The Self-Destructive Nature of Laissez-Faire

[ComradeRed]

The problem with the "real capitalism" of laissez-faire is that capitalism is not self-regulating in nature. The product of everyone trying to get on top of each other is not a shifting equilibrium in perfect harmony...it's some guy figuring out how to beat the whole system and the system catching fire. Capitalists are "innately competitive"(as they themselves rant) and can't shut up and be happy with their money...the innate competitiveness of capitalism is self destructive!

The capitalists will keep accumulating money until there is none left even to purchase their products...then they will keep fiddling when Rome burns. They've done it before, they'll do it again. The inane bleating of pro-capitalist apologists that somehow the only reason that there is a consistently high correlation between them getting anything they ask for and the entire system groaning in collapse under the strain, is that the government is still around AT ALL, is absurd beyond words.

It's like clamoring for the invalidity of an experiment showing a linear relationship between giving plants less water and the amount of wilting...because all of the tests used water. What a joke.

[Exploited Class]

Originally posted by ComradeRed@Dec 6 2004, 09:11 PM
The capitalists will keep accumulating money until there is none left even to purchase their products...then they will keep fiddling when Rome burns.

Well this is really truly the biggest weakness of a capitalist society. Right now more so than ever with the modern day robber barons.

The Lower classes spend everything up, rent, property, taxes, luxury items..ect..ect everything goes up. X amount.

Now the ruling class retains X and Turns it into Y. They trickle down Z amount back through wages.

Z has to always be less than X, in order for Y to be successful (Y is profit).
If Y which can be wages, cost of operation, is ever smaller than X, then they lose money and that isn't good. They always have to pay out less than what they recieve. When the bottom end no longer can pay out enough X to maintain a stable and growing Y, then funds need to be found elsewhere.

Iraq is a great example, everybody thinks it is all about the oil. However it is not at all about the Oil, but about setting up new buisnesses and then having the oil exports provide for those long term buisness ventures.

You can always tell when a capitalist economy is done for, how it seeks out new avenues of wealth to maintain that Y.

To get money from us, the untapped Social Security, let's privatize it, invest it in their market system, into their companies. After we have pillaged it.

Let's privatize the public school systems, but not before choking it off funding so that there are no alternatives.

The Army right now is being largely funded by private companies through tax dollars.

Our tax dollars also go to private companie through weapon purchases. TSA, the whole baggage and passenger screening is going to be going private.

Check WWI and WWII, you won't see private companies suppling food to the troops or moving equipment, but check Iraq and you see Haliburton everywhere and into everything including mercenaries.

The current US government is creating the largest debt, raising the debt ceiling and still is not taxing the rich more to help fund it. Instead it is giving out corporate welfare to keep those failing companies afloat. It matters not to the ruling class, because they are set for life no matter what happens, they can sell all their dollars to other currency and live elsewhere, it matters not to them what happens here. So long as they make the most they can before it all falls apart.

[NovelGentry]

Z has to always be less than X, in order for Y to be successful (Y is profit).
If Y which can be wages, cost of operation, is ever smaller than X, then they lose money and that isn't good. They always have to pay out less than what they recieve. When the bottom end no longer can pay out enough X to maintain a stable and growing Y, then funds need to be found elsewhere.

This is a great summary of the situation which is clear and rather simply explained, however, I'm dismayed that you didn't bring in the second option of destroying productive forces, or even the possibility of exploiting old markets more thoroughly as Marx pointed out.

On an extended note, this accepted creation of debt is indeed sometihng which has allowed the U.S. to do a little as they have done in terms of conquest of new markets. In fact, I would argue that if this debt did not exist the capitalists would have already resorted to those other two options that I mentioned, in some ways they may have already.

[Professor Moneybags]

The problem with the "real capitalism" of laissez-faire is that capitalism is not self-regulating in nature. The product of everyone trying to get on top of each other is not a shifting equilibrium in perfect harmony...it's some guy figuring out how to beat the whole system and the system catching fire. Capitalists are "innately competitive"(as they themselves rant) and can't shut up and be happy with their money...the innate competitiveness of capitalism is self destructive!

The market regulates itself. No doubt you want some bueraucratic regulatory body to dictate people's wants and needs.

The capitalists will keep accumulating money until there is none left even to purchase their products...then they will keep fiddling when Rome burns.

No matter how many times we keep telling them that wealth is not a static quantity, it goes through one ear and out of the other.

They've done it before, they'll do it again.

Where and when ?

The inane bleating of pro-capitalist apologists

There is nothing to apologise for.

that somehow the only reason that there is a consistently high correlation between them getting anything they ask for and the entire system groaning in collapse under the strain, is that the government is still around AT ALL, is absurd beyond words.

We're not getting what we ask for and we're not living under capitalism.

[Exploited Class]

Originally posted by Professor Moneybags@Dec 7 2004, 12:04 PM
The market regulates itself. No doubt you want some bueraucratic regulatory body to dictate people's wants and needs.

Yeah it does and really well, like a fucking roller coaster ride and the people that are truly effected by it are the likes of you and me.

Sweet a recession out of nowhere, mass unemployment, we get to go back 3000 years in history and be nomads travelling for a job market. Oh boy tons of private living homes lost due to a market crunch. Hey outsourcing of jobs, great!

No matter how many times we keep telling them that wealth is not a static quantity, it goes through one ear and out of the other.

It is for the sake of liquid assests like currency, it is a static figure. Sure intrest, valueship, market potential, investments, loss earnings, depreciation, liquid asset world market value and all the rest is not static. However those do not trickle down to the lower class in greater amounts than what goes up.

Welath doesn't have to be a static amount to understand where wealth primarily sits and stays.

Where and when ?

Robber Barons, the Depression, The multiple recessions, world market depressions encountered from the 20s to the 50s. S&L scandals, The accounting scandals of the early 21st century. The collapse of the gold standard market, the silver standard....

There is nothing to apologise for.

I would fucking apppologize for the mass killings of indians to the brink of genocide for market and venture capitalists, the railroad industries almost extinction of the buffallo. The Ludlow Massacre, where capitalists sent in hitmen and burned women and children alive. The destruction of the enviroment like the Love Canal. The unsafe work conditions that killed 100s of thousands at the start of the industrial revolution. Expansion into rural habitats for natural resources that wiped out and moved local inhabitants and deystroyed cultures. The Amazon.

To save money, all the unsafe chemicals used in productions instead of using safer and more expensive methods, at the cost of the workers.

How about a system that depends on poverty at all times? Not everybody can make a livable wage, if there were enough 30K a year jobs for everybody, 30K would be worthless through inflation.

We're not getting what we ask for and we're not living under capitalism.

We are living under capitalism, we are not living under a totally free market. Which will never happen because the places you see free market societies are deystroyed and are 3rd world african countries and asian countries.

We are most definetly getting what we ask for, we want competition, there has to be winners and losers and losers sometimes carry 20,000 jobs which are people who all lose not at fault themselves, but they will suffer. We want a capitalist class, they are the ones that dictate what happens on a large scale market through venture investing and speculative buying.

Capitalism promises poverty. Poverty equals crime. Crime equals jail and now jails equal a new slave labor market, prison workers. Now you can compete with them for a job. As they work at 25 cents an hour for J Crew. If companies don't like the idea of outsourcing all the way to india, they can just lobby for tougher laws or laws that are do nothing like Drug Crimes, so more people get busted and go to jail creating their cheap labor force. The awesome part, that is now a competetive market for labor! They have to, in order to keep up profits to maintain stock prices, to keep investors happy and to cut back on labor costs.

Study 4 years, your own money for college, graduate then find out the market took a dive, your specific job target gets saturated, becomes a company side market, they drive down prices, you may get a job but at a lot less and takes you longer. Now you have to extend your loans, which means college costs even more as a loan is stretched out. You may not get a job or that market might be removed, not at your fault, so you have to take out another loan to go into a different direction or move and become a nomad with no stability. Nothing at your fault, all because of a market that has no heart. Yeah, you get what you deserve.

[ComradeRed]

The market regulates itself. No doubt you want some bueraucratic regulatory body to dictate people's wants and needs.

By any means, cite examples of capitalism regulating itself...perhaps America in the 1800s, which capitalism.org claims to be the "closest" thing(if not, actually it out West) to Laissez-faire; and look at what happened! The capitalists were killing each other! Why? To gain a monopoly! But wouldn't capitalism regulate itself to compete not to destroy?! Why would they dare to destroy each other?!?

And how the hell would it regulate itself? Through competition? I'm afraid that arguement is as hollow as the head which thought of it...why? Largely because it's unsubstantiable! Not to mention full of bullshit!

[Professor Moneybags]

Yeah it does and really well, like a fucking roller coaster ride and the people that are truly effected by it are the likes of you and me.

Sweet a recession out of nowhere, mass unemployment, we get to go back 3000 years in history and be nomads travelling for a job market. Oh boy tons of private living homes lost due to a market crunch. Hey outsourcing of jobs, great!

I suppose it would be wishful thinking to ask you to explain how and why this happens, wouldn't it ?

Robber Barons,

No such things.

the Depression,

Caused by government intervention, contrary to the fairytales you learned at school.

The multiple recessions, world market depressions encountered from the 20s to the 50s.

Thank heavens the market has a means of correcting itself. Pity no such system exists under communism, isn't it ? And those are just the recessions not caused by government running (and ruining) the economy.

S&L scandals, The accounting scandals of the early 21st century.

In a market so beset with pull politics, how you can call that "cause by capitalism", I can only guess. Do you think that just because a something involves money, you think it must have something to do with capitalism ? Talk about equivocation.

The collapse of the gold standard market, the silver standard....

You're not honestly trying to tell me you believe in the gold standard. The collapse was entirely orchestrated by interventionists to allow themselves unlimited spending. Wouldn't be for that welfare state thing, would it ?

I would fucking apppologize for the mass killings of indians to the brink of genocide for market and venture capitalists, the railroad industries almost extinction of the buffallo. The Ludlow Massacre, where capitalists sent in hitmen and burned women and children alive. The destruction of the enviroment like the Love Canal. The unsafe work conditions that killed 100s of thousands at the start of the industrial revolution. Expansion into rural habitats for natural resources that wiped out and moved local inhabitants and deystroyed cultures. The Amazon.

If care to explain how each of these phenomenon are linked to capitalism, then go ahead. I can't wait.

To save money, all the unsafe chemicals used in productions instead of using safer and more expensive methods, at the cost of the workers.

See above.

How about a system that depends on poverty at all times?

It doesn't.

Not everybody can make a livable wage, if there were enough 30K a year jobs for everybody, 30K would be worthless through inflation.

Wow. He's finally learning the futility of the minimum wage and "equality". Not to mention that 30k a year is far more than I earn and that a "livable wage" is subjective.

We are living under capitalism, we are not living under a totally free market.

Which will never happen because the places you see free market societies are deystroyed and are 3rd world african countries and asian countries.

I can't work out what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like another appeal to force. Lack of examples and evidence noted, too.

Capitalism promises poverty. Poverty equals crime.

No, it doesn't. Lack of respect for other people's rights equals crime. For all these so-called "capitalism causes poverty" claims, it's interesting to see how few people there are living in poverty in semi-capitalist countries relative to the people's paradises of North Korea and Zimbabwe. But we all know what you intent to replace capitalism with don't we ? A system where the government cracks down on criminals by committing all of their crime for them.

<snip the rest of the crocodile-tear-stained drivel>

[Professor Moneybags]

By any means, cite examples of capitalism regulating itself...perhaps America in the 1800s, which capitalism.org claims to be the "closest" thing(if not, actually it out West) to Laissez-faire; and look at what happened&#33; The capitalists were killing each other&#33;

No, they weren&#39;t.

Why? To gain a monopoly&#33; But wouldn&#39;t capitalism regulate itself to compete not to destroy?&#33; Why would they dare to destroy each other?&#33;?

They weren&#39;t.

And how the hell would it regulate itself?

Supply and demand. Ever heard of it ?

(I trust that I was right about you wanting to set up a bureucratic system to dictate this supply and demand, seeing as you deny it.)

Largely because it&#39;s unsubstantiable&#33; Not to mention full of bullshit&#33;

Thanks for the intellectual arguments, Mr. Vacuum-head. Now try this short online course in economics, and learn both how the market really works and how unrealisable the system you advocate is.

[Osman Ghazi]

I suppose it would be wishful thinking to ask you to explain how and why this happens, wouldn&#39;t it ?

It was the government&#33; Fiat spending&#33; rabble rabble rabble...

No such things.

Right. Stalin didn&#39;t exist either. He&#39;s a bedtime story to scare kids.

Caused by government intervention, contrary to the fairytales you learned at school.

Maybe it was exacerbated by government intervention, as the nations of the world attempted to pull themselves back up, but the cause was overproduction and the overvaluation of the stock market.

Thank heavens the market has a means of correcting itself. Pity no such system exists under communism, isn&#39;t it ? And those are just the recessions not caused by government running (and ruining) the economy.

Violence is also a self-regulatory measure, but that doesn&#39;t make it good. In fact, putting tons of people out of a job every time a mistake has been made seems like a decidely bad way to regulate a society.

It doesn&#39;t.

So everyone can be employed at the same time?

No, it doesn&#39;t. Lack of respect for other people&#39;s rights equals crime.

But what if poverty equals a lack of respect for people&#39;s rights? Then poverty would in fact equal crime.

No, they weren&#39;t.

Right...

I trust that I was right about you wanting to set up a bureucratic system to dictate this supply and demand, seeing as you deny it.)

Their role is not to &#39;dictate&#39; supply and demand, merely to determine what it is. (Ideally) Their role is to gather information on how many X&#39;s need to be produced to satisfy the demand.

And PM, every system regulates itself through supply and demand. Can you show me one that doesn&#39;t?

3rd world African countires are traditional economies.

50 years since African independence, this is no longer true. I would say that their economies are mixed capitalist/traditional. For example, in urban areas, very few people participate in &#39;traditional&#39; economic activities (by which I assume you mean handicraft, cattle and sheep herding, etc). However, &#39;traditional&#39; economic activities dominate the rural areas. It is very much like the situation faced in Europe during the industrial revolution, though with obvious differences.

[Professor Moneybags]

No such things.

Right. Stalin didn&#39;t exist either. He&#39;s a bedtime story to scare kids.

The existence of Stalin has nothing to do with the existence of so-called "robber barons". What exactly have they robbed ? (If it&#39;s the usual worker exploitation argument, then don&#39;t bother replying).

Maybe it was exacerbated by government intervention, as the nations of the world attempted to pull themselves back up, but the cause was overproduction and the overvaluation of the stock market.

Hold a minute- There&#39;s that claim again that capitalism is "too productive". I thought Marx said it was too wasteful and not productive enough...oh well.

Violence is also a self-regulatory measure, but that doesn&#39;t make it good.

Violence isn&#39;t a self-regualtory measure.

In fact, putting tons of people out of a job every time a mistake has been made seems like a decidely bad way to regulate a society.

You speak as if a job was somehow owed to them.

But what if poverty equals a lack of respect for people&#39;s rights? Then poverty would in fact equal crime

But it doesn&#39;t, so the point is moot.

And PM, every system regulates itself through supply and demand. Can you show me one that doesn&#39;t?

Communism.

[Osman Ghazi]

Hold a minute- There&#39;s that claim again that capitalism is "too productive". I thought Marx said it was too wasteful and not productive enough...oh well.

Are you 4 years old? Then why are you playing stupid games with me?

Overproduction of useless shit&#33; You of all people should know that when you produce more than what people want, the price will either fall, or units won&#39;t be sold, thus companies will go out of business. But I trust I don&#39;t have to explain capitalist economics to you, do I?

Violence isn&#39;t a self-regualtory measure.

Then how come every time a situation becomes socially untenable, violence also occurs? Answer: because violence has the potential to change a situation for the better. It is a tool through which people can attempt to regulate their society.

You speak as if a job was somehow owed to them.

Do I think that everyone should be able to pursue a living and only be fired if they&#39;ve done something wrong? Yes. Jeez, I&#39;m an animal.

But it doesn&#39;t, so the point is moot.

I don&#39;t think that&#39;s true.

Personally, I think that people become more self-interested out of necessity. For example, you would be much more greedy if you had to face starvation, exposure, etc. every day. That seems to lead naturally to the belief that you are more important than others, thus that rights of others are less important than your rights.

If that isn&#39;t losing respect for others rights, I don&#39;t know what is.

Communism.

See, you don&#39;t get what I&#39;m trying to say. Communism (read state capitalism viz. USSR) really did try tro regulate itself with supply and demand. It just had a horribly innefficient mechanism for doing so, namely a one-party bureaucracy.

[Professor Moneybags]

Overproduction of useless shit&#33;

Such as what ? Who are you to determine what is "useful" and what isn&#39;t ? What a pathetic little wannabe dictator you are.

Then how come every time a situation becomes socially untenable, violence also occurs? Answer: because violence has the potential to change a situation for the better. It is a tool through which people can attempt to regulate their society.

The "potential" ? No thank you, violence is what happens when reason fails.

Do I think that everyone should be able to pursue a living and only be fired if they&#39;ve done something wrong? Yes. Jeez, I&#39;m an animal.

So you do think that the world owes you a living.

[Osman Ghazi]

Such as what ? Who are you to determine what is "useful" and what isn&#39;t ? What a pathetic little wannabe dictator you are.

Okay, I&#39;ll try to explain this in a way that a 4 year old can understand, because you must be really high or something:

I&#39;m going by your concept of supply and demand. &#39;The market&#39; deemed the shit useless, not I. In fact, I was not born in 1929 and thus I wasn&#39;t in a position to enforce my vision of what is useful in my &#39;pathetic, dictatorial&#39; way (a moronic claim, as anyone who knows me would say.)

If I recall correctly, pulp and paper was one of the industries that was overproducing. It was too easy to get money to start compaines, due in part to overexcitement and a lack of understanding of the stock market by many new middle-class investors. But as many had made small fortunes investing in business, many others thought they could as well.

But what happens when more of something is produced than is needed? Hmmm...?

The "potential" ? No thank you, violence is what happens when reason fails.

Violence occurs when it appears that there is no other viable option. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

And what about Iraq, has reason failed there, too?

So you do think that the world owes you a living.

No. You see, &#39;the world&#39; is a rock. As rocks are not sentient or even alive, they cannot owe me anything. I think that people owe the other people in their society an opportunity to be successful. Especially, when you consider that people are born into situations not of their choosing. They have to face the fact that not everyone can take care of themsleves.

[Professor Moneybags]

In fact, I was not born in 1929 and thus I wasn&#39;t in a position to enforce my vision of what is useful in my &#39;pathetic, dictatorial&#39; way (a moronic claim, as anyone who knows me would say.)

You advocate dictatorship (command economy) and you are indeed pathetic, so the statement is not moronic.

But what happens when more of something is produced than is needed? Hmmm...?

It gets sold on the cheap.

And what about Iraq, has reason failed there, too?

Reason was never there to begin with.

<snip the smart-ass equivocation>

I think that people owe the other people in their society an opportunity to be successful.

In other words, you can demand things from people without a reason.

Especially, when you consider that people are born into situations not of their choosing. They have to face the fact that not everyone can take care of themsleves.

Making the able into thate slaves of the unable is not a good idea. I&#39;m sure you can work out why.

[Professor Moneybags]

I&#39;ve often wondered how society would function where everything is owned privately. I think it would be quite frustrating when every time you turn into a new street whilst driving in your car you have to pay a toll to whoever owns that street. Everytime you walk into a park, or down a path, you have to pay. The police would be privately owned and so work for profit rather than working for the protection of the people. I&#39;m sure bribery would be a large problem there.

I&#39;ve often wondered that too. Not that anyone here is adovcating it; certainly not I.