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Calamitous Consequences
Via Scotiabank's Guy Haselmann,
Karl Marx died in March 1883, yet there has been a rebirth of the ideas he detailed on the inherent flaws of capitalism. Recently, Paul Tudor Jones gave a ‘Ted Talk’ about capitalism needing re-definition. My paper entitled ‘2014 and Beyond’ began with the sentence, “Modern day capitalism appears to need a different moniker”. It is quite possible that future developments in capitalism will have profound and on-going influence on markets and valuations.
Let me first go on record and say that in the 135 years since Marx’ death, capitalism has been the single greatest engine for human advancement. It has certainly been an outstanding way to organize the production and distribution of goods and services. Its free-market structure encouraged innovation, leading to new methods and products whose technological advancements allowed for globalization and the general shrinking of the world. Entrepreneurship aided improvements to health and education, and was the cornerstone to economic progress. No other social construct in history has done more to advance the human condition, or lift more people out of poverty, than capitalism.
A capitalist structure’s main quest is to ensure the real appreciation of capital. Corporate leaders are incentivized to maximize shareholder value at almost any cost: the best means is to increase output per hour worked (productivity). Can this be sustained forever?
The causes and responses of the 2008 crisis are the culmination of decades of intervention by lawmakers, central banks, and regulators trying to create a perception of prosperity. Unfortunately, many of the actions by policy officials have been designed whereby current day benefits were trade-off against future economic prospects. It is unfortunate that policy-makers’ well-intentioned attempts to build a stronger economic system may have added to future challenges and complexities.
Marx exposed the inherent contradictions where he believed that weak aggregate demand leads to workers not being hired in an endless loop causing capitalism to ultimately self-destruct. Is it possible that capitalism’s underlying focus on profits, and the necessity for endless purchases of goods and services, has a practical limit?
The necessity for growth has led to over-capacity, which has been a root cause of deflation, and one driver of the Fed’s futility. QE and ZIRP (i.e., Zero Interest Rate Policy) have only served to turbo-charge this loop. Going forward, markets will have to contend with servicing the large amounts of debt created under ZIRP. High levels of indebtedness require a minimum degree of economic growth just to ensure debt-servicing is possible.
Markets and the economy will also have to contend with troubling demographics. On the horizon in upcoming years is a steep acceleration of retirements. New retires will draw on retirement and medical benefits, but more importantly, they will withdraw their labor services from the economy. Capital will have less labor to work with which will result in less business activity. Moreover, older people are simply less innovative (maybe this is why productivity levels have fallen in the last few decades).
There are currently profound and complicated relationships between, capitalism and inequality, between labor and capital, and between governments and its citizenry. Social tensions are swelling between: business owners and workers, voters and politicians, rich and poor, old and young, and amongst countries. Tensions are spurring general resentment, nationalism, and religious vehemence.
The question becomes how will these tensions be resolved? Feelings of inequality and injustice are constraints on economic growth that ultimately affect everyone negatively with the potential for calamitous consequences. Easy solutions do not exist. Eradication of US inequality, for instance, will require more than redistribution and wealth transfer policies, especially since the US system is already progressive and steep in subsidies. At an extreme, they risk making everyone worse off.
Furthermore, the conversation surrounding the issue has been counter-productive as some politicians infer that when the rich benefit it is at the expense of the poor. Measurement errors distort the discussion; such as when reportable taxable income is used to measure income gaps but does not include subsidies. Regardless, the divide is real and growing, but it is not a zero sum game where one’s benefit is at the expense the other. Each side feels victimized.
The great challenges outlined in this note are of critical importance and should not be dismissed quickly. As Paul Tudor Jones said during his ‘Ted Talk’, these conditions typically lead to “war, revolution, or higher taxes”. Maybe the early warning signs before those occur are organized protests, police backlash, racial tensions, currency wars, protectionism, voter backlash, rise of fringe political parties, Sunni/Shia tensions, and ‘Arab Spring’ (etc.)
It might be useful to think about these high level concepts while applying them more granularly to markets. In this respect, maybe bonds are not in bubble territory as so many believe.
Maybe there is a deeper reason why central banks are hoarding such vast quantities of sovereign debt.
Maybe central banks simply cannot afford to have market interest rates rise too high due to the cost of debt servicing extreme levels or global indebtedness; and due to terrible demographics in developed world economies.
Maybe corporate revenue growth will be challenged for decades to come.
Maybe the mindset of maximizing profits at all costs has a practical limit.
Maybe for capitalism to survive peacefully, the perceived divide - between wages and profits and labor and capital - needs to shrink and unite (hurting profit margins).
Since major central banks are at or near the lower bound (and many have ballooned balance sheets), and since most major governments (and corporations) have historically high levels of debt, effective future stimulus may not be available. Central bank’s powering risk assets higher may no longer be possible. Higher prices may only be achievable through elusive economic growth. Maybe bonds just aren’t as bubble-like as pundits claim. Maybe it is equities (and forward earnings estimates) that have greater bubble-like characteristics.
“If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street / If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat / If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat / If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet” – The Beatles
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Its called, "the law of diminshing returns",
Thank God there are no inherent contradictions in government expansion.
The issue is not market pricing of goods and services.
The problem is a debt-based paper money system run by central planners who are endlessly juicing additional consumption with additional debt.
As John Exter of the Federal Reserve predicted, this debt system will go parabolic and collapse under its debt burden sending sound money (gold) into the stratosphere.
Scotia-Mocatta has played a role in the LBMA gold fix rigging and it figures that they will find a problem with capitalism (not rigging gold and interest rates leading to collapse).
QE is not additive to debt, it effectively erases it.
the problem isn't capitalism or socialism. it is production. bespoke crafts replaced by factory workers in the 1800's. factory workers replaced with robots in the 2000's. there is no use for the average person anymore but to harvest their organs. i'm long scalpels...
If harvesting in the US you best use a machete to get through the layers of subcutaneous fat.
You will first need large cash payment with which to buy the rights to harvest the king's game.
The US Treasury has added $4 Trillion of debt just since 2011. The FED, and other CB's, have bought much of it. Welcome to the 21st century's Tara plantation, debt slave.
it is a write off by savers' accounts
It's not that it's paper -- It's that it's not commodity based, which means it is not linked to reality. Electronic fiat money is no better than paper fiat money, and that's what we actually have today.
This article conflates market design with money design, and those are two very different things. They certainly affect each other, but you can have a centralized market system based on commodity money, and you can have a free market based on fiat money, whether it is paper based or electronic based. Of course, neither of those two will be good, but any market design based on commodity money will be better than any market design based on fiat currency, because any market design based on fiat currency will first accelerate until it reaches debt saturation, and then will collapse, either into hyperdeflation or hyperinflation.
Marx's concerns mostly apply to money supply design, not market design. A fiat currency design will always accelerate away from the constraints of physical reality precisely because the fiat designation by default separates it from physical reality. The very act of separating the money supply from physical reality thus contains within it the seeds of its own destruction -- it inevitably dies from the very same thing that temporarily seems to make it successful. Fiat currency sends erroneous and false price signals to all market participants and more credit is extended as inflating commodity prices used as assets to back credit allows the extension of further credit, and the market thus deviates further and further away from a stable configuration until it collapses, precisely because the feedback loop of being tied to reality has been severed.
A truly free market with a free money supply will of course be subject to momentum swings as market participants jockey for position and profits, but as they are all tied to physical reality which remains stable, prices can't deviate too far away from reality before a collapse happens, and this collapse will happen long before it becomes large enough to sink the entire economy.
If leaders had any real desire to support and encourage a stable economy and stable economic growth, they would eliminate unbacked money altogether. This would not mean the elimination of credit, but it would mean that the price for money would truly reflect supply, and thus the economy would not be allowed to deviate anywhere near as far as it is with a fiat system. Of course, a system like this is much more difficult to game and certainly is less addictive to the masses, so it is understandable why no politician would ever support such a thing.
bollocks
It's called moral hazard. Capitalism requires a respect for capital asshat, capitalism has not existed for a long long time, and even then only in certain pockets/regions at a time.
If I cheat and you don't, I will beat you every time. The Achilles heel of Capitalism
Bullshit. People want a good product at a good price. If I sell great pizza for a dollar a slice and you sell a terrible pizza substitute which you advertise as pizza for ten dollars a slice you will go out of business and I will prosper.
Apparently you ave been under a fucking rock for 30+ years and never heard about bailouts or "too big to fail".
by "cheating" he means owning your "representation" and getting to pick himself as the winner.
this is what has been going on for quite some time now.
How can you agree that capitalism has an Achilles heal when you admit that the problem is that we no longer live in a capitalist system but rather an oligarchy of Too Big To Fail entities?
How does a lack of free markets prove that free markets are flawed?
Where do I say that "free markets are flawed"? You are a fucking idiot, we have not had free markets for more than 100 years. That's the problem asshat.
I disagreed with the poster who said
"If I cheat and you don't, I will beat you every time. The Achilles heel of Capitalism."
You then supported his position. It's foolish to say that the Achilles heel of capitalism is the lack of capitalism as that statement puts the onus on capitalism itself.
i agree with the LawofPhysics. by the time the Fed was created the last vestiges of 'free market capitalism' disappeared. that the welfare state was born and began its imperial ascent at that time only expedited its disappearance.
asshats nostalgic for 'the good ol' days of free market capitalism' are bufoons; they've never known 'free markets.'
"i agree with the LawofPhysics. by the time the Fed was created the last vestiges of 'free market capitalism' disappeared."
I agree with that too. But how can you then fault capitalism itself? Do you agree that flaws within capitalism created the problem? Do you believe that capitalism favors those who cheat?
Because that's where this thing started:
Seasmoke If I cheat and you don't, I will beat you every time. The Achilles heel of Capitalism
it's not capitalism's fault 'only,' but every -ism that has been created. every system favors those who cheat by not integrating safeguards against regulatory capture & beneficiary exploitation. until that can be accomplished, all those -ism are doomed to fail. i have some ideas abt fixes, unfortunately they all require a degree of integrity and a centralized authority to execute the plan. those seem to be harder and harder to come by these days.
"every system favors those who cheat by not integrating safeguards against regulatory capture & beneficiary exploitation"
Regulatory capture is a misnomer. All regulation is intended to benefit the status quo and not the little guy. Rothbard was right when he said that capitalism and anarchy are the same thing. Regulation is what destroys capitalism, it is not a safeguard.
LoP, you're the one who's being an asshat.
your comments about bailouts and tbtf, have no bearing on the discussion of capitalism. if bailouts/tbtf are going on, then that's NOT capitalism.
try to understand what capitalism is, first.
"if bailouts/tbtf are going on, then that's NOT capitalism." -- Exactly my point douchebag, we haven't had capitalism for 100+ years. Thanks for helping.
The question remains, do you believe that in a capitalist system cheaters always win and that this is "the Achilles heel of capitalism?" Do you believe that this supposed advantage which cheaters receive in a capitalist system has led to the TBTF system?
Thank good ol' FREE TRADE. Corporations send factories to Chinese(and others) slave factories. The US runs trade deficits of $500 Billion per year, which is financed by US Treasury debt issuance and it's called Capitalism, lol. It's a silent takeover of the economy by the communists in DC and Beijing. This ain't got nothin' to do with a pizza parlor.
Everyone loves competition when they are small and hungry and hates it when they become big and wealthy.
you got the point
And this is why Page and Brin have visited the Obama White House 230 times and have hired a monkey intern to down arrow everyone in this thread.
Anti-simianite.
lol
Imagine playing Monopoly tm where each time you play anew you "pick up where you left off," and lets us know how that turns out.
Monopoly is a zero sum game. In the real world capitalist synergy creates multiple winners.
Not any more, not these days.
One either owns (extreme wealth) or works (if available).
Correct. And that confirms rather than denies WB's statement:
"Everyone loves competition when they are small and hungry and hates it when they become big and wealthy."
Yes, I was agreeing with WB7.
Well then, let's have that drink.
Pierre Proudhon's idea of competition was that competition was great until you were on top, then you would despise competition as it ate into your profits (Megacorps today). But it makes you wonder if 'legislating away competition' can be considered fair play in the realm of competition in the market (you aren't trying if you aren't cheating)?
I say no due to the monopoloy of force government has, aka , bribing the refereee.
Philosophy of Poverty is a good read.
You know the parable of the scorpion and the frog? It's in our nature.
"I sort of gave up on this whole human adventure a long time ago, divorced myself from it emotionally. It gives me an artistic detachment that I find valuable."--George Carlin
Karl Marx, Tyler? Say it aint so.
Yes Mr. Train, it is so. Karl Marx was one of the brightest economists this world has ever seen. His observation of capitalism, Das Kapital is quite simply brilliant. In fact, he predicted that productive capitalism would eventually lead to financial capitalism (M&A, derivatives, casino capitalism) and ultimately economic collapse. People seem hung up on his later work - The Communist Manifesto and ignore his more important earlier work in Kapital. I happen to believe that there are solutions to the problems inherent in free markets (like market power and misallocation of resources) well short of full-blown socialism, but lassiez faire leads to where we now are - the precipice.
Rather than Marxist ideas and capitalist ideas constantly clashing and their purveyors subject to ad hominem attacks, I encourage a Hegelian solution of taking bits from each - a synthesis - and constantly refining them based on public benefit. That is, neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx was entirely correct. Economics ain't religion.
Oh, just to show my true ZH colors, let me say that the Fed has abandoned its mission (sound currency and full employment) in favor of protecting the financial system. With that, it is the Fed that has abandoned us and it is high time we either abolish it or dramatically reform it.
We're being treated to Mr. Marx on April Fool's not Mayday. That may be significant.
capitalism is worked well. In the world of money people's lives mean 0.
Sorry dude. The bubble is government. And that means bonds. Which will lead to another bubble in private assets (in turn) - of epic proportions.
Karl Marx coined the term "capitalism." The whole point of communism, socialism, marxism, whatever you want to call it, is control of labor and production of the masses by the few. And who might the "few" be? Every parasite in government. That's why they won't allow for transparancy. Marxists use the free market when it suits them until they bend it to their own needs.
Notice how lazy Marxists are. Trotsky lived in NYC and complained the whole time about everything. He used to sit in a restaurant eating the cheapest thing on the menu and hogging the table all day so the waiters lost the revenue from other customers who needed to sit down. On top of that he never tipped the waiters because they already had a salary and didn't need a penny more. All that while he, his wife, and two sons were living high off the hog in a Bronx apartment and a paid chauffer courtesy of Bolshevik millionare Jacob Schiff.
Of course that did not stop either one from misappropriating money for the purpose of funding a revolution in Russia. Like Nuland who used our money to fund a coup in Ukraine. All Marxists are smug cheapskates who feel entitled to other people's money.
"Is it possible that capitalism’s underlying focus on profits,"
Having more and better things as a result of your labors is not a moral failing.
"and the necessity for endless purchases of goods and services, has a practical limit?"
As long as humans live, breath and interact they will procure necessary goods and services from others. The practical limit can only be reached when all of humanity (give or take one individual) is dead.
Humanity is hurting due to a lack of capitalism. The communists have been in charge for a century.
Not a practical limit.
Only a point in which you've "borrowed" too much of the futures prosperity to make today better.
At that point, you must take your medicine and re-balance.
If you dont, you turn into Japan. (who will eventually explode under their own weight)
"you turn into Japan"
or America, with its bloated, overweight population of well-sedated diabetics. "more and better" is great for the people who earn it, it's a deserved reward, but the challenge is finding the time to both earn it and enjoy it... otherwise all that hard work ends up in the free spending hands of hangers-on, future ex-wives, shiftless children, and of course, parasitic government.
the Gettys and Vanderbilts are perfect examples of how "more and better" quickly turns into "worthless and drug addicted"
In reality, yes. At a corportate board meeting, no.
You can tinker around the edges of capitalism all you want (more government, less government) at the end of the day the Darwinian drive to achieve the most amount of energy for the least amount of expended effort is too deeply rooted into our primitive DNA to overcome. Greed and fear are forever destined to remain our own worst enemies.
"Greed and fear are forever destined to remain our own worst enemies."
finally someone gets it.
now why are greed and fear so deeply rooted.
they seem to be the anti-thesis to:
"achieve the most amount of energy for the least amount of expended effort"
More like:
Is it possible that BANKSTA FRAUD & THIEVERY has a practical limit?
It's not fraud and theft when you write the rules. Or have the regulators watch your back, for the children.
. . . or maybe compounding debt money itself is the relentless driver of nominal growth.
capitalism isn't the problem....DEBT is the problem. Government Debt! The spending of money we don't have...much which ends up with people that don't make good use of it. Wall Street the allocator of capital...has been corrupted by this. Goverment unfunded libilities are something like $120 Trillion...the effen FED printed $4 Trillion to reward FAILURE. Capitalism is fine... debtism is the PROBLEM, without debt you won't get cronyism!
you are coming at this from the wrong angle.
You have to look at human society in the light of ecology and zoology.
Homo sapiens is the primate that adopted the ant/termite/bee model of social organization.
This worked fine when mankind was organized into tribes, less well in towns, and not that well in modern society.
The elite now effectively form a seperate species, a subspecies that preys upon and parasitizes the rest of mankind. They use propaganda and control of the government to rule us. Yes, there is capitalism and profit and wages and labor etc. But that is just a small part of the Big Picture.
Capitalism vs socialism is just an outdated approach to understanding society.
Better to look at it as a struggle for control of the government and a struggle to avoid the grasp of elite propaganda, the Memes of Capital.
Democracy is a bulwark against the elite. The elite seek to weaken democracy so they can depress wages, increase asset prices and increase profits and sales.
The fight for democracy must begin with knowledge. You must understand that democracy can really only exist at the local level.
You must understand that democracy is inverse to population heterogeneity. Diversity is strength ....for the elite.
You must understand that formal education is propaganda.
There is a lot more to it than just socialism vs capitalism.
"There is a lot more to it than just socialism vs capitalism." -- most definitely, but there are hard limits and the laws of Nature and Physics really don't give a shit what any one species thinks or does.
Humanity will reap what it has sown.
Great post. I have said before that predatory behavior in a small setting (family, tribe, etc.) would be met with resistance. It would not be permitted because it poses a threat to the healthy function of the unit (possibly survival). But, in larger and larger settings, predatory behavior can avoid resistance. Massive government, massive industry, etc. are perfect breeding grounds for predators.
Bingo boom etc.
It's a big club, and you aren't in it.
Luke 12:28-32
"Now if God clothe in this manner the grass that is today in the field, and tomorrow is cast into the oven; how much more you, O ye of little faith? And seek not you what you shall eat, or what you shall drink: and be not lifted up on high. For all these things do the nations of the world seek. But your Father knoweth that you have need of these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom."
But this is NOT "capitalism". If it were, zombies would die.
It's fascism combined with domestic socialism.
Read as far as...
"The causes and responses of the 2008 crisis are the culmination of decades of intervention by lawmakers, central banks, and regulators trying to create a perception of prosperity."
...then stopped. If that's what he see's as the cause, the rest of the article is going to be sufficicently biased.
If, alternatively, he said the criminal class of bankers should have been prosecuted to the full extend of the law, then it might be worth reading.
Modern day "Capitalism" - aka what the US is doing is also called "The Mixed Economy"- which is to say, that it is socialism.
Not quite, in a truly socialist system, the people control the productive capacity, not the corporation/oligarchy.
By "the people" you mean the government. Giving all the power to control the means of production to a tiny group of elitists ( and labelling them as "the people")...yeah that'll work.
"Is it possible that capitalism’s underlying focus on profits, and the necessity for endless purchases of goods and services, has a practical limit?"
No.
As long as humans exist there will be an endless need of goods and services and the ability to earn the means to purchase them.
When people think corporate fascism is capitalism things get a bit confused.
corporate fascism IS capitalism, always has been, always will be.
It's how the banksters manage their debt farm, and make you believe you're gaining something out of it.
Capitalism does not exist, there is only freedom - actions, and re-actions. Capitalism is a meme inventented by those who wish to harness the masses. This, in order to somehow provide credibility to their desire to leech off of others' productive capacity.
A good thread for some of ou ZH commies to chime in on.
Thanks Tylers.
WTF. he hasnt figured out that profit cannot exist without growth.
The Limits To Growth explained all of this and more.
When will economics study at university level require at least 25 credits in basic physics. While many would argue the point, economics is as governed by laws of physics as any other theory of economic function. Markets can't always go up because of simple physics associated to them. But the idea of growth, exponential or linear, is absolutely governed by physics.
The earth is our resource, we can get wealth from it, we extract it from a limited supply. Some people look at growth the same way religious zealots look at religion, they just believe in it, no matter what a scientist may come along and tell them. If capitalism can not adapt to a steady state economy, one in which people maintain a standard of living, and maybe enjoy a quality of life over just buying more stuff, if capitalism can't adapt to that, then it really is FAILED. You see, the market, given a chance, can adapt to most any scenario, people free to do business will adapt and find ways to profit and produce in a growth model, a steady state model and even a decline model. The problem is a certain group tries to manipulate markets instead of leaving the choices to free market's. Left alone, the people acting through their choices can build models of capitalism. I think the model of ever growing population as the only source of capitalism's survival is deeply flawed.
Continuing growth has nothing to do with capitalism. Saying that a "state model" ( meaning government intervention into the buying and selling of goods&services ) must exist side by side with capitalism is silly. You say the problem is a "certain group" tries to manipulate markets...that certain goup uses the "state model" to do exactly that. You give a certain group the power to infringe on capitalism, then blame the "failure of capitalism" for everything they do? Juvenile logic
Implying the system in place is actually capitalism and not cronyism
Once we start discussing QE, central banks, government involvement, etc we are no longer discussing capitalism. We are discussing infringements to capitalism, which have grown in direct proportion to our economic woes. We are not seeing the limits to capitalism, we are seeing the slow destruction of it.
The fact is, that we can only discuss capitalism in theory because it no longer exists in any form as a "system". Only in black markets, the fallout of socialist failures, and decentralized areas can we see the shadow it.
Forget about "The Markets" there hasnt been a laissez faire system during my lifetime. I've cut my own check for 37 years, and during that time people have embraced a Mechanical Utopia which streamlined and speeded conveniences but has left us with de-facto Global Totalitarian Surveillance State
Keep using your credit cards and direct deposit for rewards, just like the indians who traded Manhattan for mirrors and beads!
"Recently, Paul Tudor Jones gave a ‘Ted Talk’ about capitalism needing re-definition"
No need to read further. Listen to Antony Sutton here.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, Hegalian dialectic and here forward to 29:00:00. "Capitalism & Communism Go Hand in Hand".
Ponder...
Ham eater opened the door to China & de-industrialized the US.
China colonizing the US via RE laundering, buying farm land & banks.
Tech was exported to build Russia. Russian troops training in the US.
IMO this whole Pooty/AIIB is only a global shit show. Nothing more than red/blue on a grand scale.
Sutton researched this decades ago and nailed it naming the usual suspects. We're living it.
Baums away.
So what do the libertarians have to say on this ?
Those who believe that the invisible hand of Ayn Rand --or of her spiritual son Alan Greenspan--who delved in her panties to find the magic formula of neo-liberal "John Galt is our perpetual machine" -- and Reaganomics is the ONLY solution to the problem; that welfare state is an insult to Jeffersonian declaration of "life liberty and pursuit of "...wowieee !
What does profit maximisation and Von Mises's gold standard-- shoved up the ass of the 99% by the 1% in head up ass manipulaitve mode--( to save the fiat $ empire), do to solve the long term trend?
Something that the short term profit maximization quandry that is destroying the world based on "ecodestruction" cheap labour fed consumerista model....and no amount of eco skepticism can efface one line, one word, of what has already been written... by those who feed fossil fuels as the promised land; nirvana country of "drill baby drill"; aka the MIIC/Oil/Financial Oligarchy of Pax Americana.
Know your enemy and know your priorities and you will find what the world needs...(and its not the tea leaves of libertarian USA; far from it!)
Taxes and non taxable profits; two faces of Charybdis and Scylla ! And we don't know it!
To summarise what our model of capitalism is since Reaganomics (and Thatcherism) hoisted its neo-liberal model on its NWO pinnacle :
Its the belief that the worst of Mankind doing to worst things possible known to Man can achieve Good for the sake of Humanity.
If you can buy that : you can buy the Imperial brand of tea that Pax Britannica made as ITS trademark of yester-year! There will be continuity of ongoing scallywagging of huge proportions.
Capitalism?
"We haven't had that spirit here since nineteen thirteen"
The banksters need to repay us.
Guillotine the Fed. Audit the heads.
falak pema ,this isnt the 80"s all cheap labor is being replaced by machines.
Librtarian, democrat,repub-quit using the all powerful central states levers.Whoever occupies the branches of fedral power merely represents the irs /imf.They could careless what the LIVESTOCK THINKS
You are jumping the gun. All cheap labour is feeding the Oligarchy game today.
But yes tomorrow we will have an oligarchy post industrial model that will eliminate the need for cheap labour down the road.
In which case if the current POWER MODEL of neo-feudalism without frontiers prevails the world hunger games will acquire a NEW INTENSITY.
Charybdis and Scylla means STATE and PRIVATE Oligarchs hold the people of the world by their nuts.
But its an inverted capitalism model today. Unlike under Mussolini and Hitler or Mao and Stalin, its the Oligarchs who run the State. (That is the whole originality of the FED legacy, only possible in land of greenback!)
Power is now held by the private oligarchs; hook line and sinker and they control all levers of power including the robotic model of the future.
disagree
Giving some group of mutually interested rich persons the temporary sense of being all-powerful is an age old ploy.
I have no doubt that's what the plans of a well organized group of officers in the American military is.
But this will only be decided by waiting for the proof of pudding and the appearance of martial law.
During last hundred thirty years of ideological war Marx and his writings have been distorted by left and right to the degree that it is unrecognizable. The chief argument, given last 25 years, against Marx theory was that it is outdated and it does not describe economies XXI century. The fact is that if his theory does not describe what is going on now in economy and financial world it means that it is not capitalism we are dealing with but something else. He was an authority on capitalistic system since he lived in one but we don't.
Interesting take on debunking myths and propaganda about Marx himself and his ideas I found at:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/subversive-ideas-of-k...
Also about convergence of the political systems:
https://contrarianopinion.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/pools-and-propaganda-...
I guess everyone who disagrees with this statement:
also takes comfort in the fact that in 20 years 15 billion humans will be climbing up the ladder of success here on Earth, with many more waiting in the wings..
limitless accumulation of wealth leads to the wealthy buying the political system (corruption), which leads to laws that favor the wealthy and screw their slaves, which leads to ...... come on, oldest story ever told......
Capitalism requies high integrity amongst the parties to sustain itself. Low integrity includes government intervention, bankers in control of fiat currency, not allowing failure of capitalists and on it goes. The cheater wins comment is mostly correct...
All nation state schemes of self-rule are coming to an end.Unfortunately they are collapsing into monolithic World Totalitarian Techno-Surveillance Gov.
My question is-why does everyone embrace it?
Even your gold purchases are unsound.I havn't found any source that sells gold coins for cash.Electronic purchases leave a convenient trail FOREVER.
The western hemisphere north of the equator has been capitalist for 500 years. This hyper-predatory banksterism and feudalism comes and goes in waves across the centuries, but it's neither feature nor flaw of capitalism, this human behavior victimizes capitalism.
Those problem can only happen if the fed bends the market to one direction or another. If you allow deflation when no one wants to buy the winners will find something they want if the price inflates people will build more.
To interfer is to pay the piper sooner or later.
Wrong! Capitalism's basis is the co-operation of human beings to live using free markets making possible the division of labor and widespread prosperity.