OK - call me beyond cruel. It is the culling of the herd in terms of businesses

[Taverner]

The American Auto Industry will not survive, bailout or not.

The Newspaper Industry will not survive.

Media will further consolidate.

Manufacturing will not survive in the US.



This is Capitalism folks.

This is your invisible hand.

The culling of the herd - if you take a Social Darwinist approach to business, you get a Social Darwinist product.



Still want a Social Darwinist approach?

[polichick]

1. I want to live in a progressive utopia - can that be arranged? :)

[Taverner]

2. California, Oregon and Washington have to secede

Then, we have to create Ecotopia.

Still with me?

[polichick]

4. Sounds like my kind of place!

[Taverner]

5. It would be. My kinda place too.

Have you read the book?

It's really interesting.

[polichick]

14. I haven't read it - just recall the 30th anniversary edition.

[Taverner]

22. Check it out

Keep a grain of salt, preferably that organic free trade grain of salt, but nonetheless include the salt!

[polichick]

30. Okay! :)

[burythehatchet]

7. Caloreton?

[Taverner]

10. Calreton

[hunter]

53. Loathesome, just plain loathesome.

I don't want to live in white bread Ecotopia.

Much rather live in the world of Ursula LeGuin's "Always coming Home."

Ecotopia devolves into facism right quick.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. What manufacturing?

I look around, I don't see any manufacturing.

I see a lot of people so busy they have to drive and text and do their nails and read a paper while they're driving to work, a place where they must be so very important they are in flux and motion the whole time, and then they go home and get up the next morning and do it all over again.

But I can't see what they're producing.

Can you? Maybe I'm missing something.

[JVS]

6. The question is what kind of solution do we want.

A few months ago people at this board detested corporate welfare, and the heads of an industry showing up to congress to demand huge amounts of money would be derided as fascism.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Never have--I want compassionate, pragmatic Socialism

And yes, it is pragmatic to be compassionate. Taking care of the "least" in society in terms of health, housing, and education results in fewer disaffected people and more productive individuals.

[Taverner]

36. And I want compassionate, pragmatic Capitalism

Yes, I understand Socialism will promote our standard of living

But given our beginnings, and our ability to think outside the box, I want Capitalism.

[readmoreoften]

44. No such thing as "compassionate extraction of surplus value from labor."

Small merchant, medieval "burgher" capitalism aside, for capitalism to work, you'd have to change human nature. Capital is earned through surplus value which is almost entirely created by people who work--doctors, graphic designers, laborers, carpenters, architects, electricians, scientists, teachers--for the benefit of people who refuse to work: bank execs, stock brokers, trust fund babies. The idea that they all got rich being "hard workers" or that somewhere down the line in their families someone was a "hard worker" is a fantasy. The idea that the "money they provide" (i.e. the surplus value that they have already accumulated from past laborers) benefits humanity is pretty laughable. Swindling Peter to loan to Paul.

How does a "hard worker" develop a product and become 'independently wealthy'? They take out a loan from capitalists. Most of the time they get put out of business by some capitalist's kid with tons of time because he doesn't have to work, ivy league connections from his unearned 'legacy scholarship' and some play money to start a chain. Of course every now and then there's a token rags-to-riches story to oil the wheels of the fantasy, but for the most part, sooner or later Mr. "Hardworker" and Ms. "Ingenuity" either go bankrupt or have a group of Mr. "C+ Average" leverage them out of their own company.

Now, of course, you could have "strictly regulated" or "socially rational" capitalism where surplus value could be kept to a minimum and MOST workers wouldn't be brutally exploited but who would regulate it? Who will stop the 'not so nice' capitalists from buying massive amounts of media to support their interests? How would the working public (those not already bought off by the dream of becoming a bazillionaire from buying a 'hot stock') stop the capitalists from making backroom deals with politicians and funding arms dealers and so forth? With privately owned media?

Capitalism will always eventually veer towards corrupt plutocracy. Hell, even Plato's Republic warned that an unequal society with uneven riches eventually leads to plutocracy and then disaster.

Socialism, on the other hand, depends on nothing more than those who already do all the work continuing to do all the work--just owning the means of production instead of getting scammed. The problem with socialism is that there is no way for it to exist without completely destroying capitalism, and there is no way to do that peacefully, because lazy rich investors who contribute nothing will never accept that they are no better than the day laborer--and, in fact, they are often a good deal less hardworking and thoughtful than day laborers. So the rich will protect the surplus value their family has collected from workers--often for centuries--and return it to them in the form of bullets.

Heck, we find out today that 100,000 more were killed in S. Korea. So much for chiding communists for being "totalitarian". Both capitalism and communism are totalizing systems. No gettin' around it.

[Taverner]

57. Check out John Maynard Keyenes

He seems to know a way to make Capitalism work for almost everyone.

And when put into practice it worked - just see FDR and the New Deal

[Odin2005]

49. Compassionate Capitalism is an oxymoron.

Or else you are confusing "market economy" with "capitalism."

[Deja Q]

9. "Survival of the fittest" leaves very little for morality or ethics.

Depending on what the higher ups do, of course.

[Kutjara]

11. There are two problems with applying Darwinism to social systems.

The first is that the whole exercise is total bullshit. There is no evidence to support the idea that social systems are susceptible to a process of natural selection in the same way biological systems are. Yet that hasn't stopped an endless pageant of "experts" from applying "Darwinism" to everything from business to politics to bargain-hunting on Black Friday as if it's a perfect fit.

Secondly, even if some Darwinesque principle can be made to fit, there is nothing in evolutionary theory that says that the result of the evolutionary process will be a "better" organism (it will be merely better adapted to the environment in which it finds itself). If that environment happens to be an economic wasteland, brought about by rapacious greed and ignorance of the basic principles of social welfare, for example, then the "organisms" that thrive will be the ones that are best at exploiting the devastation. Who the hell wants to live in that world?

One of the big problems I have with "Social Darwinists" is that most of them have no idea about what either society or Darwinism truly means.

[Taverner]

12. You don't get my point do you?

I am saying this is the result of Social Darwinism

Not very pretty is it?

[Kutjara]

13. I do get your point.

I was merely adding a corollary about how the very "Social Darwinist" principles guiding our current society are fundamentally intellectually bankrupt. It's as if we've based our entire way of life on the ten-step teachings of a supermarket self-help book.

[Taverner]

21. Sorry then :)

[Odin2005]

20. Exactly. The Social Darwinists forget that natural selection can create altruistic behavior.

That is why many animals live in groups, safety in numbers and "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine".

[Greyhound]

26. It's most likely how we came to be. We're not very well-equipped to survive alone,

we had to cooperate to live.
:thumbsup:

[Taverner]

35. Atheists for Jesus here!!!

[Odin2005]

50. I've read a big part of our evolving big brains comes from needing to deal with selfish cheaters.

Basically, part of the selectionary pressures that lead to the development of our big brains and the development of language is the use gossip and the like to discover who is not doing thier fair share and thus is exploiting others in the clan so that freeloader is punished. The problem with Capitalism is that the freeloaders tend to be in charge and use psychological manipulation and propaganda to neutralize our natural BS detectors.

[MazeRat7]

15. Not unless we start producing something the rest of the world "wants"...

Or is that "needs"? I'm not sure, but "entertainment" (which is our primary export product) is not going to be enough. Sad how we have such great ideas, scientific minds, and people, but we cant seem to produce anything the rest of the world wants ? Seems to me the bulk of what we "want" we get from American companies that manufacture it overseas. That is the root of our trade imbalance.

Why is that ? Where did we go wrong ?

Peace,
MZr7

[Greyhound]

27. We failed to control our monetary system, early-mid 19th century.

This allowed power to concentrate and then consolidate thus stifling innovation.

[Taverner]

34. Yeah yeah yeah - you can always attribute it to something in the past

Whether it be Smoot-Hawley or Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific

But what do we do about it now?

[Greyhound]

38. Take it back. But that ain't gonna happen, not soon anyway.

They're gonna do whatever the hell they want to do and there's nothing we can do short of wide-spread resistance to stop them, and we're not there yet.

There are any number of ways to handle the problems we both have and have coming, but our "leaders" are part of the problem and they're doing very well. So, why would they act to change what works for them?

[Taverner]

39. Exactly - what serves the (1) most people (2) the longest amount of time...

... (3) in the least intrusive way.

Find that out and you rule the universe :)

[BrklynLiberal]

16. Are we all going to end up living like this??

[bemildred]

17. Good point.

Enthusiastic herd cullers always assume they are not among the culled.

[Taverner]

19. Exactly

Fuck culling

I want thriving

[stillcool]

18. The Defense Industry, Booze, Food..

Pharmaceuticals, Tobacco, illegal drugs and the poppy trade will all do very well.

[Taverner]

23. People need to eliminate reality

So be it

[Odin2005]

24. It is time for a co-op-based Market Socialism.

Take out the parasitic investor class and make the workers themselves the owners. Replace private capital investment with investment banks owned by various levels of government. It makes more sense to me.

[Taverner]

33. Problem with that is it relies too much on central planning

Central planning is the one no-no with markets, as much as we wish it wasn't

You have to have distributive planning, or the system crashes

[Odin2005]

46. Uh, the co-ops are exactly for the purpose of avoiding the diaster of planning.

I have no problem with a market economy, I have a problem with who owns the businesses. The investment banks would simply be the replacement for private capital, and would be fairly autonomous from the governments that own them. There would be investment banks at many different levels, local, regional, state, national, and supranational, so there wouldn't be an issue with centralized control.

[Taverner]

58. But co-ops don't work

Unless you like a subsistence diet like I saw the locals in Cuba have. Granted, the Cubans didn't starve, but they were none to happy to get rotten meat, moldy vegetables and a pound of rice every month.

[Odin2005]

60. What do you mean co-ops don't work? sounds like made up capitalist BS to me.

Cuba's problem is isolation by the US and being ruled by an authoritarian government, not socialism.

You must think Chavez and Morales are driving their countries into the ground too, I bet? :eyes:

[AndyTiedye]

42. Arrange a Buyout by the Union

Helping the UAW do a buyout of the automakers would be cheap compared to everything else being suggested here.

This would keep them in American hands, and ensure that the interests of the workers were paramount.

Otherwise, the Chinese will buy them out at fire sale prices, and you know what will happen to all those Amercan jobs then!

[Odin2005]

48. Exactly.

Also, IMO a co-op-based economy would have a bonus in having a less severe business cycle. I was reading up on basic Macro-Economics recently and read that a major cause of recessions is sticky wages, forcing companies to lay off workers. The sticky wages, of course are the result of long term contracts being written after long negotiations because Labor and Capital have different interests. If the company was a co-op in which some of the profits were re-invested in the business and the rest given out as yearly bonuses to the workers all the recession would do is cut the bonuses for a year or two, no need to lay people off.

[Taverner]

59. That would work

Of course that means (eek) worker ownership something so evil, so dastardly, it could only be called fully Democratic and Capitalist :)

[stray cat]

25. The same culling can apply to workers and people in general

I agree with you - pure capitalism is tough - I like some degree of a compassionate safety net myself without pure socialism.

[Taverner]

32. Pure capitalism is tough

I agree 100%

The job of the government is to ameliorate that pain

[anonymous171]

28. This is what we need to be saying.

[bemildred]

29. What we need is a lot more politician culling. Big politician culling events. nt

[natrat]

31. the banks are getting together and cutting off credit-small biz will be crushed

then big biz will swoop in and take those markets and property at rock bottom prices.

[Taverner]

37. Do we really have to be a debt based economy?

When has that model ever worked?

[leftofthedial]

40. at present, only the banks who have received a share of Paulson's loot

and Wal*Mart will survive.

[Taverner]

41. Yep - its the cash handout of the Century!

And that's saying a lot given we are only 8 years into this century.

[readmoreoften]

45. Very true.

[Waiting For Everyman]

43. You still think this is "normal process"??????

:rofl: There will be no "herd" left after this.

Where have you been? This is a giant, sucking, black hole in the universe, pulling everything into it.

You think anything's going to be left standing once we let industries start being pulled into this? How many months can we lose half a million jobs? How many million foreclosures can we take? Are you nuts? Or do you just not give a damn until it's your own ass in the gravitational pull?

Well when that moment of enlightenment finally arrives for you, remember that it's just the "culling of the herd". And kiss your own selfish ass goodbye too.

I'm sorry, but it's just time to snap out of it.

* If this is one of those "pretend to take a position" threads, then what I said is for those who do.

[Odin2005]

51. I think you missed his point.

He wasn't supporting the Free Market Fundamentalist nuts, he was calling them out to show what morans they are and showing that Social Darwinism is intellectually, morally, and practically bankrupt.

[Taverner]

55. Yup

You got it

[sarcasmo]

47. The question is, what will be left?

[Berry Cool]

52. All references to "culling the herd" offend me in this context.

People are not cattle. They're not just anonymous mooing masses. They are individuals.

[Odin2005]

54. And that is why Capitalism in inherently evil, it treats workers like just another expense.

Just another expense that must be sacrificed to the idol of Profit Maximization. Capitalism dehumanizes, it turns people into cogs in the machine.

[Taverner]

56. Capitalism is no more evil than Polar Bears

But Polar Bears do what Polar Bears do, attack and eat things. Its just their nature, not good nor bad just DANGEROUS if left unchecked in your backyard.

[Odin2005]

61. Or one should keep the bear away from town, much simpler.

Just the same way, the corporate elites need to be thrown out of the town that is human civilization.