-=> Kaelon wrote to Arelor <=-

Ka> Capitalism with safeguards and proper institutional regulation is
Ka> necessary in order to build a long-term vision that ensures that
Ka> vulnerable investors are protected from exploitation, and that
Ka> companies have to demonstrate their actual value so that informed
Ka> investors can be - well, informed! Private Equity, especially in
Ka> technology, is largely responsible for obfuscating real value and there
Ka> is now a reckoning where more than half of all technology companies in
Ka> the world are fundamentally insolvent.

This pile of nonsence is what is called "soft socialism".

"Capitalism is great, but it needs to be controlled". "Controlled" meaning run
by "smart" people, usually the state, which only has people who think that they
are smart.

The lame excuses of "we need to 'protect' people from exploitation" is the
normal cry. In Capitalism there are risks - that's just part of life. And
having the gov't "protect" people from their mistakes is just keeping them like
children - and controlling them.

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Re: Re: Recession to Depressi
By: Dr. What to Kaelon on Wed Jul 13 2022 08:27 am

> Ka> Capitalism with safeguards and proper institutional regulation is
> Ka> necessary in order to build a long-term vision that ensures that
> Ka> vulnerable investors are protected from exploitation, and that
> Ka> companies have to demonstrate their actual value so that informed
> Ka> investors can be - well, informed! Private Equity, especially in
> Ka> technology, is largely responsible for obfuscating real value and there
> Ka> is now a reckoning where more than half of all technology companies in
> Ka> the world are fundamentally insolvent.
>
> This pile of nonsence is what is called "soft socialism".
>
> "Capitalism is great, but it needs to be controlled". "Controlled" meaning
> run by "smart" people, usually the state, which only has people who think
> that they are smart.
>
> The lame excuses of "we need to 'protect' people from exploitation" is the
> normal cry. In Capitalism there are risks - that's just part of life. And
> having the gov't "protect" people from their mistakes is just keeping them
> like children - and controlling them.
>
That is not socailism. It is not near socialism.

Capitalism run amok leads to exploitation and crisis because the particular forces that drive it have no countervailing force. We need to stop the excesses, prevent pathological situations such as monopolies from forming, and to have other means to keep society in check and regulate activity.

We live in a democracy, and without regulation a small minority of Capitalists could, would, have undue influence on society.

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Re: Re: Recession to Depressi
By: Dr. What to Kaelon on Wed Jul 13 2022 08:27 am

> This pile of nonsence is what is called "soft socialism".
>
> "Capitalism is great, but it needs to be controlled". "Controlled" meaning
> run by "smart" people, usually the state, which only has people who think
> that they are smart.
>
> The lame excuses of "we need to 'protect' people from exploitation" is the
> normal cry. In Capitalism there are risks - that's just part of life. And
> having the gov't "protect" people from their mistakes is just keeping them
> like children - and controlling them.

Frankly, this is bullshit. Our economic system has had numerous safeguards for institutions and corporations - such as the "bailouts" that the government (i.e., taxpayers) ensured that big banks would receive and the even large-scale industrial corporations would receive, when their risky models folded in 2008-2009. In a true Capitalist system, they should have been all allowed to fail. Where are your cries for the lame excuses of banks and manufacturing in 2008-2009, or for airlines, commodities traders, and real estate speculators now in the 2020-2022 Pandemic period?

Let them all fail. And then we can talk about the "lame excuses" of the very valid truth that corporations have co-opted our political institutions. This isn't Capitalism, Dr. What. This is syndicate corporatism. And that's not what entrepreneurial people and innovators signed up for.
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-

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Re: Re: Recession to Depressi
By: Kaelon to Dr. What on Sat Jul 16 2022 09:18 am

> Frankly, this is bullshit. Our economic system has had numerous safeguards
> for institutions and corporations - such as the "bailouts" that the
> government (i.e., taxpayers) ensured that big banks would receive and the
> even large-scale industrial corporations would receive, when their risky
> models folded in 2008-2009. In a true Capitalist system, they should have
> been all allowed to fail. Where are your cries for the lame excuses of
> banks and manufacturing in 2008-2009, or for airlines, commodities traders,
> and real estate speculators now in the 2020-2022 Pandemic period?
>
> Let them all fail. And then we can talk about the "lame excuses" of the
> very valid truth that corporations have co-opted our political institutions.
> This isn't Capitalism, Dr. What. This is syndicate corporatism. And that's
> not what entrepreneurial people and innovators signed up for.
> _____

This is what Capital wants though. It wants protection, it wants to use power. Why would people who work with Capital not wan't to rig the system in their favour? They have the capital and the power, so they can. You expect them not to?

I don't see a difference between "syndicate corporatism" and "capitalism". The latter must lead to the former because that is how power is distributed. Capital, not producers, win the power contests so the state bails them out at the expense of producers.

Capitalism is a lie because most producers are alienated from ownership over their work though the employment contract. Adam Smith described a system where most people were self-employed, worked for themselves, and were the final recipients of the capital they created. That is not true today, hence the mess. That is the problem, not simply 'equity', that a few people in corporations get to speak on behalf of the entire corporation against the labour within the corporation.

Capitalism bifurcates the role of the person as 'citizen' and the person as 'employee', which means economy activity is not directed they way WE want, but they way THEY want.

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Re: Re: Recession to Depressi
By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Mon Jul 18 2022 08:57 am

> This is what Capital wants though. It wants protection, it wants to use
> power. Why would people who work with Capital not wan't to rig the system in
> their favour? They have the capital and the power, so they can. You expect
> them not to?
>
> I don't see a difference between "syndicate corporatism" and "capitalism".
> The latter must lead to the former because that is how power is distributed.
> Capital, not producers, win the power contests so the state bails them out
> at the expense of producers.

This is an interesting conversation, and I hope you don't mind if we debate it a bit further.

I think true Capitalism, including the "free hand" of the market, needs freedom in order to function properly. Which means it also needs the freedom to fail. At some point in our history (most likely, the Copper Speculative Bubble of 1908, which resembles a lot of the same Cryptocurrency Bubble we have now), the wealthiest investors started to leverage their tremendous assets to co-opt banking institutions to create insurance models that would, in essence, create soft-floors for failure. This should have been thwarted then and there. But it became the foundation for how our society enabled the rampant speculation of the 1920s, and how it rebuilt our entire economic global order following the Great Depression.

Corporations today are not engines of capitalism or innovation. They are syndicates of vast capital control, and resemble nothing like the intentions of true capitalism -- which were not single-man corporations or self-employed persons. Remember, after all, that the modern corporation traces its origins to the Dutch Corporations of the late Middle Ages and the Italian Banks of the early Renaissance. They had shares, shareholders, risk-taking, reward-sharing, and all of the hallmarks of true opportunity pursuit. What we have today is nothing like the original corporations, because they have become so deeply interconnected with our institutions - especially our fiduriary controls and our political organs.

One might argue that following the Great Depression, the only way to mobilize all of society to combat both imminent economic institutional collapse and to defeat geopolitical threats, was to unite the pillars of commerce and government into a single corporatist continuum. This was certainly the approach of the Fascists and Communists. I would argue it's ultimately what happened in the Western - now Global - Order, in that Democracies learned how to harness and unify the economic structures to unite military and industrial components to thereby coopt commerce for political aims.

If that's the case, then, is there any way to unwind this Corporatist Dystopia in which we find ourselves? Or has the dream of a true Capitalist Restoration gone for good?
_____
-=: Kaelon :=-

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Re: Capitalism vs. Corporatism
By: Boraxman to Kaelon on Tue Jul 19 2022 09:47 pm

> I imagine a world where human beings are fully self governing, where no one is
alientated from their own economic activity and we all direct our economic activity
rather than have it directed by Capital. Capital is just a factor supplier and
commodification of things is limited, where human need and national interest trumps
private desire for profit. An ownership economy consisting of a massive patchwork of
private enterprises, which consist if US, responding as always, to market demands,
wants, needs.
>

You keep mentioning we need an idea from out of the socialist-capitalist spectrum,
then keep suggesting things that Primo de Rivera already advocated for and became
Spanish Fascism.

There are only two ways of managing things. One is to let somebody you trust manage
them. The other is to let people manage them. Your standard proposal is to turn
workplaces into Unions, arguing this falls into the category of letting people do the
management, and while variations of this arrangement exist everywhere on the wild
already, I think it is obvious by now that there are lots of industries in which this
arrangement won't cut it.

But we already end up having this conversation so you already know how this goes.

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Re: Capitalism vs. Corporatism
By: Arelor to Boraxman on Thu Jul 21 2022 06:29 am

> You keep mentioning we need an idea from out of the socialist-capitalist
> spectrum,
> then keep suggesting things that Primo de Rivera already advocated for and
> became
> Spanish Fascism.
>

I'm not too familiar with him. From what information I've looked up, I can't seem to make the connection here. You're talking about the dictator here, right?

> There are only two ways of managing things. One is to let somebody you trust
> manage
> them. The other is to let people manage them. Your standard proposal is to
> turn workplaces into Unions, arguing this falls into the category of letting
> people do the
> management, and while variations of this arrangement exist everywhere on the
> wild
> already, I think it is obvious by now that there are lots of industries in
> which this
> arrangement won't cut it.
>
We run the most important institution we have, the government, this way. There seems to be a disconnect here. We want the government which makes life and death decisions, which has greater impact on us than any single company, to be run democratically, but companies not?

I'm not sure how these 'two ways' are different. Both involve people managing and NEITHER of them describe our current Capitalist system. You don't get to either choose someone you trust OR to get to manage. Since when do I get to choose someone I trust to manage?

> But we already end up having this conversation so you already know how this
> goes.
>

Sure do.

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Re: Capitalism vs. Corporatism
By: Boraxman to Arelor on Sat Jul 23 2022 10:50 am

>
> I'm not too familiar with him. From what information I've looked up, I can'

Rivera is, for practical purposes, the original ideologue of the Spanish
phalanx.

One of his biggest selling points was turning every industry into a Union or
Cooperative. In fact, when the Phalanx managed to get to power and General
Franco was established as the Leader, there was a lot of discontent because his
policies were not as aggressive as Rivera's proposals. You can still witness
fisfights in pro-Fascist bars when some Franco advocate wants to defend him
against a Rivera advotace.

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Re: Capitalism vs. Corporatism
By: Boraxman to Arelor on Sat Jul 23 2022 10:50 am

> We run the most important institution we have, the government, this way. Th
> but companies not?
>

Nation-States are not run like anything resembling a cooperative. They often
try to tell us such so we buy into the narrative that we are all the State, but
in practice there is a big gap of power between the people up the food chain
and the people down the food chain, in such a way that declarations that
underdogs have a say is illusory.

ie. we tell Jack that he has a saying and that his voting counts, but this is a
farce because:

1) Jack's only method of contributing to set policies is by voting a
representative into power, but there are no accountability meassures to ensure
Jack's representative will represent Jack once he gets to office.

2) The representatives Jack can choose from are pre-selected from him. The
criteria for deciding who may run for office is decided by people who not
necesarily represent Jack interests. This is why so many ellections turn into
contests to vote the lesser evil in instead of voting somebody you actually
WANT to see in office (and this should be regarded as a red flag that the
Government's "Board" is not representative at all).

3) The Government has many powers that Jack doesn't have. Jack cannot delegate
into a regular Cooperative rights Jack does not have (for example: Jack does
not have the right to kill other Cooperative members or seize the assets of
other Cooperative members). The Government has lots of powers that people does
not have (such as killing people or taking their things). In practical terms,
this sets the Government's "Board" in a qualitatively outsider realm, far away
from the subjects they rule, as opposed to a regular Cooperative, in which the
representatives of a farming group are farmers.

4) Jack cannot quit the Nation State without subjugating himself to a different
Nation State, because Nation States won't allow anything else. Nation States
are engineered in such a way that every person under their command is a slave
who believes he is not a slave, and set up as to extract the most productivity
from them (be it work or political support). Rights are usufructary: Jack is
entitled to have hens in a pen only as long as the Government does not need the
hens itself. In a Cooperative, the Cooperative may suspend Jack's benefits (or
so called "negative rights", such as having access to a hen feed bank) but
may not suspend Jack's right to ownership (including self-owneship).

If anything, a Nation State is a corporation with a small board of executives
who may force anybody to buy their stocks, yet they are unaccountable for, and
the shareholders are powerless worms in their hands.

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Re: Capitalism vs. Corporatism
By: Arelor to Boraxman on Sat Jul 23 2022 06:58 am

> Rivera is, for practical purposes, the original ideologue of the Spanish
> phalanx.
>
> One of his biggest selling points was turning every industry into a Union or
> Cooperative. In fact, when the Phalanx managed to get to power and General
> Franco was established as the Leader, there was a lot of discontent because
> his policies were not as aggressive as Rivera's proposals. You can still
> witness fisfights in pro-Fascist bars when some Franco advocate wants to
> defend him against a Rivera advotace.
>

I'll have to read up on this, but details do matter to me, that is where the devil is. It seems, from your description alone, something quite different, but familiar to fascists. Fascists saw society in groups, so that different sections were seen a pillar of society, hence the 'fascis'.

To be clear, this is not what I'm describing at all. It is a VERY different proposition to lump farmers into one entity, manfacturers of heavy machinery into another. I've NEVER advocated anything like that. Putting people from different firms into one political entity has nothing at all to do with anything I've described, and seems incompatible. Unionisng or collectivising an industry is country to the principles of self-governance. I've neither advocated unionising or collectivism.

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Re: Capitalism vs. Corporatism
By: Boraxman to Arelor on Sun Jul 24 2022 12:09 pm

> My questions were rhetorical. We know that people in general want self-gove
> vern ourselves.
>
> We understand and support the concepts behind Democracy, even though the app
> doesn't follow for the same people to think that running a pet food factory
> ering, that the world would fall apart if we didn't skew property rights tow
>
> ---
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First of all, I'd argue that most people are not actual democrats and therefore
the rethorical questions fall on their faces. You can see this today: everybody
wants democracy, but once they don't get the results they want they try to
break the system. The efforts placed in isolating political oponents break
democracy.

You have mentioned multiple times that our current governing systems is failed
because there is a gap and a missalineation between rulers and rules. If I were
to conceede the government is a cooperative, I would destroy your thesis that
cooperative ownership works by pointing at the innumerable failing
"cooperatives", so I am doing you a favor by arguing Governments are not like
cooperatives.

In a democratic system you get the improductive scumbags to vote so the
productive losers give up their earnings to the improductives. THere is strong
incentive for a significant (and I would say mayoritary) segment of the
population to spand the power of the government and ruin Jack's rights in the
process if need be. The push in politics, at its very base, at the guy next
door level, is to destroy self-ownership. Cooperatives may have pathological
behaviours from time to time but I haven't see such level of rot in any I know.

--
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> First of all, I'd argue that most people are not actual democrats and therefor
> the rethorical questions fall on their faces. You can see this today: everybod
> wants democracy, but once they don't get the results they want they try to
> break the system. The efforts placed in isolating political oponents break
> democracy.

Exactly. Many "Democrats" here in the states are ok with people expressing
their opinions, so long as they match their own. If they do not, they want
the ability of those persons to express their opinions to be very limited.

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