My biggest concern with capitalism is not the class war going on now between the rich and the middle class... in fact, my biggest concern makes the class war trivial...
my biggest concern is the environment...
capitalism requires constant economic growth... with that as the ideological priority, the environment suffers...
we are consuming the planet the way a virus grows and consumes something until the carrier dies...
last year, we saw The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and this year we have seen the nuclear disaster in Japan... there is land in Japan that will be radioactive for the next 10,000 generations of humans...
what's next?
I do not want capitalism to fall into the dustbin of history as another failed ideology... I like it... but we need to find a way to regulate growth and protect the environment, or we are doomed...
Define the growth of flailing ideologies in terms choking and purple...
Capitalism failed when it failed these people - before they needed a social safety net, which capitalism abhors because there's no profit in it. It failed them because it is concerned only with profit. It is fundamentally selfish and cruel; it worships only growth, profit and greed. No doubt you'll articulately explain just how wrong I am, Lazy. Par for the course.
Well, I'm not familiar with California, but I know a bit about Auckland, New Zealand. Basically, there is no such thing as a truly free market, distortions abound and they are not all to do with inefficient public sector planning preventing the market from finding its "natural" balance. And is that "natural" balance even desirable?
Well, a great many people have done their level best to ensure that there isn't a free market. That doesn't change the fundamental forces in play: when something becomes scarce but stays in demand, the price rises. When You restrain price you drive scarcity. When you restrain supply you drive scarcity. All these forces will find a way to express themselves. All economies are similar, they all behave this way. There are not different kinds of economies, there are just economies with more or less intervention restraining supply, demand, or price.
Auckland's real estate market got totally out-of-whack when direct foreign investment was allowed and a lot of foreign money invested heavily in the NZ property market for various reasons (safe country, stable outlook, lack of corruption, etc, great place to live, attractive to Hong Kong Chinese fearing a Chinese takeover, etc. etc.). This was great for all the foreign people with money. Great for all the local people with property who at least on paper, found their wealth doubling, and local property developers, etc. But it has proven to be absolute crap for all the middle to low income people who grew up and worked in the city. Rents skyrocketed. Owning your own place has been put out of reach for a huge chunk of the population, etc. Hundreds now live in temporary shelters, caravans, garages, etc. NZ slipped even further away from being a homogenous society to a two or even three-tier society with even greater social problems. Desirable outcome? Nope. Not even for the locals with property, because who wants to live in a country like that?
Yeah, who wants to live in a safe country without corruption and free from tyrannical government? Um...the people who keep moving there? Just a guess. A further guess: they're coming there because the places they're fleeing are worse. But sure, blame it all on the bloody foreigners. And capitalism. Because capitalism allows people to see a need (housing, say) and fill it, making themselves better off in the process. Outrageous! Why, look at them all, building housing like that. Except they aren't—because someone is preventing them from doing it. Otherwise they would be. They are greedy capitalists, right? There's money to be made building housing. They want to make it. They will if you let them. Someone is stopping them.
By contrast, the Maori, who were granted riparian rights to the entire NZ coastline, granted public access to it in perpetuity. (hang on, I grossly misrepresented that, turns out it is more complicated, with these rights basically being stolen from Maori and vested in the government, same old colonial pattern of theft). ........Whatever, you get the gist. Think of the US national parks. Outcome: we have no private beaches. Everyone can sit on any beach they want to. Not all wealth can be quantified in terms of (private) money. In fact I would put living in a civilised society founded on trust, respect and fair opportunity much higher on my list of personal priorities than my own private wealth. Not saying your fair market ideal can't create that kind of society, but you've failed to convince me of how it would achieve this apart from the vain hope that everyone (even the disaffected) would/should buy into the logic of natural rights. But why would they, when you work your butt off to end up living in a caravan?
All systems seek equilibrium. You can try to restrain the forces that correct imbalances, but you just drive the system to a more-strained state. Eventually that will make the system less attractive and demand will drop, like what's happening in California. As for all those bloody foreigners buying up all the everything...we've seen this movie before. In the 1980s Japanese firms, flush with cash, began buying up US companies and real estate. They bid the prices up to absurd levels, but eventually you need to turn those investments into revenue. You need to sell access to them (rent, say), make them generate revenue on their own (like a company turning a profit), or sell them to someone else for more than you paid. The high price does not justify itself, at least not once you've found the last fool willing to buy it. The bubble pops and the buyers look stupid. Those investments—from Columbia Pictures to Rockefeller Center—look ridiculous now, but they had US nativists all up in arms. It doesn't help to tell someone in a tent that it's only temporary, when temporary could be ten years. But the underlying problem is fixable: let people build housing, and they will.
I gotta admire your naive faith in free markets to right themselves. And all the while these bubbles are inflating and popping, there is a lot of very real collateral damage. And no, your twisting my argument to say the reluctance to foreign ownership of real estate is ultimately xenophobic doesn't wash. NZ is a wonderfully cosmopolitan place with growing diversity. It's not the foreigners that's the problem here. It is not even the faceless foreign capital entering the country (which is neither good nor bad, they are just pumping their capital to where the yields are more promising). No it is the collision of corporations and individuals with vast amounts of wealth entering a market that was protected from them before. It's like releasing a cage of orcs among hobbits.
Ok, you might say, higher real estate prices merely reflect the premium investors are willing to pay for all those beneficial features NZ offers in an international comparison, so in terms of information, the market should perform better (more information means better decisions right?). Yeah, the only problem with that is the frame of reference for the investment decisions of foreign investors is light-years removed from the average domestic worker who just wants to have some security and a garden for his greens. You simply can't compare the two. The domestic worker doesn't give a toss about international comparisons when making this investment decision. But by allowing foreign ownership of land, you are effectively forcing the local lad to compete on the world stage against players with vastly more resources. I am not saying this is morally right or wrong. I am just asking, is this a desirable social outcome?
And the irony to top it all off, is that by screwing the social cohesion, which is undeniably happening, you are creating greater inequality in society, which leads to the very corruption in society that the foreign capital was fleeing from in the first place.
Well, I'm not familiar with California, but I know a bit about Auckland, New Zealand.
Basically, there is no such thing as a truly free market, distortions abound and they are not all to do with inefficient public sector planning preventing the market from finding its "natural" balance. And is that "natural" balance even desirable?
Well, a great many people have done their level best to ensure that there isn't a free market. That doesn't change the fundamental forces in play: when something becomes scarce but stays in demand, the price rises. When You restrain price you drive scarcity. When you restrain supply you drive scarcity. All these forces will find a way to express themselves.
All economies are similar, they all behave this way. There are not different kinds of economies, there are just economies with more or less intervention restraining supply, demand, or price.
Auckland's real estate market got totally out-of-whack when direct foreign investment was allowed and a lot of foreign money invested heavily in the NZ property market for various reasons (safe country, stable outlook, lack of corruption, etc, great place to live, attractive to Hong Kong Chinese fearing a Chinese takeover, etc. etc.).
This was great for all the foreign people with money. Great for all the local people with property who at least on paper, found their wealth doubling, and local property developers, etc. But it has proven to be absolute crap for all the middle to low income people who grew up and worked in the city. Rents skyrocketed. Owning your own place has been put out of reach for a huge chunk of the population, etc. Hundreds now live in temporary shelters, caravans, garages, etc.
NZ slipped even further away from being a homogenous society to a two or even three-tier society with even greater social problems.
Desirable outcome? Nope. Not even for the locals with property, because who wants to live in a country like that?
Yeah, who wants to live in a safe country without corruption and free from tyrannical government? Um...the people who keep moving there? Just a guess. A further guess: they're coming there because the places they're fleeing are worse.
But sure, blame it all on the bloody foreigners. And capitalism.
Because capitalism allows people to see a need (housing, say) and fill it, making themselves better off in the process. Outrageous! Why, look at them all, building housing like that.
Except they aren'tâbecause someone is preventing them from doing it.
Otherwise they would be. They are greedy capitalists, right? There's money to be made building housing. They want to make it. They will if you let them. Someone is stopping them.
By contrast, the Maori, who were granted riparian rights to the entire NZ coastline, granted public access to it in perpetuity. (hang on, I
grossly misrepresented that, turns out it is more complicated, with these rights basically being stolen from Maori and vested in the government, same old colonial pattern of theft). ........Whatever, you get the gist. Think of the US national parks. Outcome: we have no private beaches. Everyone can sit on any beach they want to.
Not all wealth can be quantified in terms of (private) money. In fact I would put living in a civilised society founded on trust, respect and
fair opportunity much higher on my list of personal priorities than my own private wealth.
Not saying your fair market ideal can't create that kind of society, but you've failed to convince me of how it would achieve this apart from the vain hope that everyone (even the disaffected) would/should buy into the logic of natural rights.
But why would they, when you work your butt off to end up living in a caravan?
All systems seek equilibrium. You can try to restrain the forces that correct imbalances, but you just drive the system to a more-strained state. Eventually that will make the system less attractive and demand will drop, like what's happening in California.
As for all those bloody foreigners buying up all the everything...we've seen this movie before. In the 1980s Japanese firms, flush with cash, began buying up US companies and real estate. They bid the prices up to absurd levels, but eventually you need to turn those investments into revenue. You need to sell access to them (rent, say), make them generate revenue on their own (like a company turning a profit), or sell them to someone else for more than you paid. The high price does not justify itself, at least not once you've found the last fool willing to buy it. The bubble pops and the buyers look stupid.
It doesn't help to tell someone in a tent that it's only temporary, when temporary could be ten years. But the underlying problem is fixable: let people build housing, and they will.
Yes, mean old capitalism failed to restrain California politicians from constraining builders from building housing, restricting the supply far below the demand and driving the cost up to the point that vast numbers of people are driven out of the market, especially in the urban areas. Imagine, making it difficult to build houses raises the cost of housing! If only this could have been predicted!
Well, I'm not familiar with California, but I know a bit about Auckland, New Zealand.
Basically, there is no such thing as a truly free market, distortions abound and they are not all to do with inefficient public sector planning preventing the market from finding its "natural" balance. And is that "natural" balance even desirable?
Auckland's real estate market got totally out-of-whack when direct foreign investment was allowed and a lot of foreign money invested heavily in the NZ property market for various reasons (safe country, stable outlook, lack of corruption, etc, great place to live, attractive to Hong Kong Chinese fearing a Chinese takeover, etc. etc.).
This was great for all the foreign people with money. Great for all the local people with property who at least on paper, found their wealth doubling, and local property developers, etc. But it has proven to be absolute crap for all the middle to low income people who grew up and worked in the city. Rents skyrocketed. Owning your own place has been put out of reach for a huge chunk of the population, etc. Hundreds now live in temporary shelters, caravans, garages, etc.
NZ slipped even further away from being a homogenous society to a two or even three-tier society with even greater social problems.
Desirable outcome? Nope. Not even for the locals with property, because who wants to live in a country like that?
By contrast, the Maori, who were granted riparian rights to the entire NZ coastline, granted public access to it in perpetuity. (hang on, I grossly misrepresented that, turns out it is more complicated, with these rights basically being stolen from Maori and vested in the government, same old colonial pattern of theft). Whatever, you get the gist. Think of the US national parks. Outcome: we have no private beaches. Everyone can sit on any beach they want to.
Not all wealth can be quantified in terms of (private) money. In fact I would put living in a civilised society founded on trust, respect and fair opportunity much higher on my list of personal priorities than my own private wealth.
Not saying your fair market ideal can't create that kind of society, but you've failed to convince me of how it would achieve this apart from the vain hope that everyone (even the disaffected) would/should buy into the logic of natural rights.
But why would they, when you work your butt off to end up living in a caravan?
Yes, mean old capitalism failed to restrain California politicians from constraining builders from building housing, restricting the supply far below the demand and driving the cost up to the point that vast numbers of people are driven out of the market, especially in the urban areas. Imagine, making it difficult to build houses raises the cost of housing! If only this could have been predicted!
Are you saying that California politicians are free to do what they want? News to me.
Yes, mean old capitalism failed to restrain California politicians from constraining builders from building housing, restricting the supply far below the demand and driving the cost up to the point that vast numbers of people are driven out of the market, especially in the urban areas.
Imagine, making it difficult to build houses raises the cost of housing! If only this could have been predicted!
3. Yes, I would tax tampons. Along with groceries and books. I would apply a value-added sales tax on everything. No exceptions.
The USA should have done this in the last century.
Generally agree, but there have to be exceptions for decency and humanitarian reasons. You shouldn't have to pay a tax because you needed surgery after being hit by a car. There is no need for the government to benefit from your death...so your funeral shouldn't really be taxed (not taxing the estate, yet collecting $120 on the casket...?). Medicines, sanitary products, personal hygiene... is the tax really going to make a difference?
We currently have over 18,000 individual taxing jurisdictions in the US. It's a disaster. One, standard VAT would make a ton of sense and save billions in compliance and collection costs...but where would those people work? I don't much care where they work, but as a friend of mine used to say, "turkeys don't vote for Christmas". It's hard for politicians to stand up to crazy...who is going to look thousands of people in the eye and say "I know this is going to be difficult, but it's for the good of the country....good luck finding a job".
The US needs an intelligent and fair re-design for all taxation. We have the technology to build compliance into the system but lack the leadership.
Since global warming is an existential threat, make gasoline $10/gallon and public transportation almost free. Give away guns...but tax ammunition at $5 per bullet. There is a lot we could do and should do...but we can't agree if our President has the first amendment right to send his hoarde to the capital to stop democracy by killing police officers....we're going to agree on taxation?
Final thought: If you add VAT to EVERYTHING...then you have to increase wages...it's almost a zero-sum game but has friction costs that reduce the value of the implementation. Smart policy is better than strict implementation.
But to do this it takes a lot of money, and one way to do it is to connect to other grids - which requires complying with regulation. Texans wanted cheap energy and they are fond of no regulations, so they didn't connect to other grids, and they didn't spend the money (to keep energy cheap) to add additional distributed capacity.
So to point this back to the topic, Texas built a system that fit their ideology and demand for cheap energy. It couldn't respond to an unusual event, because that didn't fit the supply/demand equation they had, so it failed when the unusual condition came along. It's not really surprising, but now that people have died it gets a lot of attention. It's also a bit glaring to have the 'independent/go it alone' rugged Texans calling for help and assistance, when they are famously unwilling to lend a hand to others when there is need. So capitalism and consumerism (and ideology) led us here. Now what? Will they comply with regulations that would allow them to interconnect? Will they build more capacity? Will their public utility commission actually do something proactive instead of reactive? Or will everyone forget this once spring rolls around and we have another thing to be aghast at?
I do find it funny that Ford is making a big deal about their trucks with onboard generators helping out in the crisis. This is a perfect example of how small distributed alternative sources could be used to improve the grid. This could just as easily be done with Many Toyota and Hondas, and Tesla / Nissan charging infrastructure could easily be configured to be a source instead of a load.
It takes money people are willing to spend, at least when they have it, and once they realize the value of having reliable power. As your business model demonstrates.
Texas' grid failed for technological reasons, and putting Bernie Sanders in charge wouldn't have prevented valves from freezing or power lines from snapping. Tying into a larger grid would help some, but Texas' grid is so large that the widespread failures at the local level would have still caused outages, and would have likely caused shortages in neighboring areas.
Heavily (ridiculously? absurdly?) regulated states have power problems all the time. As you move into residential power systems you'll find a lot of customers in California, the anti-Texas. I still have a lot of friends there and a topic that comes up on our weekly beer-and-Zoom call is the power situation—most of these folks have grid-tied residential PV systems, some with with battery backups—because the utility power is so unreliable. They aren't freezing to death because it's southern California and it isn't their turn for anomalous weather, but it's a problem they deal with constantly. People without the means to pay for that kind of infrastructure just have to cope, and if the freak winter weather had hit them instead of Texas—probably with identical outcomes—I doubt any talking heads would be blaming their regulatory structure.
Not quite sure why this topic has ended up in this thread but isn't the critical technical issue with renewables keeping grid stability? Remote, independent generation is all well and good but if you want an interregional grid to function, you need a stable source of power to cover your base load with enough resources available to come quickly online to handle peaks (at least as I understand it - total non-techie here). Just one more reason as I see it to invest in 4-gen nuclear. My wife is in the German Green party, so we are at loggerheads on this, but even in her party they are worried about grid stability now that renewables account for so much of the nation's generating capacity and both coal and nuclear are getting phased out.
This discussion wound up in this thread because it's fashionable to blame the Texas grid's collapse on capitalism (because everything is capitalism's fault, and if you can mumble the magical incantation "deregulation" you get bonus anti-capitalism points) so why not?
The grid's purpose is to distribute power from where it's made to where it's needed. Renewablesâat least distributed renewablesâaren't a particular problem for grid stability precisely because they're distributed. Grid stability breaks down when big changes happen all of a sudden, like a critical line or a point source going down. When a small draw turns into a small supply that's still a small change, even if it happens quickly.
To harden a grid against disruption you need sources you can ramp up and down quickly, but you need distributed sources. That way you can lose large parts of the grid but keep it online.
But to do this it takes a lot of money, and one way to do it is to connect to other grids - which requires complying with regulation. Texans wanted cheap energy and they are fond of no regulations, so they didn't connect to other grids, and they didn't spend the money (to keep energy cheap) to add additional distributed capacity.
So to point this back to the topic, Texas built a system that fit their ideology and demand for cheap energy. It couldn't respond to an unusual event, because that didn't fit the supply/demand equation they had, so it failed when the unusual condition came along. It's not really surprising, but now that people have died it gets a lot of attention. It's also a bit glaring to have the 'independent/go it alone' rugged Texans calling for help and assistance, when they are famously unwilling to lend a hand to others when there is need. So capitalism and consumerism (and ideology) led us here. Now what? Will they comply with regulations that would allow them to interconnect? Will they build more capacity? Will their public utility commission actually do something proactive instead of reactive? Or will everyone forget this once spring rolls around and we have another thing to be aghast at?
I do find it funny that Ford is making a big deal about their trucks with onboard generators helping out in the crisis. This is a perfect example of how small distributed alternative sources could be used to improve the grid. This could just as easily be done with Many Toyota and Hondas, and Tesla / Nissan charging infrastructure could easily be configured to be a source instead of a load.
Agreed. On both counts.