It's capitalism or a habitable planet

[goslow]

The laws were changed in favour of capitalism as against simply trading, or at least as against capitalism with benefits to the wider community.

They can and, hopefully, will be changed.

Yes of course its up to the government to make sure business is regulated to avoid the negative impacts. Where the arguments come is about how far you go with that, competitiveness, costs of compliance etc.

[syberberg]

are you saying that's good or bad syberberg???

That's a deceptively easy question, Neil. <wry chuckle>

Private ownership of business, IMHO, is a bad thing. But so is collective ownership if it's in the form of state ownership. (I can elaborate further if you'd like, but be warned that it could well turn into an essay on Neo-Anarchist Economics).

[21st_century_caveman]

Firstly, i'd like to say its great to have a reasoned debate about these issues which people often have a lot of preconceptions about and carry a lot of baggage which prevents then thinking outside the box and results in people accusing each other (often wrongly) of adhering to certain isms.

A lot of people seem to find it very difficult to accept that there might be some inherent problems with capitalism, when you point them out they lose all rational thought and accuse you of various things because they see it as an attack on their personal system of belief. You see much the same thing with some people when you question the legality of the war in Iraq or the actions of Israel in Palastine for example, you get accused of being anti-American or anti-Semitic.

To me capitalism can be seen as a religious belief system with money, private property, greed and markets etc all elevated to the level of gods to be worshipped, the same is true of other isms too, but obviously with different gods. Just like in religious belief systems there is also present the conviction that it is the one true system which everyone must adhere to.

I am not trying to argue that Capitalism is necessarily a good thing, just that it is the natural order of things, human beings respond best to ownership.

I think that is a mistake to suggest that ownership is somehow a law of nature, its like suggesting that human nature is to always be greedy and selfish whereas human nature encompasses many different behaviours and is largely dependent on the prevailing system, it just so happens that capitalism promotes greed and property ownership.
I find it hard to believe that there is any natural order of things, its all dependent on whatever system is dominant, for example it was the natural order of things before the 19th century to hold people as slaves, it was seen as perfectly natural. Under modern capitalism people are held as wage slaves and in order to keep them working the system must create desires and wants for material possessions for them to accumulate through advertising.
I think the inherent materialism of capitalism and its need for people to accumulate stuff might be one of the roots (along with lending money at interest) which creates the exponential resource consumption and environmental destruction which is associated with capitalism in its current form.

Complexity is naturally going to decrease and it is much more likely that we will end up with much more local economies thriving on the back of private ownership.

I think i would tend to agree with that but say that the way forward may be something halfway between private and public ownership, some kind of cooperative ownership perhaps.

I don't see a problem with a definition being narrow, a good definition is narrow, definitions by their very nature are never perfect and are only a set of words to help individuals understand. I happened to borrow this particular definition from another website. I think many people in society confuse capitalism, with democracy and globalism and industrialism and monetarism and many other isms. So I will have a go at my own definition of Capitalism.

I agree, definitions are never great and many of these issues defy precise definition.

Capitalism is the employment of capital to make more capital, capital in one form or another being essentially stored or usable energy, capitalism may or may not need a currency to work and can be a force for good or bad in society.

I can see what you're getting at, and i don't know if this was the problem that occurred to you, but it strikes me as slightly impossible within conservation of energy to use energy to make more energy. I'm guessing thats why the capital in capitalism usually refers to money which can be used to make more of itself and also be conjured into existence.

(I can elaborate further if you'd like, but be warned that it could well turn into an essay on Neo-Anarchist Economics).

I would certainly like you to elaborate further, i find anarchism/libertarian socialism quite interesting and i feel that if humans are to make any progress in living together peacefully on this planet then we need to move towards a non-hierarchical, truly democratic, non-authoritarian society self-organised from the bottom up.

[Neily at the peak]

21st century caveman.

I too am delighted to to have a reasoned debate about these issues and yes I do have a lot of preconceptions and carry a lot of baggage but who doesn't. I like to think outside of the box and I like to listen to what other people say, even when it challenges my belief systems, I have already moved a considerable distance from my beliefs as a teenager. The great thing about having this debate online is that you can stand aside from the emotions that may get in the way of reasoned debate, were we in the pub, in the commons or on question time!

There are certainly inherent problems with capitalism, the promotion of greed and selfishness being obvious, the destruction of the environment being important and the depletion of resources being of great concern to the majority of us on these forums.

The problem is the vast majority of people aspire to private ownership of something, this has been so for thousands of years, long before fossil fuels, in fact it probably goes back 10,000 years to the first agricultural revolution. Until then society had been a society of hunter gatherers, for which there is a lot to be said in terms of impact and possibly happiness. But since that point people have become increasingly specialised focussing on food production or weaving or joinery or some other such trade, it is these trades that enable them to earn capital to provide for their basic needs.

The only reason that the capital in capitalism usually refers to money is because it is the one form of capital that is directly exchangeable with all other forms of capital. The other basic forms being, land, labour, buildings and energy.

I think what I am trying to say overall is that in future capitalism will look very different, we can expect to see an end to the consumer society, but capitalism is likely to provide a more attractive alternative (for me) than the only other viable option (as far as I can see) which is a return to every man for himself (or clan) hunter gatherer type society. If you and Syberberg can explain your viable alternative I would really appreciate to hear your visions.

Neil

[isenhand]

The problem is the vast majority of people aspire to private ownership of something,

Although I too agene that capitalism has a number of problems and I would add that these problems present a serious danger to out long term survival (hence my interest in an alternative system). I disagree with this point. I think this is muddling up two things. People have a basic need for security, for feeling safe. As capitalism promote greed and selfishness people achieve the feeling of security though ownership. Other societies at other times achieve security through other means (such as forming clans). Thus, I think the need for security is mixed up here with desire for ownership. I don?t see people as having an inherent need for owning property but for security; owning property form the means in our society.

but capitalism is likely to provide a more attractive alternative (for me) than the only other viable option (as far as I can see) which is a return to every man for himself (or clan) hunter gatherer type society.

I can see a better alternative than that!

.ui

[kenneal - lagger]

I am coming round to thinking that we need a mixture of capitalism and community. We own a lot of things that could and should be shared, lawnmowers, DIY tools, gardening tools, cars and washing machines for instance. These are best shared in a small community as is land for growing. It can be worked better by hand in a community but a community also gives greater security of ownership.

One's house, I think, should be personally owned for your own family security. One that is part of a small community but personally owned again gives that security. That's how rural settlements evolved. And that is how eco villages are evolving.

How this translates to city living I don't know. Perhaps a small community in a city might be hundreds of houses rather than ten or twenty in a rural setting.

My thoughts for what they are worth.

[RogerCO]

...

Capitalism is the employment of capital to make more capital, capital in one form or another being essentially stored or usable energy, capitalism may or may not need a currency to work and can be a force for good or bad in society.

I can see what you're getting at, and i don't know if this was the problem that occurred to you, but it strikes me as slightly impossible within conservation of energy to use energy to make more energy. I'm guessing thats why the capital in capitalism usually refers to money which can be used to make more of itself and also be conjured into existence.
...

Put those two thoughts together and you have the nub of the problem with capitalism - in order not to violate conservation of energy it has to import energy (stored or embodied in stuff or resources) into its system - wherever you draw the boundaries of that system.

While the boundaries of various different more or less self contained capitalist systems were significantly smaller than the surface of the planet this was not seen as a problem. We now reach the stage however where the boundaries of the (Western) capitalist system are global.

For some time (since 17th C ?) capitalism has continued to operate through focusing on money, which is not conjured into existence out of nothing but is created as future debt - in other words by borrowing against the work (energy) of future generations.

I remember first being a bit shocked in the 70's when I started paid work to discover that my National Insurance contributions were actually being used to pay for today's pensions and not a saving for my future - if I wanted a pension I was reliant on the generation of workers during my old age continuing to pay NI. But I came to accept that that was the way of the world and put my nose down to the grindstone and forgot about it.

We now reach the stage where not only does the continued operation of a capitalist system (useful definition Neil - "the use of capital to make more capital" - thanks) have a call on all of the earth's natural resources (Limits to Growth) but it also contains a debt mountain that, if it couldn't be serviced through consumption of resources, would take at least two working generations to pay off (need to check this back of fag packet calculation) and whilst I can believe that my children might 'pay' for my old age it is hard to believe that my unborn great grandchildren can be relied on. (Rights of Future Generations)

Hey ho, gotta smile

[kenneal - lagger]

All life has to import energy to live. Plants do it, in the main, by using solar energy, while animals, at the lowest level prey on plants, and at the higher levels prey on other animals. So we are all beholden to solar energy.

Human animals go one step furhter because we cook our food which uses more stored solar energy. Once we start making things we begin to use more energy, at first only human energy but then as metals and machines come into picture, we start using stored solar energy again.

Any system, be it capitalist or socialist or plant, uses outside energy. The capitalist system used to be about the storing of that energy in commodities or manufactured goods to increase capital. It has now become the accumulation of noughts behind a number in a ledger somewhere by any means, manufacturing or betting on the future price of a commodity or whether or not someone can repay a dodgy loan.

Capitalism started to get into trouble when it lost sight of what capital is.

[RenewableCandy]

Capitalism started to get into trouble when it lost sight of what capital is.

That's a profound thought for a Friday afternoon...

[fifthcolumn]

A lot of woolly thinking here.

Capitalism is simply the means of efficiently allocating resources by means of price. It's that simple.

All the other talk of ownership et cetera is politics.

The problems with capitalism are very simple and there are two main ones:
1. It doesn't deal with externalities very well. The owners of businesses don't want to pay for things which lower their profits and don't provide them with any means to cover it. This is the crux of our problem right now in peak oil: nobody wants to invest in a huge network to replace the oil based huge network we have.
2. Capital tends to gather in piles till the piles are bigger than the real economy via fractional reserve banking and other methods. This leads to the eventual corruption of the whole system as speculation becomes rampant and the owners of the capital seek the means to profit from scarcity. This again is a problem with peak oil: now that oil is becoming scarcer, why should the producers not hold back supplies so the price rises and they make even more money.

Unfortunately we have only a partial solution to #1 and it's very inefficient. It's government meddling. Doesn't work very good and can be counterproductive.
We don't have any solution to #2 unless we want to start creating wealth taxes. The problem with that, however, is that nobody would risk investing their capital and nothing would be done.

So I am afraid, people, that we just have to let the system crash and reboot, providing a new future from scratch once more in what has been referred to as "creative destruction"

[Papillon]

So I am afraid, people, that we just have to let the system crash and reboot, providing a new future from scratch once more in what has been referred to as "creative destruction"

Fascinating, thank you Fifthcolumn.

What I find frustrating is the prospect of the system only "half crashing" (ie depression, and/or recurring recessions), just to go back to the same pattern until it has truly consumed (eventually) planet Earth's non-renewable resources. I see this as a real possibility. Us humans, we just don't learn, do we? Get my drift?

[isenhand]

A lot of woolly thinking here.

Capitalism is simply the means of efficiently allocating resources by means of price. It's that simple.

All the other talk of ownership et cetera is politics.

Not quite, capitalism is about private ownership. What you are talking about is free market.

The problems with capitalism are very simple and there are two main ones:
1. It doesn't deal with externalities very well. The owners of businesses don't want to pay for things which lower their profits and don't provide them with any means to cover it. This is the crux of our problem right now in peak oil: nobody wants to invest in a huge network to replace the oil based huge network we have.
2. Capital tends to gather in piles till the piles are bigger than the real economy via fractional reserve banking and other methods. This leads to the eventual corruption of the whole system as speculation becomes rampant and the owners of the capital seek the means to profit from scarcity. This again is a problem with peak oil: now that oil is becoming scarcer, why should the producers not hold back supplies so the price rises and they make even more money.

Those are problems that come out of our current socioeconomic system. They not the only problems. ?

Just putting my engineering hast on here; if the system itself has fundamental faults then you need to replace the actually system. You cann't patch up a capitalist free market system, it needs replacing.

You have correctly identified our current system as resource allocation system (and there?s a lot I could say about that) so, what we should then look at is another way to allocate resources that does not rely on free market not capitalism.


.ui

[isenhand]

So I am afraid, people, that we just have to let the system crash and reboot, providing a new future from scratch once more in what has been referred to as "creative destruction"

If we wish to have a better future we need to sow the seeds today. Also, I think we can actually start to move to a sustainable economy without having to have a crash.

.ui