persons of diverse culture and widely-conflicting views, who, nevertheless, are all bound to the same old war debt as if they agreed with it. Most don't.


The United States began with heavy restrictions on corporatism; charters were limited to twenty years. This prevented any bank from assuming unwanted powers. The outcome of the War Between the States was Lincoln's Empire, meaning a permanent national bank and the practice of stuffing it with Treasuries, that is, making loans to the government, just like in England. It's an easy change to mark. It "flipped". Everything from that point has been further steps into "capitalism", which could not have existed previously, as the policies were rather like those of China.

It's now a meaningless collective where some loudmouths continue to spout Yankee Doodle like wars and genocide are a good thing, like that's just what you do, because greed and power rule the world and you just play along. What a nonsense. It maintains a facade that some people are ok, in material terms, but past that point it has no idea how to take care of people. Anything like that is your problem. It's effectively soulless.


I don't understand the "barter" remark. I live near a town that used to be called "Hemp", because you could pay your taxes in hemp. Taxes don't have to be monetary. I've offered myself as a unit of corvee' labor instead, but there was nowhere on the form to check this off.

I don't necessarily have an issue with a government, a central bank, or taxes, but so far I would agree that problems are caused by infusing it with policies describable as Capitalism.

[norman]

Posted by shaberon (here)

I don't understand the "barter" remark.

Barter is separation.

Part of how all this mess got started.

Faithless individual sovereigns can only barter, that's why it seems so obvious and natural to them (it's been going on a very long time). It comes with the faithless territory. Once flipped into faithlessness, the truly natural way became inaccessible to them.