What are your views on capitalism? Do you think that it is awesome or that it is not awesome?

I don't know about you guys but I personally think living in a capitalist nation is pretty sweet. I've seen videos of places that are less capitalist and they also seem significantly less awesome. Everyone is always sick and rioting and starving and on fire. Capitalism rocks.

Please share your opinions on this important topic so that we may discuss it until everyone has agreed on a singular viewpoint.

Funny, I was considering this topic the other day.

Let's consider capitalism for a moment, shall we? Capitalism is individual-centered, all motions are to benefit the individual, while this is inefficient as a whole it works remarkably well. I propose that it is BECAUSE of the fact that it is individual-centered that it works.

It is a documented theory that all people, regardless of their situation or achievements, become dissatisfied and desire to have more. Putting this into the equation one can see that people who are dissatisfied with their living conditions can only take this problem up with his/herself (or their environment/situation). As should be obvious, this stress either is directed inwardly or outwardly at one's surroundings.

The thing is, when you have a life regulated by the government, problems or conditions in your life become channeled to the government, and I think this may cause grinding between the people and the leaders of society, and eventually, the collapse of a state.

Agree/disagree? It's a rough idea and it's poorly written.

Every heard of Western Europe?

Yes, I have heard of the region know as Western Europe. Please feel free to elaborate on your position.

I'm a huge fan of capitalism simply because there is not a better - either tested or highly feasible - system at present to organize the economy. When I speak of capitalism I refer to capitalism with a fair amount of government involvement (not including direct control over production/prices).

"The market system itself is an organizing and coordinating mechanism. It is an elaborate communication network through which innumerable individual free choices are recorded, summarized, and balanced.”... "Through this mechanism (the market) society decides what the economy should produce, how production can be organized efficiently, and how the fruits of production are to be distributed among various units that make up the economy." - Macroeconomics: McGraw.

I don't believe that the system itself can be blamed for those who are "left out," that is rather the result of factors such as overpopulation, unchecked criminal behavior, and lack of motivation (usually passed down generations and ergo would benefit from temporary and significant outside involvment (both public and private) to kick whole communities out of detrimental cycles).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 14 2011, 7:51 am by jjf28. Reason: added "at present" to avoid confusion

Just because capitalism is the best system in practice by humans does not make it the best system, nor does it make it a good system. Don't fall into that fallacy.

It's the best we can do so far.

I'm sure there could be better implementations, but that doesn't change the fact that feasibility has to be considered in any plan... Otherwise, yes, there is no better system as of now.

But since we're counting feasability, it's the best system as far as we are aware of.

That's not the point of a discussion.
A discussion may not end with a singular viewpoint, but sometimes with even more questions and even more ways to look at things. What is more important is that people can be aware of others' opinions through discussions, and develop their arguments and ideas more thoroughly through discussions. Discussion itself is not a means to end discussion, but as a tool to exchange ideas, develop trained opinions, and to broaden one's view at a certain subject. If you wanted to 'discuss until everyone has agreed on a single viewpoint', then you only need a bandwagon. 'CAPITALISM IS GOOD, ANYONE THAT THINKS SO POST HERE. End of discussion.'
With that in mind, I'll be the devil's advocate.

Capitalism is not good, for several reasons. We must work slowly but without hesitation to change our system into a more efficient system.
One reason is that because it is good for us, does not intrinsically mean that a system may be 'good' in the longer run.
As one extremely ridiculous example, to survive, race A have to build a spaceship that uses up 87% of planet A's resources. Unfortunately, with race A's Capitalism's extremely wasteful resource usage race A have already used up 24% of Planet A's valuable resources and chucked them in the ocean. Unfortunately, to salvage the resources, race A has use more resources than they can salvage. And so, race A only awaits their extinction. While extreme, this does remind us of certain creatures on a planet called Earth. It only means that just because it's sweet right now, doesn't mean it's good. Aspartame is sweet, but if you eat too much of it, you go blind (course, you can't eat too much of it through commercial products).
Well there certainly are more reasons.

That's quite controversial. There are cases in which it is hard to tell if the system is creating underclass, or if the people themselves are drawn to be an underclass. Certainly, there can be cases in the latter, but you can't ignore the former either- because there are always both.

In your opinion.


You didn't give several reasons, you barely gave one.

As for the one reason you tried to give, non-capitalist nations can use as many resources as capitalist ones, so that isn't even relevant.

Advances in automation and technology has disproportionately benefited the upper-business-owning-class. As technology increases, human labor loses value.

Slowly, but surely, automation will replace labor completely, leaving those without corporate inheritance to starve out.

This is the natural/eventual evolution of the market. Government interference in the market slows this down. (It still does not stop it. Radical-Left utopian ideas are eventually required.)

The counter-argument is that this will open more technical jobs to maintain and build these machines. Some menial tasks such as cleaning are difficult to displace with a single machine. While we can make machines that clean pools, mow lawns, vacuum carpets, clean windows, and polish floors, it's difficult to make a machine that can do all of these.

What I would predict, more accurately, is machines becoming more common. Instead of janitors we will have custodial technicians, who must know how to employ various cleaning machines and still perform a number of cleaning tasks. However, as machines become more advanced, the technician will be required less and less to intervene, until eventually, the job is purely maintaining and cleaning these machines.

These jobs too, will be taken over by machines that can maintain and clean each-other. And instead of switching from capitalism straight into resource-based systems, we must gradually switch one into the other.

It seems as though capitalism is merely a stepping stone in the evolution of human economy. It would be folly to dwell on it too long, because then we begin to stagnate. The future would seem to more and more resemble something out of Star Trek, where money will no longer exist, but certain aspects of government will.

I'm not sure if it's related or not, but I'll post it anyways... (I'm not even sure if I even know what I am writing.)

Since the last few months, the American money started to drop. USA is in great debt (Not sure if this is right.) If the system crashes, expect a 3rd world war.

There is one thing that machines will never have: creativity. Robots will never be able to invent a new food/song/movie/book/game/etc. Robots can't conduct experiments and form conclusions, they can only do what they are programmed to do. Eventually, all of the jobs will be base in research and development of new ideas.

Actually, computers are as capable as humans to solve problems and find solutions to problems and as computers become better and better, so do the computer AIs. There are already a lot of results and amazing discoveries found in the field of AI. There are two form of AI, weak AI and strong AI.

You could design a machine that creates songs, it's not as impractical as you think.

Not saying they'd have to be awe inspiring, but music is very mathematical. The more limitations you put on the easier it gets. Let's assume there are 4 types of chords (major minor augmented and diminished) and you stick to standard harmony... You could adopt something like the lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization to define how to move your melody in terms of tension, and then after that you create patterns and variation mechanics to create interest. After that all you'd need is to define rhythm, which is probably easiest.

Gogo someone do this.

Also, there already is software (band in a box) that can play music for you, and even generate solos/melodies, but a ton of the stuff is hard-coded, they just put thousands of hardcoded options so it is irrelevant. You have to choose chord progressions (or write your own), music styles, and solo/melodist artist (last one is optional).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 15 2011, 10:00 pm by TiKels.

A Socialist - Democratic's thoughts on Capitalism

Actually, I don't mind it. A system that rewards people through their work (Skinners box, if you may) and promotes competition between corporations (That way when companies like EA or Capcom get greedy they get a nice kick in the ass when everyone goes to other corporations instead) is pretty solid. Of course though I've got a major problem with Capitalism when it's taken too far. Simply put, I value moderation. Having a capitalist system that's put to an extreme is no better than a communist system that's put to an extreme.

While pro capitalists love to argue that a guy who gets his ass drunk and goes to work shouldn't get paid the same as a workaholic, I like to argue that letting a corporation get away with too much stuff will probably set us back to that magical time when we'd throw our kids in mines with only a candle to guide them in and out.

Exageration? Well, okay, maybe it is. But there's no denying that if we let corporations or basically anyone get away with too much that they'll damn well abuse it. Hell, this nonsense already happens. Companies set up their businesses in developing countries and pay people the very lowest they can get away with, companies will go beneath minimum wage and employ those willing to work for less, and all the time I hear of these terrible stories relevent to insurance and how they fuck people over, putting them in a worse position then they already were.

And because of this, I believe that a moderate combination of both Socialism and Capitalism woven together is our best option. We get the best parts of Capitalism which promote business and production and we get the best parts of Socialism which protects everyone from the corporations when they decide to not play fair.

And perhaps the best way to implant this would be through that old saying, 'you can attract a lot more bee's with honey'

Wow, this is probably one of my shortest entries ever. I'm proud of my self