Saving Capitalism - Hard Work Required!
It feels that our nation is splitting apart. While many folks are in the "middle", the voices that are often the loudest are those from either the far left who unabashedly proclaim that capitalism is evil, or those on the far right who express palpable fear that the Marxists and Socialists are coming to take away their way of life. As is the case for most "issues", reality slices in the middle. But until the good folks of our nation embrace two principles, the tearing of our nation's fabric will continue.
Principle One: Capitalism is astoundingly powerful. The power of the market to allocate resources is breathtaking.
Principle Two: Capitalism without restraint leads to horrible inequality and the system eventually crushes itself.
Communism requires a squashing of human hopes, innovation, and oppression (or murder). I seriously doubt that those who proclaim capitalism as evil would actually want to live in a communist system. The lore of goofy Soviet era economic follies are comical. A central planner says make a ton of paper clips. So they make a single one-ton paperclip. Job done! That nonsense won't work in a competitive capitalist economy.
At the same time, under capitalism, a dichotomy develops between those who own capital and workers. Karl Marx was right when he saw this process in action. Today, we see growing inequality as the top 1% of U.S. households own nearly 50% of household wealth. At the same time, nearly 50% of Americans have a zero or negative net worth. Civil unrest is starting to rear its head. The path we are on is not sustainable, and it certainly isn't fair!
Political candidates who identify as socialists, if you read their platforms, are really after a "repair" of capitalism. Bernie Sanders proclaimed during the 2016 primary debate that "we are a nation of entrepreneurs".
What we need is to embrace capitalism and put the fears of the right to rest. We must build on the system's strengths but tweak the system so that everyone shares in its bounty.
Folks on the right need to acknowledge that something is wrong with the system. Trump tapped into the pain caused by the status quo in 2016 and promised to alleviate it. But the policies he enacted benefited the wealthy. He stoked fear of the socialist boogeyman to gain support, yet imposed polices that only accentuated inequality to the detriment of many who supported him. Some believe that inequality is a byproduct of a robust economy. But a look at our nation's past shows that periods of strong economic growth occurred during periods of far less inequality.
Only when folks across the spectrum are willing to dance with their perceived devil will our nation successfully harness capitalism's innate strength and remedy it's allocation inequities.
quite possibly the most inane understanding of communism i've ever seen.
ReplyDeletewell, today.
well, this evening.
you appear to have learned what you think you know about the soviet union from a comic book published by the john birch society in 1961.
anywho, i'm pretty sure what you would call the 'far left' a sane person would call the center-right, and what you would call the right is, well, genocidal racism.
there's no left in the united states in national, elected politics. bernie sanders and aoc are true centrists from any proper perspective. their quite boring centrist agenda for the economy and the society is merely obvious political necessity.
you are what the kids today call a neoliberal: from your anodyne right-wing political stance, the center looks like it's on the left.
with that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, i will say that i have quite enjoyed your bike work over the years, from the store in mass during the 20th century and the vintage bicycle racing newsletter and onward till the whole scene kinda blew itself up and landed in a ditch; you helped give rise to the neo-classic bike renaissance: lugged steel bikes, vintage racing bikes, randonneur bikes, all that good stuff. it's simply that when someone leads with the 'i'm a lefty' and then immediately and seamlessly begins the rock-ribbed neolib twaddle, well, i get a bit peeved...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind bike biz thoughts on the bicycle blog.
ReplyDeleteBy putting a warmer imprint on Marxist ideology that led to countless deaths and despair, I fear that you have actually illustrated my point quite clearly. Clearly the solutions I envision are well outside of your comfort zone.
I actually should fact check the giant paperclip claim. That was from an econ textbook I read decades ago. But it certainly is a valid metaphor to illustrate the woes of central planning in absence of market forces.
Marx's critique of capitalism was that it contained within it the seeds of its own destruction. Absent market regulation, capitalism inevitably falls into boom/bust cycles, and with each cycle, wealth concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, until not enough wealth is circulating in the general economy to supply the basic needs of the population. At which point, social unrest/revolution happens.
ReplyDeletethe whole concept of the left-center-right political continuum grew out of social ethics research conducted by a professor at Harvard in the early 50s. Dr. Potter theorized that when presented with any given public policy question, people's opinions would cluster into a total of 7 - 3 left, 3 right, and center - position of argument
ReplyDelete<<< ======== left wing === centrist ==== right wing ========>>>
Utopian - progressive - liberal - moderate - conservative - reactionary - authoritarian
The central conclusions of his research were that:
People arrive at their position on the "worldview continuum" based on their stated or unstated responses to four philosophical questions, among which were - what is my purpose in life, is the Universe evolving, is there a supreme being, etc. and he proposed a "mapping" for taking the responses to these pillar belief questions and find the individual's location on the continuum.
And, trying to convince someone whose beliefs are different than yours using an argument based on the "facts" is basically a waste of time. you must appeal to their worldviews ! this explains why people are so "locked in" to their political leanings, notwithstanding the echo chamber and confirmation biases imposed by talk radio and social media.
I found the above to be a very useful insite !