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Schumpeter, Intellectuals And Capitalism
Submitted by Alberto Mingardi via Library of Economics and Liberty,
Kevin Hassett recently debated Thomas Piketty on his book, "Capital in the 21st Century". After presenting some interesting points on Piketty's work, Hassett reminds his audience, somehow ironically, that not just Marx, but also Joseph Schumpeter thought that capitalism was going to die.
As he wrote in his voice "Capitalism" for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Schumpeter was convinced that "the capitalist process by its very success tends to raise the economic and political positions of groups that are hostile to it." The reference here is to the anti-capitalist attitude, which is very persistent among intellectuals. This might seem a rather inappropriate point to raise discussing Piketty's book but, if I understand him correctly, Hassett was actually thinking about the overwhelmingly enthusiastic reception of the book by its reviewers. The great enthusiasm that many intellectuals showed for Piketty's work may suggest that they were somehow looking for a new masterpiece arguing for a similar argument. It is easier to be impressed with somebody's scholarship, when her findings confirm our biases.
Many authors have asked themselves "why the intellectuals oppose capitalism": from Ludwig von Mises to Robert Nozick. Schumpeter's treatment of this subject is very interesting, because it is so intertwined with his wider view of the way in which a modern industrial society developed. In a chapter of "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" aptly entitled "Growing Hostility," he explains how "the bourgeois fortress" became "politically defenseless."
He sees the capitalist order proceeding from a "rationalizing attitude"--"an attitude which spurns allegiance to extra-rational values." Modern capitalism is "the propelling force of the rationalizing of human behavior," but this critical mind doesn't stop at the gates of modern factories, but also wages war to the very system it should hold dear, breeding egalitarian challenges to the legitimacy of capitalist inequality.
The argument in favor of capitalism, for Schumpeter, is a difficult one, that the masses naturally overlook: "any pro-capitalist argument must rest on long-run considerations. In the short run, it is profits and inefficiencies that dominate the picture."
And yet, to be sure, "neither the opportunity of attack nor real or fancied grievances are in themselves sufficient to produce, however strongly they may favor, the emergence of active hostility against a social order. For such an atmosphere to develop it is necessary that there be groups to whose interest is to work up and organize resentment, to voice it and to lead it."
Enter the intellectual.
For Schumpeter, intellectuals as we know them are a creation of a capitalist society. True, we always had "people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word": but they were few in number, and their words could be accessed, debated and learned by a tiny fraction of the population. Capitalism nurtures intellectuals: on the one hand, a capitalist society is less keen to curb freedom of speech and discussion than any previous set of social institutions. On the other, innovation multiplies the means for the public debate: books become increasingly cheaper, newspapers mushroom everywhere, then of course you had radio and tv, and today social networks. Also, "one of the most important features of the later stages of capitalist civilization is the vigorous expansion of the educational apparatus and particularly of the facilities for higher education."
Yet this apparatus produces more intellectuals than could thrive economically, and this creates resentment. Schumpeter didn't think that hostility against capitalism could be considered just a feature of the intellectuals as a social group: but assigned them a particular role. Modern capitalism creates opponents of a different kind, especially among those to whom the long-term benefits of the market system are less apparent, namely workers. But they yearn for leaders and narratives. Intellectuals do not often enter politics or labour unions directly, but "they staff political bureaus, write party pamphlets and speeches, act as secretaries and advisers" etc. "In doing these things they to some extent impress their mentality on almost everything that is being done."
I've always been fascinated by reflections on the intellectual's attitude towards the market system. For one thing, this is not a peripheral theme--but rather a central one--for classical liberal authors. It is pretty clear, for example, that Hayek considered this a question of not trivial importance.
Schumpeter's reflection in this field may sound a bit over-deterministic, but it is full of insights, as it brings together different elements: from the "rationalizing" attitude of a modern, capitalist society, to the resentment that people who were highly successful in schools nurture as they face the labour market. I hope you'll forgive me if I did not do justice to Schumpeter, painting a picture with too big a brush.
But let's go back to Hassett. An interesting question is what we shall deduce from all of this. I suppose one extreme answer would be that it is basically useless to engage in a debate with anti-capitalist intellectuals, as they are drawn to their positions by forces too powerful to be countervailed by a good argument. And yet Hassett debated Piketty.
I suppose a less extreme inference from Schumpeter's analysis would be that yes, there are very strong reasons why intellectuals may oppose capitalism. They are deeply ingrained in our society, and thus this makes any attempt to change their mind particularly difficult. But this doesn't really make it a worthless effort.
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All hail Karl Obozo Marx!
Hope & change!
Marx was an intellectual idiot. Everyone knows that except college students. One day we will look at Keynes as the same.
He was also on "welfare"...from Engels. Engels cut money in half and sent it to him so he wouldn't be destitute at the end of the month...lol.
The survival behaviors, called morals, that people possess, exist in differing intensities in each of us. This individualization defines how we interact with others and how we want others to interact with us.
Given the opportunity, and more often than not, these moral strictures on our behavior are willingly forced on as many others as possible.
It is the tyranny of government, the proselytizing of religion, and the violence of the mob - all to create a world that is congruous to the possessor's survival beliefs.
I'm not so sure that survival is the most accurate term. I would use "self interest"... Sometimes enjoying life is more desirable than just muddling through. To each his own.
I'll also posit that humans behave in this fashion regardless of any legal or economic system. In other words, underlying each and every society at all times is the collective interaction of individual self interests. These may coincide with the confines of a proposed system, but often don't...
Further, it is true that the consolidation of power ultimately tips the capitalist island over, but this is a complaint for every system of government/economy. Just as the rational actors in a capitalist society act to ensure the normalization of their profit never occurs, so too do the socialists, communists, and anarchists. Eventually the barnyard's beast of burden decides to sit in the mud instead of pull the plow... and the race for control of animal farm begins again... like groundhog day.
Capitalism gives way to statism because statism is everywhere and always a cancer on society. And once statism usurps the money upon which society (the free market) depends, the cancer spreads like wildfire (graph from Piketty's book):
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2...
One thing's for sure: whatever survives this contagion won't be the body politic as we know it.
Survival is the main motivating effect. Different morality occurring in different groups denotes moral behaviors that promote the survival of that particular group. The way of survival and the morality is very different in the Quakers and Genghis Kahn's lads, but each believed theirs to be correct.
Power, and consolidation thereof, is the modus operandi of government.
Just as its actions undermine freedom, government's actions undermine the free market.
Survival self interest. Aided and abetted by subjectivity.
A propensity for polarization about any transient conceptual pole.
Mammals with a thinking brain, needing to autonomously psychologically evolve over the course of a lifetime; best wishes for that ...
But hey, it is Fight Club, yet after all. Words on a screen, duking it out for rational survival, in the environment of textual biology.
Marx and Engles were given the script for Das K by the founder of the "Illminati", Fr. Adam Wieshaupt. All by design, look it up. The time-frames match. Also just so happens that it was all happening right around 1772....hmmmmmm...1776 was not that far away, the roots of something something were made back then....
The thrust of the article made me think of this situation as Capitalism's version of Jevon's paradox....
Unless you believe the banker's second law of fiatdynamics: Curency can only be created, never destsroyed...
ori
Fr. Adam Weishaupt was a Jesuit priest responsible for the founding of the Order of Illuminati. Jesuits are without a doubt, STILL the master shit disturbers of the universe.
Here is a link from the Masons.
http://masonicdictionary.com/weishaupt.html
I'll try to find a different link to something I watched the other day that explained more about this guy.
Also:
The brief of Clement XIV for suppressing the Society, dated 21 July 1773 was put
in execution 16 August. During the order's suppression from 1773 to 1814, General
Ricci created the Illuminati with his soldier, Adam Weishaupt, the Father of
modern Communism, who, with his Jacobins, conducted the French Revolution. Years
later Jesuit General Ledochowski, with his Bolsheviks, conducted the Russian
Revolution in 1917, it being identical to the upheaval of 1789. - History of the
Jesuits: Their Origin, Progress, Doctrines, and Designs, G.B. Nicolini of Rome,
1854,p.356.
Bingo Crawdaddy...
Their logo says "Go forth and set the world on fire"...and they are.
Their founder was called Ignatius....burn baby burn, but slowly....
ori
The jesuits can destroy currency too in the process of shit disturbance.
"All Hail Marx and Lennon"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B00005T7K4/ref=c...
One of the dumbest ideas that leftists and even many on the right hold is that capitalism is something you choose. It is like there is a supermarket of economic systems. You walk down the isle and see communism, fascism, capitalism...oh, look, mercantilism is on sale!
Capitalism is simply a description of what happens when you leave people alone. I personally would like to rename it "voluntary exchange". It would be much easier to defend but essentially the same in explanation.
All the other "isms" are what happens when you begin to torture the free exchange of products and services and try to fool the system with bad monetary policies.
I see a difference. Capitalism is the creation of capital out of promises, it is what tool power away from the horded wealth of the feudal age. Voluntary exchange evolved into collectivism to expunge cheats, which in turn resulted in feudal cheats who horded wealth. I think it should be called free market cooperation.
Maybe this time we get it.
Capitalism, like all the other isms, is merely an ex post facto label given to how individuals' self interest has manifested itself through the society. Trying to demand that voluntary exchange take place is like demanding the tide stay back. Ultimately, such a system is dependent upon a neutral regulator to ensure exhange remains voluntary... that regulator has a snowball's chance in hell of staying neutral. And, from there, it simply becomes a tool for further entrenchment and consolidation of power.
Actually, it is dependent on the absence of force. It is also dependent on an ethos which decries the use of force. We have done it, before. You have to disempower the State. It has no regulators in the traditional meaning. Regulators are the soucre of the problems, not the solution.
Once you say that power is the answer then you are positing the idea that it is simply your autocratic regime against my autorcratic regime. I reject that idea.
The reason your doctor's office or shopping mall is pleasant and your DMV is dismal is because one has a voluntary relationship with you and the other is based on force. That is the difference in your life between empowering yourself and empowering others.
Walden Pond Couch Potato Liberalism ........
It is clear that liberals today have infected america with the 'collapsed colony disorder' similar to an abandoned bee hive where all the bees suddenly disappear whereupon all productive activity ceases.
This collapsed colony disorder has arisen as a consequence of a cross breeding between radical Walden Pond Liberal Bees like Bill and Hillary Clinton who follow the philosophy of transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, and Killer Bee Liberals like President Obama who follow the philosophy of Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin.
The Walden Pond liberal bees all advocate that people find peace and solace within themselves and turn their Henry David Thoreau style cabin in the woods, complete with HDTV and marijuana vaporizer, into a 'Couch Potato Cabin in the Woods'. A couch potato cabin in the woods where people all wait for government assistance instead of becoming active participants of the economic bee hive in order to help keep it alive.
Then you have the Stalinist Killer Bee Liberals who seek out the productive queen bee of an active capitalistic bee hive and supplant it with a government mandated LGBT Queer Bee lookalike. This honey sucking government appointed LGBT queer bee lacks any reproductive desires causing all the worker bees to become couch potatoes and seek out a delusional introspective existence at a nearest college or university with their green energy sex toys that recharge in the sunlight.
America, because of unchecked liberalism, has divided itself into two major groups. One group are the Stalinist killer bees who are hell bent on destroying all capitalism, and the other group are the Walden Pond Couch Potato liberal bees who don't recognize that their comfortable couch potato bee hive (cabin in the woods) has turned into a collapsed colony called a ghetto.
Today's millennials are early adopters of both Walden Pond Couch Potato liberalism combined with Stalinist Killer Bee Liberalism. The result is a new transcendental liberalism called Walden 'Pond Scum' Liberalism.
Nice analogy. I like it.
I divide liberals into two groups very much like your bees. The first group are the juvenile collectivist-socialist-leftists. They are the peace, love, happiness and "everyone should have everything for free" group. They are not particularly hostile but also not particularly bright.
The second group are the adults. They know that the real end game is power. It is not prosperity, caring or equality. That is all BS and the cover for the power grab. These are the Stalinists in your bee-group. They know brutality is the order of the day and that they need worker bees. They need to kill some of the workers to impress the others. They also kill the juvenile group before they realize their utopia was smoke and mirrors and double speak. These are named Mao, Castro, Stalin, Ayers, Pot and so on.
He was a genius. Immensly productive. An autodidact . A very bad person and mentally ill.
His infuence has immensly decayed, rightly, save the prison cells of the recently literate and the likes of Harvard, Yale Law School and weathy slums of Manhattan.
Karl Marx was a silver-spooned rich bitch who never worked a day in his life. He is perfect to craft a theory upon "workers" and economics. He also starved a few of his kids to death. Marx occasionally wrote articles for newspapers and he wrote his long papers and books full of his philosophies about the 'struggle' of workers, but he never worked a day in his life. Instead, he sat in his pig-sty and found all sorts of reasons he shouldn't work. Mainly, he thought he was too important to work. Marx was also a hypocrite. While he wrote with such sympathy for the men who worked in factories, calling them slaves, the money he lived on, the charity he received from his friend Friedrich Engels, came from the Engels family interest in a factory. So the 'slaves' were supporting the Marx family, while Marx sat and thought. Real fuckin' stand up guy. Rot in Hell you fucking piece of shit.
Edit: nice to see some of his followers have stopped by for a history lesson.
Great post.
"Schumpeter was convinced that "the capitalist process by its very success tends to raise the economic and political positions of groups that are hostile to it"
The lesson of socialism is that government is the benevolent tide that lifts all boats, it is a short lived experiment since they run out of other peoples money but it's lesson is dulled by the fact that government has the monopoly on education as well.
Visit Venezuala, enjoy your future now.
Ok, enough of this bullshit.
Without risk of ones OWN capital...there is no "capitalism". Capitalism is not, getting fucking loan guarantees from government (spreading that risk away from yourself) to everyone else, whether for building railroads across a continent or building solar panels in California or forcing people through "capitalism" to buy health insurance.
Its national socialism, spreading the risk of THE VENTURE in question to everyone else and keeping any profits if successful to yourself.
Can we at least recapture language and quit bastardizing it?
Totally agree.
What we see is those in power selecting the good aspects of cpitalsm for themselves and passing on its costs to the others.
Lol...scraping the obvious Marxist parasites sure to come off my boots, this French fucker (Piketty) has my blood boiling, what the hell is a "French economist" anyways?...10.4% unemployment?
Out-fucking-standing boys.
So, how much money will he donate to France from the sales of his book?
Crickets
////////
French or Marxist?
Show yourself junker or brand yourself forever with your junk as a coward.
Your choice.
"Without risk of ones OWN capital...there is no "capitalism"."
This includes limitation of liability by legislated contrivance. I think too many of the intellectuals today are deliberately confusing capitalism and corporatocracy to further spurious arguments.
Corporaprocy.
ok, Karl is un-capitalist;
Tom re-capitalist;
Kevin un-re-capitalist;
Schumpter re-un-re-capitalist.
If still in doubt, do what Grant Williams do, have an unsure-ance strategy:
buy gold bitchez.
i can't help but laugh at the ZH posters who rail against the guys who have popularized whatever -ism they don't like. it's ironic that they use the very PsyOps techniques being used by politicians every day. ad hominems, counter-factuals, talking-their-book bias.
capitalists hate socialism until they have to pay for shit they need to make their businesses run (a national highway system? rule of law so your stuff doesn't get stolen en route?)
socialists hate capitalism until the govt they mooch from runs out of money and they have to go begging for private capital (any surprise that all of those 'socialist' academics exist side-by-side with Sloan, Wharton, Haas, & Booth?)
most people are too dense, vested, or self-involved to envision the obscure consequences of the systems they advocate, let alone see the world from someone else's perspective. it's worse when they've spent their whole lives at only 1 end of the social spectrum, be it wealthy or empoverished.
Academics can demand that the world follows some pure system of economics, but once it attempts implementation, it will never be pure for long... the capitalist vs socialist debate is no different than the democrats vs republicans debate... there is no practical difference between the two for the vast majority of the population.
Those two comments are two of the laziest and ignorant comments I have ever read. The history of the WORLD has shown that capitalism and socialism are as different as night and day.
It is amazing to me that one can look at Google Earth at South Korea and North Korea at night, and see the difference between economic freedom and economic totalitarianism IN REAL TIME, and not get it.
i find it hard to consider American Korea and Chinese Korea as 'evidence' in a debate about capitalism and socialism. they might be examples of totalitarian vs liberal (in the technical, classic sense of the word), but being de facto protectorates of their respective benefactors for so long, it's hard to think of them as independent outcomes.
You find it hard to consider that NK and SK are evidence in the difference between totalitarianism and capitalism? I find it hard to consider that a rational human being could type that with a straight face.
North Korea and South Korea are the most glaring examples of the difference between totalitarianism and capitalism in modern history. Your willful blindless does not change that.
On the off chance that you were trying to draw a distinction between totalitarianism and socialism (in order to bolster the argument in support of socialism), let me point out that NK in its more socialist days was run by the Soviet Union. When the USSR fell, the lights went out in NK, and millions of people died from starvation. That was in the 1990s, by the way! Recent history.
Consider this: Until the end of WWII, Korea was one nation, with one people, one language, and one history. There were dividing political ideologies like we have now, but it wasn't that long ago that the country was divided into two nations. One side (the north) chose communism, and the other side (the south) chose democracy. To clarify, that was BEFORE the Korean War, BEFORE the US and China took sides.
Are their influences from other countries on the Koreas? OF COURSE! That is the way the world works. The outcome is plain to see, whether you want to see it or not.
You're missing the point. How self interest plays out in one state ought to look different than another... and their current status is determined by an incredible amount of factors, the label they choose to classify themselves being far down the list.
Capitalism isn't a destination, it's just a stop along the way... and a brief one at that. Think of our progress like a few meandering roads that always lead back to a familiar intersection.
Poor example. Interstate.
By and large the fedgov highyway system is paid by users, with commercial users paying disproportionately more.
On the other hand the cutting through thousands of cities of the highways DESTROYED cities and working neighborhoods, yet to if at all recover.
Damned right.
Once the bastards got control of the money (spooning your wallet softly since 1913) they have corrupted everything to the point the only levers they have left to maintain the illusion of control is to bastardize the language.
coz they believe words can kill...
and they have a bear-fighting Russian in sight.
And then some.
Bravo!
But hey, at least we aren't French, which is nice.
nmewn,
YES! If there is one thing I'm sick of, it's the mis-use of language. If we can't use the right terms, then we can't understand anything. I harp on this quite a bit around here with the definition of inflation.
In this case, the word capitalism has been turned into just another "ism." As you said, capitalism is the free use of one's capital for risk and reward. Capital = money for those of you in the real world. Savings, if you will.
Capitalism = economic freedom. That's it in a nutshell, anyway.
On the language, I call it the abuse of language (to put a finer point on it) because it is on purpose. The INTENT is there to mislead, to decieve.
Just one example, it is no accident that words like "investment" are used the way they are. What images does the word "investment" conjure up in the mind? Well, first of all a surplus of saved cash (capital) that someone is willing to put at risk for a return of it (the principal) and to make a profit on the risking of it. But even more so, it is always completely voluntary. There is never force applied for someone to make an "investment", as that would make it something else entirely.
So to get around the word "tax" which everyone knows what that word is (and its collected at the point of the kings sword) they use the word "investment", its intentional deception.
There are countless other examples of these word contrivances used to "liberate" the peoples saved capital and have the state wind up with it in their pockets but that one...the word, investment...is my personal whipping boy ;-)
Excellent points. Yes, it is abuse, not mis-use. The abuse of the word "investment" might possibly be the most egregious example. It is responsible for quite a lot of our economic ills.
Keep up the good fight! :)
The vast majority hate capitalism for all the wrong reasons.
1. The first reason is that what they perceive to be capitalism is really an oligopoly with numerous small openings for the little guy,
2. They hate capitalism because the level of food stamps, uemployment benefits and medical benefits they receive is not enough.
3. They also hate capitalism because it affords them with an excuse as to why they themselves have not succeeded.
4. They forget that capitalism has given them the most inventions, innovations and surprises compared to the other systems that are rigid and which take great pride in simply redistributing.
Trumpet Maximus.
While in Thailand, purely by accident, I had a chance to observe a family of temple monkeys. I can't stand monkeys and usually avoid them whenever possible.
In any event, my previous observation that there is more to be learnt from observing the social heirarchy of monkeys than there is from intellectual discussions of economics still holds true.
We are still a bunch of fucking monkeys living in a giant monkey social pyramid, and all the PhD economic mumbo jumbo does nothing to hide this unpleasant fact.
We have managed to create fancier toys than the monkeys in that temple.
But when you look at them and they look back, there is no doubt that those monkeys understand exactly what our game is.
Bottomline, the boss and his henchmen are neither capitalists or socialists, they are brutes.
Given how monkey's butt-hump (male of female) as a sign of hirearchy, I'd say the brutish bosses work in the same simian construct...
yea, well even a monkey knows when it's being fucked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwR5l8wfXlU
Classic.
Telling.
We're the evolved ones, right? ... Right??
I'll agree as long as an up-arrow doesn't imply I am willing to pick bugs off of someone's head. Certainly a down arrow is straight up poo flingin'.
Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes by Frans de de Waal
Humans are nothing but primates living behind a thin veneer of civilization.
Very thin veneer at that...and cracking right now...
The alpha among them is indeed the brutest.
Basically we ARE monkeys who have made systems of globalized electronic frauds, backed up by the threat of the force of weapons of mass destruction. The supreme ideology is militarism. What is being called "capitalism" has been covertly controlled by fraud and murder. The same goes for "communism" and every other "ism" that I am aware of, because militarism is the supreme ideology, because it IS the ideology of fraud and murder, which is what actually controls the world.
It is pretty well impossible to have us little monkeys have a rational political debate about anything. Therefore, the Grand Canyon Paradoxes of progress in science and technology being channeled through social systems which are covertly controlled by lies backed up with violence have become practically infinite tunnels of deceits, where the lies are different at every level. We are still basically the same little monkeys as we always were, except we recently developed technologies which are trillions of times more powerful and capable. Those abilities are primarily employed to be better at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence, because that is what stupid little monkey societies were always doing, for millions of years.
The degrees of cooperation and community which evolved as longer term developments of the dynamic equilibria between the previous systems of organized lies and robberies, working through human ecologies and political economies, are being thrashed and trashed, by powers which are trillions of times greater exploding through those ancient social hierarchy systems, which previously had a much longer time to gradually evolve better balances.
Ideally, "we should" all become profoundly more intellectual, in order to go through sufficient scientific revolutions to cope with having developed the scientific methods enough to create a technologically based society. However, in practice, we are almost all urban barbarians that do not understand, and do not want to understand, any of the science which made the technologies we depend upon. The primary reason for that is the social pyramid system: human hierarchy is fundamentally based on backing up lies with violence, in order to keep the vast majority of people ignorant and afraid.
Inside of that context, almost all of the established religions and ideologies were forms of controlled opposition, who agreed to operate within the frame of reference of the biggest bullies' bullshit social stories. Indeed, our society is almost totally controlled by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, and those who pretend to oppose that tend to nevertheless spout the same bullshit, if not more so.
The production of destruction controls production. The most important things are the death controls. That is why militarism, which is the ideology of the murder system, is the supreme ideology. However, profound paradoxes arise from the empirical facts (which can also be theoretically derived from first principles about general energy systems, as those express through human beings and human civilizations), that success in warfare was based on backing up deceits with destruction, in which context spies were the most important soldiers.
That is the context inside of which all ideologies regarding political economy operate, because economics is a science like warfare is a science. Warfare was the oldest and best developed social science. Economics was built on top of the foundations of warfare. However, the paradox that success in warfare was based on deceits meant that the biggest bullies' were the supreme bullshitters. Since they were the supreme bullshitters, the entire civilization became based upon their social stories, which included the social stories of the controlled opposition groups too.
Although what I am asserting seems obviously correct, it is even more obvious that our entire civilization is based on operating through the maximum possible deceits and frauds, in which every different kind of proponent of various religions and ideologies, including even the public faces of militarism, are thoroughly expressing lies and hypocrisy, and therefore, almost nobody is going to point out what is obvious, that the death controls must, do, and should, control everything else.
The people who were the best at operating the real death controls were the best at lying about that. The controlled opposition to them is even better at lying about that, as a principled position. The Grand Canyon Paradoxes keep on growing bigger and bigger that the scientific methods were enabling us to discover more objective truths about the world, and even ourselves, while our society was quite deliberately controlled through frauds and murders which were the best at lying about themselves, and suppressing the truth about themselves.
In the case of Marx, the early Marx had some scientific merit. However, that was then mainly used to be a false front to rationalize the messianic Marxism, which was used by big bullies, to be better liars and hypocrites, so that they could engage in their kinds of frauds and murders, which would enable them to control their civilization for a while, in the so-called communist countries, (which, of course, were never actually communist.)
Similarly, we do not have "capitalism" now. There are no good labels for what actually exists, but I tend to refer to it as fascist plutocracy, in which the basis of the system is the triumphant application of the methods of organized crime to control civilization. Thus, governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gang of criminals, and those biggest gangsters are now the banksters, who have been able to get legalized their ability to create the public "money" supply out of nothing as debts, as a fraud that is enforced by the government. That kind of "money," which is legalized counterfeiting of the public money supply by private banks, destroys "capitalism," because the "capital" is being made out of nothing. The more that "money" gets made out of nothing, the more that "capitalism" gets destroyed, and thus, the facts are that "capitalism" has been destroyed at an exponentially accelerating rate for quite a long time, with the recent rounds of Quantitative Easing making that become blatant.
That triumphantly enforced fraud also destroys common sense, since it violates the basic laws of nature to make something out of nothing, or to send something to nothing. It is ridiculous to talk about "capitalism" inside the context of fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems. Instead, what exists is the operation of the principles and methods of organized crime, which is called militarism when that is done on a large enough scale. There is no merit whatsoever in false fundamental dichotomies between organized crime versus government, since governments are always simply the biggest forms of organized crime. Similarly there is no intellectual merit whatsoever in deliberately ignoring those social facts, or in proposing "solutions" to problems which continue to deliberately ignore those facts, including saying silly things like that government should not be organized crime, when it is, and must be, and so, the only possible better government is better organized crime.
The ironies about "intellectuals" inside of society all trace through the profound paradoxes related to militarism, as the expression of the ways that frauds and force actually control civilization, while the degrees of delicate dynamic equilibria between the previous systems of organized lies and robberies are obviously breaking down at exponentially accelerating rates, but while most "intellectuals" are still wedded to some old-fashioned religions or ideologies, which will not let them embrace militarism as the supreme ideology. Instead, virtually all intellectuals promote the same bullshit as the biggest bullies, namely, world views based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and their related impossible ideals, which actually accomplish nothing beyond enabling people to continue to tell lies and be hypocrites.
One of basic expressions of the paradoxes related to militarism are the paradoxes with respect to the enforcement of the "rule of law." Of course, almost everyone prefers to deliberately ignore those paradoxes, as expressed by Plato as being the problem that Nobody Guards the Guardians, since there are no possible solutions to that problem. In the case of countries like the United States of American, it is patently obvious to anyone who is willing to look at its history that the ruling classes which control America are the best organized gangs of criminals, which have been able to apply the methods of organized crime to dominate the political processes, in order to achieve things like the current monetary and taxation systems.
Most politicians are puppets, while the masses of muppets have been brainwashed to not want to understand that, as citizens, they are actually members of an organized crime gang, called their country. By those means, the democratic republic has already been almost totally destroyed, while the future prospects are not good, since the controlled opposition groups are dominated by reactionary revolutionaries. Those intellectuals' "solutions" tend to be recommending to go backwards, towards whatever old-fashioned religion or ideology they prefer, while the combined American Money/Murder systems continue operating on the autopilots of their maximized frauds and deceits about themselves, with barely any trouble at all, since they have such enormous inertial momentum.
Overall, theoretical "capitalism" makes abstract sense as the operation of entropic pumps. However, to include the full range of how human entropic pumps actually operate, one must cover the total territory of human ecology, as well as the political economy within that, which means that one must include fraud and murder into "capitalism," which is what then creates the actually existing system of a runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut. Hence, money is measurement backed by murder, because the debt controls depend upon the death controls, but, everyone who becomes successful within those systems tends to do so by being better professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, which, of course, includes the range of "intellectuals" which live inside of those established and entrenched systems.
Overall, Neolithic Civilization is working itself up into a frenzy of madness and self-destruction. Ideally, "we should" go through a series of profound intellectual scientific revolutions, in order that our civilization could become more scientific, in order to cope with, and survive, having already become as scientific as it has become. However, that would take enough people understanding how and why we have ended up with globalized systems of electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs. Ideally, we need intellectual revolutions that could apply to the crucial expression of politics, which is militarism. Ideally, we need to develop better murder systems. There is nothing less than that achievement which would be workable. However, that achievement is obviously in a head-on collision with the history of militarism having its success based upon deceits, so that the best militarism was the one which was most able to lie about itself, and that included surrounding itself with controlled opposition groups which would agree to also go along with those lies. Of course, that is what dominates in America, and all around the world, today.
Those points which I made above are a brief survey of the problems that "intellectuals" have within the context of our current civilization. In my view, it is painfully obvious that everyone who was most successful within the currently established systems are the ones who least want to better understand the paradoxical nature of the problems, which were inherent in human nature, because they are inherent in the nature of all life. Little monkeys have the same basic problems as human beings do. We have the same basic problems that little monkeys did. The differences are that the human experiment was about developing bigger brains, that could build better models of their world, including having a better model of themselves within their model of their world. Clearly, the scientific methods were about doing that even better still.
However, after we develop sufficiently better scientific methods, to drive us through a series of profound paradigm shifts, representing progress in sciences like physics and biology (which have equally profound technological ramifications) we are still stuck within the context of the paradoxes of our supreme ideology, which is militarism, or the ideology of the murder system. None of the bullshit about "economics" makes enough sense unless one understands that economics is a science like warfare is a science. That is why both the science of economics, and the science of warfare, are sciences about frauds and force, which were proportionately successful to the degree that they were able to lie about themselves, and surround themselves with other people who would agree with those lies, and continue to endorse and promote those enforced frauds, by whatever means necessary, both mentally and physically
Human realities are always necessarily organized systems of lies, operating robberies. Therefore, every possible kind of "intellectual" is doing that. Meanwhile, the Grand Canyon Paradoxes of progress in science and technology, without anything remotely similar happening in our politics, ARE, from a sublime point of view, with a macabre sense of humour, quite intelligible. After all, it makes perfect sense, both empirically, as well as theoretically, that civilizations operate through vast integrated systems of enforced frauds, within which context it also makes perfect sense that those doing that are the best at being able to maintain attitudes of evil deliberate ignorance towards themselves, or those who employ them, actually doing that.
THE SUBLIME, SUPREMELY PARADOXICAL PROBLEM FOR HUMAN BEINGS IS THAT THEY ARE CONTROLLED BY THEIR MURDER SYSTEMS, WHICH THEY OPERATE THROUGH THE MAXIMUM POSSIBLE DECEITS, BECAUSE THAT WAS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL WAY TO OPERATE THOSE MURDER SYSTEMS.
HOWEVER, AFTER THE DEVELOPMENT OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, CONTINUING TO DO THAT HAS BECOME EXTREMELY PROBLEMATIC!
We happen to still being living in the first generation that grew up with the fact that weapons of mass destruction had been developed. We have watched as the globalized systems of electronic frauds, backed by the force of atomic bombs, were built. We have watched as the runaway debt slavery systems, backed by wars based on deceits, have generated numbers which have become debt insanities, which are threatening to provoke death insanities.
In the context, the established systems continue to be best at lying about what they are really doing, while their controlled opposition continues to promote similar bullshit about what the "solutions" to those problems should be. Therefore, our political problems are trillions of times worse than ever before in human history, and way, way, way worse than the political problems that our much more ancient ancestors ever had. Somehow, to survive, there has to be enough of a greater use of information, and higher consciousness, to enable us to operate better death control systems. We need to go through profound paradigm shifts in our perceptions of militarism, and the monetary system, so that we can cope with how and why we operate the death controls to back up the debt controls.
Of course, when one steps back and looks at the magnitude of the problem of having a globalized civilization of running electronic frauds, backed by atomic force, there are barely any presently practical ways to imagine how we can survive that, especially since all of that is now being done through the maximum possible deceits and frauds, and therefore, almost all intellectuals are fully invested in continuing to promote their preferred kind of professional lying and immaculate hypocrisy.
A lovely post mon ami. I bring to your attention a point from the first few paragraphs of your post. Why do you think when you turn on your 'smartphone,' you are faced with a toy? You don't need to know Electrical Engineering or Computer Science concepts in order to describe a general notion in time and space. Anyone can describe what they know about their smartphone. How many people can tell you exactly what it is capable of, and what kind of a cultural revolution it would bring if people knew and demanded the full functionality of it all for free? Think ad-hoc networks, my friend. It's the one thing no one in the entire fucking world cannot stop: ad-hoc networks. It takes a conceptual appreciation that is inherently built into the very essence of human existence - ad-hoc networks. Tribal shit my man, pure tribal shit. It's exactly what they fear. Tribes are strong, well-defined, coherent in function, resilient. Shamans must return. Just because you got a fucking iPad in your hands don't mean you're too good for a shaman.
I agree, Skateboarder:
Shamans must return.
It takes homemade hardware and software built out of love and care, just like making a good dish that everyone just fucking loves. Not a corporation - a service. That is the greatest thing a human can do - serve, willingly, and with the fullest conviction of the heart. And it takes an uncompromising set of principles to do things right the first time. That, and appreciation and adoption of homemade things over corporate shits. The family name standing for good product, as it really should.
Someday, my friend, we may see things work right. I fear Fukushima cancer will claim you and I in our lifetimes, but who knows what the future holds.
and to think that they killed off hundreds of millions...and yet
they will return!
Gross underestimation in the power of internet transformation.
And what's that term I heard sometimes ago,
O ne
L anguage
I ntelligence
N etwork
(strange you can't google anything about it)
Yes, indeed. But I got good news: There are still people left, who are in the know about the "Star Sickness" we are suffering from, and could cure us: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C7%83Kung_people
;-)
DonT we first have to develop interstellar travel in order to contract Star Sickness?
But it's great to hear that we already have the cure! Put those !Kung on a Reservation and put up a high fence around it. We need to preserve their culture.
The term "Star Sickness" denotes a situation in which the individual has lost the connection to it's greater surrounding, including the spiritual word. Such a loss of connection leads to aimless errantry. It has nothing to do with interstellar travel (that would be Space Sickness, wouldn't it?). ;-)
thanx, now i know what it is. and now i know what ails me. And best of all, i know where to go to get cured. do the !Kung still take $ or do i need to pack some bitcoins?
They will take neither $ nor bitcoin, I think. As far as I know, the idea of getting paid for everything is itself a symptom of Star Sickness.
They sound like a cool people. I hope they are located far enough from any resources so as to be safe from the Empire's Reach.
I'm always taken back by the euphemisms of capital structure.
A true capitalist is too busy to complain. </sarc>
You didn't need a sarc tag outside of the socialization/taxation of ones profits aspect of it (capitalism), its true ;-)
nmewn? Did I get it right?
lol...as far as I'm concerned, yes.
But its not what I think is right or wrong, its what you think is right or wrong. Therin lies the rub, is your conscience clean (when you're alone, with your thoughts) of humanity, of your own person and how you gained your profit?
You (everyone) has to weigh these things whether one is a taker or a giver.
I don't know why I like that.....seems to invite the question, Have I done on to others as I would have them do on to me...enough? A sort of ex post application of Luke 6:31, which I have to say, we do not do this often enough and it is perhaps because we do not understand its significance or its reach. nice nmewn +1
Someone is handing out Free-bees nmewn. It's too easy
that sounds like the School of Kant.
Intentions are all that matter?
"It is ok, if i manipulate the interest rates, the money supply and the economy, as long as i am 'doing God's Work'."
My intentions were good, even if you got screwed in the process.
"... and how you gained your profit?"
I gained my profit by doing God's Work, so everything's cool.
I saw this earlier and wanted to return to it, I guess I do need to give an explanation of what I meant.
Naturally my presumption (and societies) is, is that we're talking about normal well adjusted people, not criminals, for eaxample - "Because I wanted her purse, I knocked her in the head and took it. And ya know, cuz she was just laying there unconscious, I raped her. So, she really didn't feel a thing."...is not a justification for knocking her in the head, stealing & raping.
For those types of people, them saying we (and she) "should be glad she didn't wake up during the rape because I would have had to kill her", rings a tad hollow and is definitely not the regular, normal people I'm talking about.
Which is, thankfully, still the majority of people.
intellectual is a fancy term for controller.....controllers do not like the rough and tumble of true free markets, so their resentment toward freedom is incubated in ivory towers where they hatch vile plans to control people in increasingly totalitarian modes...in general,intellectuals are the poison of civilization, a fact which can be substantiated time and time again. they are the hand maidens to evil.
Extremely well said, tony. I will add that socialism and central power of any sort appeal to the arrogance of self-professed "intellectuals". They like the idea of molding society in and toward their own image. It always applies to others rather than themselves. They are often people who actually don't do anything, produce anything or know how to do anything. They do not have the humility to simply analyze what happens in real life. Their arrogance forces them to come up with pre-copernicus type economic explanations making the earth the center of the universe. Everything revolves around them even if it really does not work. Liberty and freedom are considered suspicious because with them not everyone makes the choice for themselves that YOu want them to make. Power is the real end game.
On the opposite side there is an inherent humility to the far right (Libertarian). They/we admit we do not actually know how to run every enterprise endemic to mankind and therefore we ought not to intervene and control things we do not understand. We understand people have many very different models for their own lives and happiness. Coercion is the enemy of all things and the use of force is limited to opposing force and real crime. Control is suspcious as those in power make choices differently and detrimentally to what you would choose for yourself. Freedom is the end game.
What the hell are you guys talking about and who the hell is greening this shit?
An intellectual is a person who chooses to spend time training and applying the intellect. All scientists are, for example, intellectuals which directly contradicts the statement that, "They do not have the humility to simply analyze what happens in real life".
The Founding Fathers of the USA were notable for their intellectualism. Are you so confused that you call for rejecting those men, yet then turn around and call yourself Libertarian? What was the Constitution if not a product of intellectual activity? If you are sitting around pondering issues of human freedom then you're participating in intellectual activity, do you then reject yourself?
Then there's the delicious irony of pouring shit on intellectuals using a computer and the internet that are products of intellectuals.
I mean seriously, that has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read.
Intellectuals are the fountain of modern civilization. Without human intellectualism, we'd be no more advanced than chimpanzees. Like chimps, our lives would be brutish and short, killed by violence or afflictions that could be easily treated with modern medicine. We would be oppressed by superstition, fear, pain and early death.
Contrast nature red in tooth and claw to our much more comfortable modern existance and consider how this came to be. Who was it, other than intellectuals, that gave us accumulated works from psychology, social study, philosophy, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, navigation, statistics, engineering, chemistry, physics, medicine, legal systems, fine art, orchestral music, etc; the very things that facilitate technology and civil society.
Who are the real "hand maidens to evil"? Which group "poisons civilization" time and time again? I'll tell you: those who oppose intellectual pursuits and would prefer ignorance.
Almost without exception, the Great Oppressors of history apply the same pattern of control, seeking to silence intellectuals through execution, imprisonment, blackmail, threats or bribes. The uncontrolled agent of free-thought (an intellectual) is a direct political threat. Great Oppressors must control the music, the art, the news, the political discourse and the application of scientific discovery, they cannot let information flow freely lest it dethrone them. They will eliminate all intellectual activity that does not fit their oppressive regime, and only allow those voices to be heard that agree to tow the line. Lazy commentators then cast the briefest of glances to history and declare the survivors of the cull to be at fault for the cull itself.
To pour shit on intellectuals is to cast one's lot in with all the other intellectual-hating individuals of history, including the Great Oppressors such as Mao "to read too many books is harmful" Zedong, Pol Pot, and Josef Stalin, none of whom could be called Great Intellects by any sensible person. Before aligning with their line of thought, recall an image of human skulls stacked up from the killing fields of Cambodia a place where the Khmer Rouge routinely executed people for simply wearing glasses or for speaking a second language because those things were deemed to be signs of intellectualism.
How far does your hatred of intellectuals extend? What would you do if offered the supreme power of a Stalin or a Pol Pot? Could you truly walk away from it like George Washington or would you kick a few intellectual heads on the way down the slippery slope? Be honest with yourself, if noone else.
Assaulting intellectualism and embracing Libertarianism is straight cognitive dissonance.
Absolutely agree.
I have the same issue with the term 'liberal'. As we know, both von Mises and Hayek had to make explicit statements about the meaning they attribute to this word in prefaces to American editions.
Libertarian, as opposed to liberal, sounds like a bad pronounciation/misspelling contraption to me.
The essence of the problem here is American 'exceptionalism', or really Ego, IMO.
By ignoring, or just being poorly educated in the history of intellect, they imagine they are still fighting the King.
Wrong on most all accounts mediocritas. The modern label of "intellectual" is term thrown losely and improperly. It is similar to the difference in the meaning of "liberal" classically and in the modern sense.
The idea of reason and rationality is not what I rail against and you are an idiot if you cannot tell the difference. You are so far off base that I think you read into my post things that are not there. You picked the wrong post.
Our founding fathers were among the brightest and best read anywhere. They were also do-ers engaged in commerce, agriculture or other pursuits, including theology by the way, dimwit.
It was exactly the kind of pseudo-intellectuals who accepted the ideas of the fascist state and other autocratic forms of socialism. Tell me, what was Marx's profession that he excelled at? How about Mao, Stalin, Pot and even Adolf himself, eh?
I am assaulting faux intellectualism and if you knew a whit about libertarianism you know that it is generally a long intellectual process of reasoning and discovery. This is opposed to most collectivism which is simplistic and demanding and anti-intellectual. That is why it caught on first in the most backwards of countries, the exact opposit of what Marx predicted.
Start from the beginning and read again dimwit, especially the parts about power.
So you're saying that you knew better when you threw around the term loosely and improperly yourself, yet did so anyway? Then instead of humbly taking the justified criticism, you get all pissy when I call you out for being loose and improper.
Nah, I'm gonna leave the hit in place because most English speakers in the world have no problem understanding the term and you can too with a 5 second Google search, here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual Plus I know all too well how many faux-libertarians are actually closet fascists and secretly dream of cutting intellectuals down and I reckon I smell one here.
Next up, it's only your arrogance thinking that I don't know what Libertarianism is. Tell me why I should think you have anything valuable to teach me when you're capable of saying something as fundamentally wrong as this:
The same old simplistic left/right nonsense that gets rolled out time and time again here at ZH by people who insist on trying to map the multiple dimensions of a political position down onto a single scale, then wonder why they end up tied in contradiction.
Augusto Pinochet was over there on the far right, where you claim (wrongly) that libertarians are, yet Pinochet was a brutal authoritarian, the very antithesis of a libertarian. Meanwhile Mohandas Gandhi was very clearly what Americans would refer to as libertarian (and the rest of the world as liberal), yet he was left wing, over with Stalin who was authoritarian. Left / right just doesn't cut it and "inherent humility" has no place anywhere along that division, that's just your arrogance speaking again (Libertarians are just the best huh?).
Total fantasy. I seriously doubt you know any libertarians. They are the farthest thing from fascists you will find...except perhaps for true anarchists. As far a faux-libertarians, well if you are "faux" anything you are a fake, like faux-intellectual. Your wikipedia reference is silly and not even applicable if you actually read and understood what I wrote.
One of the first things most on the libertarian proper right will do is redefine Left and Right in more accurate terms. Pinochet and Hitler were not the far right. They were autocrats and socialists. They were to the right only of communists. I will actually meet you halfway and say that the general public does get confused by this.
Without writing multiple paragraphs the proper far right is anarchists (the true definition) and Libertarians who have little to no government and maximal individual freedom. The far left is communism wherein it is 100% government and you are owned by the state, no individual property. There is more to it, but that is the start. There are no autocrats on the right.
The words "liberal", "conservative", "left' and "right" got screwed up in the early twentieth century. Google it if you like. Part of it is on purpose and also the problem with dual meanings in English. For example, "Anarchists" love to go to the G8 meetings and create mayhem. They are not true anarchists who believe in no government. They are socialists who use the mayhem meaning of the word in order to bring down the current order and in the rubble establish their socialist utopia. It is also a stupid idea politically that the same word means both disorder and no government.
And yes, I do passionately thoroughly believe in Libertariansim as the best answer to improving the lot of mankind. It has been a process of reasoning for decades and a gradual change in my thinking. Most of my libertarian friends are former leftists who have taken the same INTELLECTUAL path over time. One even did essentially socialist economic dissertations in grad school.
I assert libertariansim is best. I do. If that strikes you as arrogance then so be it. Because you do not understand it, it is essentially a philosophy of humility and liberty. By the way, it is classical liberalism as oppossed to modern liberalism. You might notice that with the proper definitions that liberty-libertal and libertarian all properly align. It is then intellectually and rationally consistent.
Thanks God for American redneck. The pivot of civilization. If all the world was like them, we would still be in caves and wouldn't have anything to worry about, except how to get meat on the table and how to get that (these days ever more fat) bitch drunk and screw her.
Table in the cave? Who needs the damn table, the contraption of those city slickers.
I suspect you've never met a redneck. They are not all that bad. They are self sufficient, generally like being left alone, don't like a lot of rules and live their own way. They also have no real desire to tell you what to do or to confiscate your property. They will share their beer and barbecue with you although you might need to bring one or the other and contribute. If they are your friends you can also count on them in a fight.
I will take rednecks any day over pointy headed utopian socialist libs who have plans for you and me...mandatory plans.
If the only criteria I had in order to choose between two people (for whatever purpose), I would choose redneck over intellectual every time.
Most of the rednecks I've known or met are smart, honest people with skills. I've never met a self-titled intellectual who was worth anything but ridicule. Truly intellectual people don't go around talking about how intellectual they are.
Exactly. Spend some time in Boulder, Colorado or any particularly leftist, intellectual, "I am better than you" community and you will suffocate.
“The modern mind dislikes gold because it blurts out unpleasant truths”
– Joseph Schumpeter
XAG @ 19 & some change? Looks tasty!
Capitalism is not as intellectual as most people would have you believe. It's simply kill or be killed adapted to the market place.
More like adapt or be killed.
Very different. Capitalism keeps things hopping and rewards the smart and agile. Other systems reward the brutal and corrupt.
Dinosaurs were not capitalists.
Maybe for a little while after we crawled out of the ooze, the sounding gun was started, and humans began competing... Since then, we'd have to go to mars to find a slice of pie not already claimed. At some point, the smart and agile move into mom's basement, get high, play video games, and worry about nothing. The smart and agile represent competition, which must be avoided by all rational actors in positions of power. Thus, capitalism breeds the same brutality and corruption as the others...
Well, like so many good things, you can have too much of it, I guess. Capitalism goes best with a little guidance, some economic and social and moral stuff. Sometimes nobody is smart enough to see the winning hand that includes more people, and yeah we're having a pretty nasty case of that right about now.
What's the cliche, democracy (or capitalism) is the worst system around ... except for all the others.
Like fire is good, but it's even better when someone puts it in a boiler across town and uses it to generate some electricity so I can watch tv with it. And fire is a bad thing for your pants while you're wearing them.
Bullshit. All bullshit. Capitalism is not any of that crap. Capitalism started with I will trade three fish for six bananas. You are good at growing or getting the bananas and i am good at fishing. If we get someone else to specialize in clothing we will trade them bananas and fish.
That is what got us out of primitive society. Someone learned how to grow food, herd animals and make carts. We traded and were all better off. What you confuse is the use of force which has been here since history began. If you are strong enough it is easier to take the fish, bananas and clothing. You don't have to work for them. This is plunder not productivity. Read Bastiat.
You don't think national socialism and communism are brutal? What fantasy world are you living in?
There is no fucking pie unless someone first bakes one. The fact you or someone else wants to steal it is not capitalism. Capitalism is about baking more pies, bigger pies and better pies and you prosper by doing it. Collectivism is about dividing up the ever dwindling pie and trying to use force to get someone else to bake another.
If this is success, I'll take failure, thank you very much.
why the intellectuals oppose capitalism
jealousy.
twas the same when Rousseau opposed royalty. not high-mindedness or rationality. just jealousy.
so what about Schumpeter? I don't know, I guess, anything about him beyond "creative destruction". Maybe just another prophet who doesn't really believe his own theories, he'd hardly be the first.
Nice point. I read another post about the parasitic nature of intellectuals, meaning leftist intellectuals. Only the Left recognizes professions and careers like "community organizer". It is a parasitic culture.
"a creation of a capitalist society."
There is no "capitalist" society -- there is a society based on Freedom (and Law designed to protect it), and "capitalism" is a natural extension.
Ignorance and opportunism and desperation rule the day.
Corruption seals the deal...
Discussions of "capitalism" are a waste of valuable energy.
there is a society based on Freedom (and Law designed to protect it),
hahaha what school of comedy did you graduate from .
I took a few courses in 'american' Mythology in school.
They called it 'American History'.
Full of Action Heros! They called the action heros 'Founding Fathers'. To augment my indoctrination, i went to our Public Library. The library had a whole rack full of biographies of these action heros. I read them all.
The mythical society covered in those courses and described in those books was considered to be based on something called 'Freedom'. Oh how i have yearned to live in such "a society based on Freedom". If only it were possible...
After American Mythology i moved on to reading a lot of Science Fiction. Science Fiction is even cooler.
If you had working examples of capitalism in various stages, one sure observation is that it never works unless there’s some moral responsibility for the actions that those that are in power have towards those that are at their mercy. Many succumb to corruption, so at a minimum, risk takers in a capitalist society must own up to unescapable, devastating consequences for making poor decisions. Capitalism fails without those consequences, and the current actions by our government demonstate they’re not capitalists.
"one sure observation is that it never works unless there’s some moral responsibility for the actions that those that are in power have towards those that are at their mercy"
And now you know why the left foists the notion that the founders werent religious, were hostile to religion, and seek to destroy religion today. Cant be havin' that moral responsibility
Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams
Capitalism and freedom are indivisible. The vast majority of people understand neither. They are just words to which most people attach vague ideas.
We are nearing an age in technology when DNA testing will be able to determine sociopaths. Once the people like those in Washington D.C. and on Wall Street are safely seperated from normal humans capitalism will be able to function again.
DNA testing will work if it is a genetic problem.
I wonder if it really is a problem at the level of the genes & cells.
It is. The problem is that a significant portion of all the other "problems" with society are likewise genetic... free will being that smidgen of opportunity to rewire ourselves after the age of reason (the longer we wait, the harder it gets). It should scare the shit out of everyone that there is even a psychology profession... presuming it is not snake oil (and it isn't), then most humans can simply be lumped into diagnosable categories of mental function or disfunction. If true, then psychologists are really no different than Gaff in Blade Runner.... dropping not so subtle hints that our thoughts and feelings might be... not necessarily our own.
Do robots dream of electric sheep?
No, they don't. But if you also got an electric girlfriend, the sheep will instigate her to commit suicide regularly. But if you happen to get hold of a Nexus VII woman and turn her in to Tyrell, you will be so unbelievably rich that you could afford a real sheep!
"Karl Marx, who knew quite a bit about the human tendency to fall down and worship our own creations, wrote Das Kapital in an attempt to demonstrate that, even if we start from the economists’ utopian vision, so long as we also allow some people to control productive capital, and, again, leave others with nothing to sell but their brains and bodies, the results will be in very many ways barely distinguishable from slavery, and the whole system will eventually destroy itself."
- David Graeber,
Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 2011
Well, Capitalism works fine if there is rule-of-law and the individual is rewarded for moral behavior, for saving, for in turn rewarding workers and paying a fair tax.
Problem being, the precepts of the Constitution and Capitalism have been warped and bastardized so that immoral behavior is rewarded, saving is punished, workers are shirked and demeaned, and taxes only apply to the middle class who can't afford to bribe politicians or pay lawyers and accountants.
Crony Capitalism is worse than Socialism or Communism as it presents the appearance of fairness and democracy while giving neither, yet imposing the oppression of .gov systems via an obtuse web of lawyers, politicians, and financiers - all serving as the "King's Men" or the "Party Faithful" while sucking up the gravy and oppressing individuals and families - with the assistance of the propaganda arms of the MSM.
There is no capitalism in the West, only the Kleptoligarchy glossed over with a veneer of sugar coated LIES.
capitalism is a mythical creature that can only draw but a single breath in this world... I hear these arguments and they all boil down to "yeah, but if capitalism was just implemented properly, then it would be perfect" mmmkkkk. Hint: capitalism has been attempted over and over again, it can't be implemented because no economic system can truly be implemented given it is a mere suggestion to society to behave a certain way. The fact that proponents refuse to consolidate the concept of capitalism with the prospects of implementation in this world is mind boggling... a strong case of denial for certain.
I think what you missed or just fail to understand, is that you cannot "implement" capitalism. As someone said above, you can implement freedom and when the people are left to their devices, captialism is the natural outflowing of that. The notion that it is implemented is exactly why we have this bastardised crony capitalist/fascist system (that has nothing to do with capitalism) we do now.
To me a "fair tax" is like "fair theft". But what do I know, could you explain fair tax for my edification?
What he could be said to have said is that people can not stand success. All these trust fund kids do not have a clue what to do with their lives and pursue pleasure or become eco-freaks or like the Kennedys become politicians leading the country to some utopia of no work , drugs, sex, and rock and roll. The liberals have near complete control of our children and are destroying the only hope for the future. Success is punished and sloth is rewarded. Those that work hard and get some wealth are reviled as greedy and cruel exploiters.
It is good ZH talks about Schumpeter (great economist he really is)
Unfortunately the article does not explain what the great achievement of Schumpeter to the economic theories was
Schumpeter was trying to incorporate technological development into economic theories of the time.
Can you name any economics book that incorporates into its equations technological development of the world and can describe it as historical process evolving in time ?
How do you even begin to describe in mathematical terms what technology is, how one technology is more efficient than the other ?
So Schumpeter was trying to explain economic cycles and introduced into economic theories a new acting factor - the entrepreneur who drains and ties capital to develope new ideas and technologies and then the society benefits from it and enters into a new economic cycle
For resolving today's problems however Schumpeter can offer nothing. He explained why we have economic cycles but today to launch a new technological cycle we need to invest (to drain and tie) too much capital and the risks are too high because the payable demand is fundamentally limited.
Apple managed to successfully create and sell IPhone. I was sceptical at the time - who would be buying it ? in such big volumes ?
But Steve Jobs was brilliant and managed to push it far enough to make it a success
Was Boeing's Dreamliner a success ? They are still struggling through it
Was termonuclear power research a success ? We invested trillions into it and still have no usefull results available
Our current gov't regime is INFESTED with "intellectuals" and their theories-the economy, foreign relations etc. etc. are just f-ing GREAT aren't they?
Socialism has been tried again and again, and has failed every time. Why hasn't this nonesense been left in the dustbin of history?
Because there is always another bunch of "intellectuals" who flatter themselve into thinking THEY can make it work because they're so much smarter. But they are just another bunch of educated fools.
I'll Have a Hotdog
You Have Schum Peter
Wampeter, foma and granfaloons. Obama is a stupid, greedy felon who would be chained to Blagegovitch but for his accomplices.
Pass the shells, dad.
All these thoughts predictions guesses occur if people begin to think politically and as a group. Unfortunately most individuals are concerned only with their self interest hence nothing will happen
All these thoughts predictions guesses occur if people begin to think politically and as a group. Unfortunately most individuals are concerned only with their self interest hence nothing will happen
Also in Schumpeter's book, he states that the intellectuals were some of Hitler's biggest supporters during his rise to power. The left is addicted to power and free market capitalism is the antithesis of the concentration of power. QED, that's why the left hates free market capitalism.
The problem isn't inherent in the capitalist system. Capitalism qua capitalism is nothing more than free markets - voluntary exchange amongst individuals, it says nothing about the political system of a culture. What happens is that the parasites now have a bigger host to prey on - see Hoppe's Democracy - the God that Failed. It's also why the likes of Doug Casey advocates for places run by those that are clinically insane - see Kristina Kirchner. But the key to various South American countries is that they don't have as big of a host to prey on, they can't install AI cameras to determine what behaviors are "normal" on every lamp post. They don't have the funds to do it. What has happened is that he inequality that is shown via the capitalist system, is CAPITALIZED on by the political class, knowing that convincing the boobeois would perpetually leave them in a position of power. Notice how Picketty and his cohorts never discuss the genesis of the porblem, its much like a doctor that treats the symptoms but never the genesis of the disease. What we really need is a perpetual reminder that, as Lew Rockwell notes, everything you have, you owe to capitalism. Unfortunately, these types of things don't yeild themselves to "good" sound bites.
The problem isn't inherent in the capitalist system. Capitalism qua capitalism is nothing more than free markets - voluntary exchange amongst individuals, it says nothing about the political system of a culture. What happens is that the parasites now have a bigger host to prey on - see Hoppe's Democracy - the God that Failed. It's also why the likes of Doug Casey advocates for places run by those that are clinically insane - see Kristina Kirchner. But the key to various South American countries is that they don't have as big of a host to prey on, they can't install AI cameras to determine what behaviors are "normal" on every lamp post. They don't have the funds to do it. What has happened is that he inequality that is shown via the capitalist system, is CAPITALIZED on by the political class, knowing that convincing the boobeois would perpetually leave them in a position of power. Notice how Picketty and his cohorts never discuss the genesis of the porblem, its much like a doctor that treats the symptoms but never the genesis of the disease. What we really need is a perpetual reminder that, as Lew Rockwell notes, everything you have, you owe to capitalism. Unfortunately, these types of things don't yeild themselves to "good" sound bites.
So refreshing! Someone else gets it. Everything, everything, everything we have is due to trading. None of us makes our own clothes, food or shelter outside of still primitive Africa or tribes in the Amazon. They will stay poor.
All socialism depends on a host that can feed it. Like most parasites it will continue to grow until the host dies. Always and everywhere.
Mix some envy for all the stuff some people have because of their talents, luck and work, the irresistible urge most folks have for a free lunch, and the skillful and specious rationalizations and "solutions" of the "intellectuals" and viola you have redistribution; whether total (communism), partial (socialism), or less partial (mixed economy). Turbocharge that with some financing and higher order planning by those who know the score and it's all headed the same place, super dooper centralized world fascism, where a teeny weeny percentage have all the power and wealth over the serfs, because they love them of course.