@findinglisp: sorry if i was a little harsh at you. I am not capitalist, but i see capitalism as a tool that should be used to make society function.
The argument for free market usually goes like this: If something is desired, people can make more profit, and so make more, since more people/more is available, when there is too much, they cannot ask as much, and the production/availability of a service goes down. And that way, the supply always meets demand as much as possible.
Frankly this argument is overrated, although it is right to like a simple theory with a simple consequence, it is not right to overgeneralize it. It is not like a mathematical statement, absolutely true when you assume the axioms, and sometimes it plain doesn't apply. Frankly industries in the US
abuse it's popularity because they profit from it's flaws. That is part of why i called findinglisp 'dogmatic', what you said are often handles for this sort of thing. Still i was strongly exaggerating for doing so, at that point at least, also abuse of an idea is no argument against an idea.
But the cattle holders and field demonstrates a way that it doesn't work. If there is more demand and supply and too little field, each cattle holder is still enticed to having more cattle, even though that would decrease the total production of the field, decreasing supply. Of course this particular example is solvable, there is probably a reasonably fair way to divide the land, like by divisioning it over the population and allowing the population to sell it to each other, or by doing the same over licensing a number of cows. (Both of these having their advantages.)
This, of course also needs some authority that is obligated too.
Pollution is actually quite analogous to the cattle holders, and indeed, stuff like carbon trading is much like licensing of cows. Pollution cannot be adressed by people suing over "property violations", because it is not always local, and even if it is, it often can be made global, for instance, increasing the length of a smoke stack. It's causes cannot always be easily pointed out. In fact, the most problematic pollution is global or international, and this means you would have to sue all industries in a nation. Not very practical.
Secondly almost none of the oceans/seas of the world have been divided into ownership, most of it doesn't even belong to any nation, most countries controlling fishing do so by licensing. This does not give much incentive for any individual fisher to fix pollution of their water, or to try improve the quality of their fishing area. Any attempt at division would be very difficult.
Yet another problem trying to prevent pollution entirely by litigating is that lawyers constantly push and pull at logic, rethoric and laws. And they're expensive too.
So much for stuff analogous to the cattle in this post, now for things to which the argument for free market does not apply.
For instance, if the competition is mostly over quality, the customers must actually recognize it. Sometimes, when it is really technical, this is very difficult for them/they don't do it. An example would be MS near monopoly on the desktop, people just don't compare Linux and Windows. Although anticompetitive tactics likely also play a role, of course any (reasonable)regulation against these would also be against the liberty of some persons/organizations, and ones probably exist that most people find fair.
Mobile phones is also an example, these are often bundled with service. I am referring to the useless proliferation of power connectors. Luckily
the EU is fixing this. In general, i don't think capitalism promotes compatibility, any competitor wants his product compatible with others but not vice versa.
(Aside)As an example where EU restricting something is more dubious:
the efficiency of lights (Often erroneously called ban on lightbulbs, that is just an effect of lightbulbs inefficiency.) The problem is that the quality of the light really is different, non-lightbulb light might look white, but doesn't have a smooth spectrum, but such that the cones in our eyes see white. Materials, however, do absorb differently over other frequencies then our cones, so we see the object differently based on other parts of the spectrum.
Still, the regulation might be incentive for creation of more efficient lights that actually do have the quality of the lightbulb.
Another example where things can well be too complicated for consumers, is insurance, insurance companies can put all sort of stuff in small lettering for consumers to fall over. The overall sum of things for consumer to track can also be too high.
And there is the question how long it takes to settle into a place where supply and demand meet. There is the issue whether some projects are too large to be funded by anyone in particular.
There is the problem of labor also being a part of supply and demand, and the disparity of the ones doing the work and the ones in control and getting the profit. If there is too much labor, there is poverty in 'pure' capitalism, and there is no reason to assume that there is always more work to be invented. Also, there is the question whether it is desirable to invent ever more work. Isn't the point to get the work done, and to work to live? And is supply and demand really a fair way of determining what the earnings of a person should be? Only up to a point i'd say. More egreous is what education people can get from their money, as that affects their chances to change their position. (And 'commercial scholarships' are bound to come with shackles.)
Further, there might be a limited supply of educated people, and if they follow greed those will do the more profitable problems of the rich first. Still if a government wanted less-profitable problems solved, incentivising it and using capitalism is a way. However, universities working not exactly via capitalism have proven their worth in many many things.
findinglisp wrote:Only liberty and capitalism, expressed as the free trade among individuals, have demonstrated consistent results of raising the standards of living.
findinglisp wrote:Sure, there is free trading between individuals. Corporations are simply collections of individuals who come together to run a (generally larger) business. The workers (and even "management" is a "worker") are freely trading their time and energy to the corporation.
Note the tone though, "individuals expressing themselves by freely trading" vs most of reality; people working for corporations they have no control and possibly no bargaining power over,mostly following it's orders.
As for Einstein, i hope i didn't imply 'look here is Einstein, he must be right'. I do think is insight of the consequences of social things, and overestimate the selflessness of people. . (Well, smart people nearly always project other people as being smarter then they actually are.) Any 'system of society' shouldn't focus on changing people, in finding a way to let them interact such that resulting system is stable and desirable. But i think he was thinking about consequences of the free market applied everywhere, and seeing that it was naive to think that that would always work.
Btw in case you saw
this vid i posted before, (you only have to read to link OP afaiconcerned.) i like his 'communistic company' idea, such an idea could entirely work within a capitalistic scheme too..
My conclusion is that, even if you are a completely pro-capitalist, focusing completely on liberties glosses over restrictions that are actually in the system you stand for. And property rights are restrictions, and when there is something new to own, or something not yet owned, there has to be some stewardship so we don't fuck it over. Focusing only on liberties might cause one to only see it something to own rather then other ways, like licensing, an hybrid between licensing and ownership, or something i haven't even thought of.
Paul wrote:For themselves, or for others? What if the others have different ideas?
Public discussion, democracy, sometimes court. But you definitely never follow any ideas to improve any situation, what if others have different ideas?
Edit: and oh, yeah current stock exchange, relative variation in month scale: Monsanto ~30%, Philips ~25%, Intel ~25% McDonalds ~10%, these numbers are ridiculous and completely not related to the actual position of the corporations. I have
no clue why these fluctuate so much. Stock exchanges grew from something useful, investing in an enterprise repaying itself if the investor was correct in thinking the idea would work, by contrast stock exchanges seem mostly for milking, while fluctuating (presumably)completely due to speculation.
I am not against investment, and even people selling their investment to other people, but something is wrong.. And it isn't investment if a company is just chugging along with no real growth, then the company didn't need external money in the first place, and is just screwing over it's customers buy having to pay the 'investment' back plus a little.
. Freedom and all is nice, but you have to be able to afford it. Basically, optimize weighedly freedom and quality of life. Sure, you can't trust government blindly, so then don't trust it blindly.. (if you use reddit: a reddit thread exists.)
Most "right-libertarians" actually fall somewhere on the spectrum from "conservatives" to true "libertarians." This is also not unique to right-libertarians or left-libertarians, however, but also applies to "conservatives," "liberals," "progressives," etc. All political tags are approximate to one degree or another. While I think ideas can be tagged with appropriate labels ("libertarian" or "socialist" or "fascist," for instance), very few people are absolutists with respect to any one particular political ideology.
13 December 1968, i myself am not a hardcore collectivist. Frankly i think calling it 'hardcore collectivist' you are just dodging the argument. Nor is this the idea that we can 'optimize' human life on earth, it is about avoiding ruin.
BTW, I don't think it's dogmatic to look at history and learn from the demonstrated results over the long run. I simply claim that, like the old saw, capitalism and representative democracy are the worst forms of social organization, except for all the others.
The so-called "robber barons" arose out of government grants of land and money to railroad companies, etc. Serfdom, of course, is purely a feature of (feudal) government. Economic booms and busts are a result of monetary manipulation by government-privileged banks (by monopoly central banks, nowadays). None of which could exist without government aid.