'We Need a New Capitalism' (nytimes.com) 435
Marc Benioff, the chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce, writes in an op-ed: Yet, as a capitalist, I believe it's time to say out loud what we all know to be true: Capitalism, as we know it, is dead. Yes, free markets -- and societies that cherish scientific research and innovation -- have pioneered new industries, discovered cures that have saved millions from disease and unleashed prosperity that has lifted billions of people out of poverty. On a personal level, the success that I've achieved has allowed me to embrace philanthropy and invest in improving local public schools and reducing homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area, advancing children's health care and protecting our oceans. But capitalism as it has been practiced in recent decades -- with its obsession on maximizing profits for shareholders -- has also led to horrifying inequality. Globally, the 26 richest people in the world now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people, and the relentless spewing of carbon emissions is pushing the planet toward catastrophic climate change. In the United States, income inequality has reached its highest level in at least 50 years, with the top 0.1 percent -- people like me -- owning roughly 20 percent of the wealth while many Americans cannot afford to pay for a $400 emergency. It's no wonder that support for capitalism has dropped, especially among young people.
To my fellow business leaders and billionaires, I say that we can no longer wash our hands of our responsibility for what people do with our products. Yes, profits are important, but so is society. And if our quest for greater profits leaves our world worse off than before, all we will have taught our children is the power of greed. It's time for a new capitalism -- a more fair, equal and sustainable capitalism that actually works for everyone and where businesses, including tech companies, don't just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact. What might a new capitalism look like? First, business leaders need to embrace a broader vision of their responsibilities by looking beyond shareholder return and also measuring their stakeholder return. This requires that they focus not only on their shareholders, but also on all of their stakeholders -- their employees, customers, communities and the planet. Fortunately, nearly 200 executives with the Business Roundtable recently committed their companies, including Salesforce, to this approach, saying that the "purpose of a corporation" includes "a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders." As a next step, the government could formalize this commitment, perhaps with the Security and Exchange Commission requiring public companies to publicly disclose their key stakeholders and show how they are impacting those stakeholders.
To my fellow business leaders and billionaires, I say that we can no longer wash our hands of our responsibility for what people do with our products. Yes, profits are important, but so is society. And if our quest for greater profits leaves our world worse off than before, all we will have taught our children is the power of greed. It's time for a new capitalism -- a more fair, equal and sustainable capitalism that actually works for everyone and where businesses, including tech companies, don't just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact. What might a new capitalism look like? First, business leaders need to embrace a broader vision of their responsibilities by looking beyond shareholder return and also measuring their stakeholder return. This requires that they focus not only on their shareholders, but also on all of their stakeholders -- their employees, customers, communities and the planet. Fortunately, nearly 200 executives with the Business Roundtable recently committed their companies, including Salesforce, to this approach, saying that the "purpose of a corporation" includes "a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders." As a next step, the government could formalize this commitment, perhaps with the Security and Exchange Commission requiring public companies to publicly disclose their key stakeholders and show how they are impacting those stakeholders.
Capitalism, as we know it, is dead (Score:2)
No it's not, it's just pining for the Fjords
Sounds more like a desire to be a merchant prince (Score:5, Insightful)
... than for a new Capitalism.
Re:Sounds more like a desire to be a merchant prin (Score:5, Insightful)
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Elon Musk at least seems to partially put his money where his mouth is. He dumps huge portions of his net worth into projects he believes are for social good.
Most billionaire "philanthropists" spend less on their social good programs than they do on yachts.
Re: Sounds more like a desire to be a merchant pri (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Sounds more like a desire to be a merchant pri (Score:5, Interesting)
Capitalism is the only economic system which is completely voluntary.
Sure, if you are dissatisfied with comcast, you can replace it with ... uh?
Regulatory design problem and optimization (Score:5, Interesting)
What he is not quite articulating is the problem of externalities. Given a set of rules one can search for a method for optimizing the outcome. And one can see advantages and disadvantages for methods that are distributed and parallel but with less information sharing or ones that are centrally controlled with more information sharing. A coarse grained analysis of capitalism versus communism are two of these poles. In principal centralized information processing should be better but in practice this ignores the cost of gathering, the uncertainty in processing, and the pitfalls of persuing a single solution versus multiple ones in the face of uncertainty.
The latter problem makes one realize that the cost function may be differently stated. Are you seeking a method that maximizes the probability of finding the optimum or one the minimizes the average loss? Capitalism with it's distributed diversity tends to minimize the average loss while communism with a single directed approach tries to maximize the probability of hitting the optimum. And under great uncertainty and with insufficient information the latter strategy has a poor average outcome.
This leads one to ask, would a communist type of planned economy tend to work better in modern society as information gather goes down in cost?
Now getting onto externalities. Capitalism has tradiationally failed to incorporate the full set of desiderata of society and instead has focused on the parts that are most easily optimized by the methods of distributed agents. As a concrete example: pollution is usually an externality. Another reralted but different externality is the well known outcome of the tragedy of the commons.
The tragedy of the commons is a special case where the correct solution can be embedded into the capitalist framework quite naturally. If you charge for admission to the meadow then you can just using money exchange create a simple system so overgrazing doesn't occur.
For other types of externality satisfaction one usually only has two tools to work with. One is a tax relief to encourage a desired outcome (e.g. low income housing). Another is regulatory oversight (a board that permits housing that forces every new building to include low cost housing). In one case it's passive and requires not much additional bureacrats (just more IRS auditors) and the other is active and requires regulators and people to audit the regulators and people to make rules for the regulators. Both are good approaches. One can perceive the tax based structure can be more efficient as long as it can deliver the same outcome-- some problems are too complex for that. It's also why people who want to get rid of tax breaks are and go to a "flat" tax are completely trying to solve the wrong problem. While there are pernitious examples of bad tax breaks, most of them are there because the govt wants you to exploit them. TO do that you have to do something the govt wants. THis can get abused but that's a lesser issue. (e.g. trump allowing sheep on his golf courses to claim them as a farm). For the most part these are a cost efficient way to embedd a desiderata into capitalist behaviour.
As examples of other desiderata one might have consider things like the quality of life issues that come from having a stable job and predictable career. This leads to things like buying homes, investment by indivuduals in developing culture in their committee, and children than live near elderly realtives, and less variation in standards of living. Of course that might put a drag on optimizing GDP. But looking at this as a pareto optimization of both GDP and quality of life then one wants a system that produces both at high levels.
Unions were created as one way to counter capitalist industrial forces that produced externalities like older workers that were cast aside for youth.
Unions declined mainly because for some time in the US, the increasing GDP grew the pie so much and so fast that all those other externalities were alm
yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
What we need isn't the same as what we want, never mind what we deserve. Want a new capitalism? Easy-peasy. Just change human nature.
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Capitalism will break down on its own soon (Score:5, Interesting)
That social contract is incrementally but surely breaking down, as automation and AI replace or devalue human labour in the goods and services economy.
Not sure what the solution is, but the problem and the fact that it will only grow more serious and fundamental, is now obvious and undeniable.
People who repeat the old economist mantra that higher productivity actually produces more jobs are deluding themselves. That formula may have worked while people were still more capable at many things than machines and software, but no longer.
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The social contract that capitalism has had with the rest of the population who are not owners or significant shareholders has been that the capitalists provide employment and income to workers.
Huh. That's not at all what I expect. Problem is, unlike legal contracts, any so-called "social contract" isn't written down anywhere so it's unlikely you and I think it's the same thing.
Personally, I thought the commercial parts of any "social contract" between you and me was if I work hard and produce valuable stuff, I get to keep that stuff and benefit from my labor. If I make something you want and you make something I want, we are free to trade. I don't get to take your stuff by force. If Bob over ther
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Why does one have to pick? There are lots of countries where they manage to mix the two, to varying degrees of success, including the US.
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Then pick the one that works. Which is capitalism. What you leave out, and virtually every other socialist, is not only are humans greedy, they are lazy. Socialism requires everyone to have the same work ethic and the same level of concern for the fellow human beings.
As every communist/socialist state has discovered over the last 100 years if people don't get something for what they do then they are not likely to do it well. Which will require some form of motivation, leaving you with ether paying th
Re:yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there are many successful "social democracies" (i.e. nordic countries) which prevent the worst abuses of capitalism and provide social services.
Re:yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people have been accusing socialism of "taking" stuff from rich people.
I think we need to consider how the rich people accumulated all that stuff.
They didn't get it by digging ditches and working harder.
They got it by inheriting it and controlling assets (capital)... property, rights, monopolies. All of these things allow them to take stuff from everyone else. They control property, assets, "intellectual property", labor and the government which serves to give them monopolies in different areas. This is how the current US oligarchy is created and maintained.
Socialism is a mechanism to prevent the creation of oligarchies and redistribute these gains to everyone.
So, yes, socialism is taking stuff from rich people and capitalism is taking stuff from everyone else.
Take your pick.
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Re:yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be a common misunderstanding of socialism.
Socialism is doing things together when it makes sense to do so, such as healthcare. It's making sure that capitalism works for us, so we don't have to be slaves to capitalism.
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I'll link to the full definitions, but quote the relevant parts:
socialism: [merriam-webster.com] noun:
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
communism: [merriam-webster.com] noun:
c: a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably
This is a lot of crossover, but you'll note that (for the quoted definitions) socialism explicitly does includ
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Socialism emphasizes the concept of fairness in "human nature". I did all the work, but they took more than me. Not fair. Let's all take the stuff back together.
FTFY. Pure socialism means the workers should own the means of production.
Personally, I think we should automate ourselves out of work all together and just share the fruits, but that has only recently become a possibility.
Re:yeah right (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, commerce would certainly come to a halt. I own a couple of 3d printers and already I find myself turning to thingiverse before running out to the store for a kitchen widget or nick nack. FDM prints are super cheap compared with plastic crap you buy in the store. In a world of infinite surplus, it's unlikely that people will go out of their way to try to earn money just to exchange it for goods.
It is equally unlikely that they will just sit on their butts. There are whole industries that revolve around people PAYING for the privilege of creating things. Take a trip to your local hobby lobby sometime. It's so profitable they don't bother to do proper inventory management, and they assume you will be using a 40% coupon on any item in the store. Likewise, people will always volunteer for community theater, fire departments, militias, etc. Art, science, just about every creative endeavor ever conceived was practiced well before people were willing to pay for an artist class. I think it is safe to say that society and innovation will fare just fine, though some of these necessary tasks may also be automatable by the time we could implement such sweeping changes. The Randian idea that for some reason without a profit motive people will cease to be productive is thoroughly debunked by history itself.
I'm not sure what a post scarcity government looks like. I am sure that people will volunteer to be in charge, that is unlikely to change. But does a government which can automate the creation of its every need sound like one that needs taxes to continue? Need a bridge, fire up the concrete robots and send them over to the bridge robot.
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Well, I've yet to meet someone who isn't passionate about SOMETHING, even if it is something I consider stupid. However, lets take what you say at face value. How many people taking part in the economy today have a role that is creative? There are millions of people driving trucks, working construction, working at the dmv, answering phones in a call center, and working convenience store counters, and while those things have value now, when the robots come to take those jobs, those things will be worthles
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Re: yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The fundamental idea behind Capitalism is that I own the means of production, and you have no say in how I use that.
Don't conflate capitalism and free trade.
Re:yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
Living in accordance with nature, goes directly against capitalism. Nature never capitalizes on anything, because there's no need. Nature doesn't have a competitor. To Nature, everything is Nature. Until people start seeing each other as one humanity, "capitalism" is all there is.
Wow, did you miss that one. Nature is nothing but competition. Every species competes for resources. Species even compete with in the species for resources. Ants will quite happily wipe out other ants within their territory. Male lions will kill other male lions just because they are weak. Nature is the ultimate capitalist because the only rule is the strongest survive.
Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Insightful)
The system we have right now has little to do with what capitalism is about.
Capitalism is (or rather, should be) a system where multiple suppliers produce goods that are then offered to customers and the product that suits the customer's needs best gets chosen by them. This creates a feedback loop where the products that the market demands will be produced since suppliers can only thrive if they manage to sell their products and hence will produce more of what the market demands.
That's how it should work.
How it does work, though, is that an ever dwindling amount of suppliers tries their best to create a monopoly situation (either by muscling competition out of the market or using patents and similar tools of monopolization) where they can essentially produce whatever they want since there is nobody that could sensibly compete with them. The demand side is completely stripped of its role as the deciding factor since you can't decide anything if you have no choice whatsoever.
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:4, Insightful)
"No one hates capitalism more than a successful capitalist." Forgot who said that, it's very apt.
Don't forget that Big Government is highly susceptible to capture by Big Business -- much more so than small government. Small government can tell Big Business to go pound sand. Big government has too much to lose. Monopolization happens precisely because government is not independent enough to hold businesses to account.
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Informative)
Correction, maybe that quote is "No one hates competition more than a successful capitalist."
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Insightful)
Government and business have no business with each other. If the government controls the businesses, it's called communism. If the businesses control the government, it's called capitalism. And both implementations suck.
If anything, a government should ensure that businesses can compete with each other and that consumers have the free choice of goods to decide which products are the ones the market really demands. And businesses have ZERO business trying to mess with governments.
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:4, Insightful)
If the businesses control the government, it's called capitalism.
That would be corporatism. We had a free market capitalist society for a long time without seeing such interference in the government from businesses. However, as we made the government more powerful we made a much juicier target to be seized and controlled.
When you let the government pick winners, establish subsidies for industry, grant legal monopolies, or establish bureaucracies that set policy it suddenly attracts the interests of businesses because you've developed a system where the easiest path to success is to gain some control of the government to make life easier for yourself and harder for your competition.
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Interesting)
The first significant interventions in the market was the trust busting at the beginning of the 20th century when Teddy Roosevelt went after the large corporate trusts which were actively creating monopolies and holding the market (and by extension the US economy) hostage. That was, to my mind, a government in a free market economy doing its job to preserve markets against the distortions that monopolies create.
I don't think there's a way to prevent capitalism, at least in some markets, from turning into corporatist monopolies, short of some sort of regulatory regime. We can debate what nature these regulations should take, and what the targets of those regulations should be, but at the end of the day, if a pure market economy inevitably leads to large players eroding competition and disadvantaging consumers, then governments will have to intrude.
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks for the reasoned and measured response. Too many of these conversations degenerate into fanatics on one side or another arguing for complete, unrestrained capitalism or complete communism. I don't think either extreme serves mankind well.
Personally, I don't think pure, unregulated capitalism has ever worked well. It's always needed the government there as an enabler, to build roads, to ensure the safety of naval transport, to provide a postal system so they can ship product. That's not a pure 'free market', that's externalizing real costs to society as a whole (forcibly, through taxation) while companies reap the benefit. But it works.
I think it is true when proponents of the free market point out that harnessing self interest or greed on a large scale generates more wealth per capita, which can potentially benefit a whole society. I think it's also true when proponents of socialism point out that the corporate structure tends to corrupt, that a successful corporation will attempt to strangle the market, locking out competitors with a monopoly or vertical integration & prevent competition and the functioning of the free market. I'm reminded of the strikes in the mines in Butte Montana about 100 years ago. The Anaconda company was so powerful that they forced the miners to return to work at gunpoint. Where is the free enterprise in slave labor?
Some commentators in this discussion treat Marc Benioff's opp-ed as some radical new heresy and a complete betrayal of the free market. It's really not a new idea; it's a renaissance of an old one. For example, take Andrew Carnegie: completely ruthless in business. But he also build libraries all over America for the edification of the public. I had a lot of time to consider both the light side and the dark side of Capitalism, because I spent a lot of time when I was young & poor reading books in a library build by Carnegie.
I don't think Benioff's exhortation to do good is going to change much in and of itself. But I agree that we could use some more noblesse oblige in our society.
Solution approach for more freedom (Score:3)
I think that we've discussed this before, but I'll recap my favorite solution approach. I wish you [not limited to MightyMartian] had a better one to share back, but you [MightyMartian] seem to be throwing up your hands.
I think there should be a progressive tax on corporate profits, but tied to market share, not just dollar amounts. The basic objective is to make over-large monopolistic companies less profitable and motivate them to increase their retained earnings by dividing themselves into sincerely comp
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I think my suggested solution approach handles this case, so it doesn't need to be specifically disallowed. If a company made an anti-competitive acquisition, then it would capture too much market share and its tax rate would increase.
Let me repeat two points of clarification that haven't appeared in this version of the solution-approach discussion.
It should not be thought of as a penalty for success, but rather as a way to encourage reproduction of the successful ideas in more companies. Some of them will
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Insightful)
When did we ever have a free market capitalist society? Even if you go as far back as the founding of this country we already had monopolists like EIC which wreaked havoc through the new world. Fast forward a hundred years and you had robber barons and textile towns. Fast forward more and you get trust busting which lead to the greatest expansion in economic power and far stronger middle class (Also extremely high taxes on the rich). Fast forward to the present where the words too big to fail are actually a thing now, the rich pay the lowest percentage of their income in taxes over any other group leading to far great inequality but also more important, reduced economic mobility.
Regulation is good when properly applied. The debate these days is the absurd stance that there should be no regulation or that the more intellectually honest debate about how to better refine any regulations to better accomplish their goals. If Republicans were more honest about governing instead of just being obstructionists these days they would be propose alternatives to current regulations instead of removing anything while completely forgetting why they were installed in the first place. You have the same problem with climate change as people still debate whether it is happening instead of debating what to do about it or heaven forbid trying to incentivize people now to move away from the coasts so we don't have to deal with mass migration later when it will no longer be an option.
It's the Rand Paul style that is harming this country where you throw the baby out with the bath water because apparently we're doing terribly and need to start over. It makes no sense. Much like the idea of reducing taxes on well to do Americans because it will somehow incentivize them to create jobs when the reality is that they only create jobs when they think it will make them more money which means it is already incentivized.
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Insightful)
Government and business have no business with each other. If the government controls the businesses, it's called communism. If the businesses control the government, it's called fascism. And both implementations suck.
The word you're looking for is fascism. Capitalism doesn't dictate your form of government, only how you allocate resources. Some forms of government rule out capitalism, e.g. communism, but otherwise capitalism can work under many types of governance.
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's called dirigisme, an inherent aspect of fascist economies [wikipedia.org]. Communism is when government owns the business.
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:4, Insightful)
consumers have the free choice of goods
The problem is that's impossible.
Poverty forces people to make poor choices, e.g. they can't buy the more expensive but longer lasting item because they can't afford it right now. Lack of education makes it harder for people to make rational choices.
So you need the government to come in and try to offset those things somehow, and then you end up with Nordic style socialist democracies which I'm guessing is not what you wanted. They work exceptionally well though.
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Your car breaks, the cost of fixing it is more than you can afford right now but you need a car to get to work.
You can't afford to buy a more reliable car. You can't afford good quality parts to repair it that will last. Your only choice is to buy more crap, because if you don't you can't get to your two jobs and won't have any money at all.
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Didn't see your other question because I don't get email notifications for score 0 ACs, but I'll answer this one. For a start the government would see to it that there was affordable public transport so you can get to your jobs without the expense of a private car if possible, or at least so you have time to save up for proper repairs.
More over the government would introduce policies like a minimum wage and strong collective bargaining that would ensure a single job pays enough to live on and afford decent
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You know, I see posts like this all the time and the first thing I think is, great, another ass hat who THINKS he was poor.
If you think poverty and the choices that people make when they are in poverty are based off of instant gratification, you have never been poor ENOUGH.
Come back and talk about choices when you have been flat busted, working 60 hours a week, no car, in a town with no public transportation, having to walk an hour to work and back, five miles from the nearest grocery store, no checking acc
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You are overly optimistic.
Poor choices "force" poverty. and poverty forces poor choices (the GP even gave an example that poor people often encounter)
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll find that poverty isn't just something that hits people who made wrong turns, it's something that can simply happen to you. Walk down the road, get mugged, spend 2 months in a hospital, lose your job, get stuck with a hospital bill nobody pays and tomorrow that can be you with the knife stabbing someone for the 20 bucks in his pockets.
Shit does happen. And only in the movies the bad people have the bad luck.
There's regulation (Score:3)
In Business the government doesn't pick (Score:3)
That said there are some games private business can't play even with an Umpire. Healthcare insurance is the big one. How about your military? Would we privatize that? Private police and fire have been tried and they suck.
Some things don't lend themselves to privatization .
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"No one hates capitalism more than a successful capitalist." Forgot who said that, it's very apt.
Don't forget that Big Government is highly susceptible to capture by Big Business -- much more so than small government. Small government can tell Big Business to go pound sand. Big government has too much to lose. Monopolization happens precisely because government is not independent enough to hold businesses to account.
It does not matter if it is big government or small. As long as elections are driven by money then the richest corps/people will control what laws are written.
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Don't forget that Big Government is highly susceptible to capture by Big Business -- much more so than small government. Small government can tell Big Business to go pound sand. Big government has too much to lose. Monopolization happens precisely because government is not independent enough to hold businesses to account.
Small government isn't powerful enough to resist big business. A small government can tell business to pound sand, but can't help being pushed around. A small government is cheaper to buy, after all.
Big government comes with it's own problems, but it's often smart enough to prevent uncontrolled monopolies -- a monopoly is competition, after all.
The working definition of "big government" is a government that holds businesses to account. Why else would business hate it so?
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Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Interesting)
This has been a slow and gradual process as business interests have put their money into politics to erode the regulations on monopolies AND into propagandizing the public to accept the erosion of their personal rights and wealth.
Time and time again I have seen inDUHviduals start earning a little extra scratch, and then become convinced that they are part of the 'upper classes' and that they had the same political interests as the koch bros or any of a number of publicly greedy billionaires.
Of course, when markets are down they are abandoning their MCMansions and really angry at, well somebody else, about their predicament
If we do not stand together as workers who demand that the wealthy pay their way, then we will all end up in the grinders for soylent green whilst the wealthy enjoy their unearned fruits of out labor and sucker another generation into being their willing dupes
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Time and time again I have seen inDUHviduals start earning a little extra scratch, and then become convinced that they are part of the 'upper classes' and that they had the same political interests as the koch bros or any of a number of publicly greedy billionaires.
It's a similar line of thinking to why the vast majority of white southerners during the Civil War went to bat for that very small minority of slave owners.
What is hilarious is that six figure earners somehow think they are on the same side as the billionaires...
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, there is rampant information disparity that isn't addressed in capitalism. It's in the supplier's best interest to make their goods *seem* better than their competition's goods, regardless of whether they are conditionally better, always better, equal, or even worse. Nobody has the time to evaluate every claim on every good they purchase, so producers that should have died out due to inferior products sometimes do better and producers that actually have superior products sometimes go out of business.
This whole idea that everything would be fine if we would just let people make all their decisions in their best self interests completely ignores that nobody can even figure out what *is* most in their best self interest and that other people are incentivized to keep that knowledge hard to obtain.
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I think you'd be hard pressed to say that on the whole the companies which make inferior products are the ones sticking around over the long haul.
May I introduce you to the entirety of the US market for broadband? I don't believe you've had the pleasure of meeting, based on this comment
Re:Nah, we just need to implement it right (Score:5, Informative)
Capitalism is (or rather, should be) a system where multiple suppliers produce goods that are then offered to customers and the product that suits the customer's needs best gets chosen by them. This creates a feedback loop where the products that the market demands will be produced since suppliers can only thrive if they manage to sell their products and hence will produce more of what the market demands.
What you describe is a free market. That doesn't necessarily require capitalism to implement as you could just as easily have such a system where all industry owned by workers, but there's just a tendency for most free markets to be capitalist. You could also have a capitalist system without a free market, but it starts to break down after a certain point.
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That's not really a system of government or way to run a society though.
For example, how would it deliver civil rights? Experience tells us it would do the opposite, because supply and demand tends to screw people over, especially when not starting from an equal base e.g. being the descendants of products (slaves).
Dupes Live On (Score:5, Informative)
Why, yes. Yes we did: https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/10/04/176258/marc-benioff-says-capitalism-as-we-know-it-is-dead [slashdot.org]
It was even msmash that posted it.
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Didn't we have this exact same story just a few weeks ago?
Well, this is just what the article is talking about: we need more competition. By having multiple dupes of the same article, there is more competition as where to post your comments.
This is more competition and is very good!
Maybe.
Where is the financial incentive? (Score:2)
If there isn't one, it won't happen.
Unless, of course, you find an incentive greater than the financial one.
I haven't found one.
Anyone?
Re:Where is the financial incentive? (Score:5, Funny)
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And there it is!
Bullshit! (Score:2, Insightful)
This person is no capitalist. He is a power hunger totalitarian.
"To my fellow business leaders and billionaires, I say that we can no longer wash our hands of our responsibility for what people do with our products."
This is just a nice way of saying your private ownership of anything needs to be completely abolished.
This human waste is either a complete socialist, communist, or totalitarian.
We do not need a new Capitalism... there is only 1. He is just trying to say "socialism is the new capitalism".
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Re:Bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
This person is no capitalist. He is a power hunger totalitarian.
And the difference is...?
I mean the real, in actual practise difference, not some fancy dream-world construct that has never actually been attempted in real life.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
If you don't already know the difference then you need to be reading the dictionary, not posting on Slashdot.
Capitalism is at its core "private ownership" of productivity vs a group owning something. (Government is a Group). This means that when I buy or have/own something to use for my own productivity I own the result of that productivity and not someone else.
If a business is going to be getting involved with responsibility in how I use their product then they are going to be wanting or needing to contr
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Trying to claim that there is only one Capitalism is either incredibly naive or just plain lying
There is a well regulated and taxed Capitalism like emerged in the US after the Great Depression, and then there is the older Laissez-faire Capitalism that was dominant before the Great Depression and seems to be taking hold again.
This deregulated Capitalism is form more prone to Boom/Bust cycles and the disparity of wealth that comes with it. The landed wealthy love it because they can stand on the sidelines wh
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
There is only 1 capitalism.
Being regulated or not is something that regards "free-market" and has nothing to do with capitalism technically. You are like most others with a mental defect that lacks the ability to tell the difference between a free market and capitalism.
Capitalism is pure and simply the ability to own your production, it does not matter if you perform that production inside of a free-market, a monopoly, or regulated setting.
De-Regulated Capitalism is what you would call "Free-Market" capita
Re: (Score:2)
To put the message in terms that you might understand - externalization of costs must be prevented, corporate growth is only one of the responsibilities, the other being business continuity and ensuring the business model is sustainable long-term.
Re: (Score:2)
Socialism, particularly in limited doses, is not inherently bad.
Canada, for instance, is very socialist compared to the USA... and still enjoys things like private ownership of property. But such a style of government in the USA would probably be perceived as akin to communism.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Rich fucks who got rich on the backs of their employees are started to perceive the threat of an increasingly angry society. That's why they suddenly turn SJWs: it's a way for them to save their necks when the shit truly hits the fan - or preserve the status quo at the cost of a few millions less in income.
The trouble is, just like jews converted to christianism who are often more vocal proselytes than real christians, their message doesn't ring quite true...
Not perfect, but still the best? (Score:2)
Of course capitalism isn't perfect, it's far from it.
But how do we know it's not still the best system?
Just because it's not great in every way doesn't mean it's not the best overall, right?
How do we know things wont get worse when we try something else?
Re: (Score:3)
Of course capitalism isn't perfect, it's far from it.
But how do we know it's not still the best system?
Just because it's not great in every way doesn't mean it's not the best overall, right?
How do we know things wont get worse when we try something else?
There are 100 million citizens that lay dead under the boot of 20th Century Socialism.
We do know things get worse when we try something else. Doesn't mean we're smart enough to avoid repeating the horrors of history. Humans are really fucking stupid in that sense, and that won't ever change.
Re: (Score:2)
But can we afford to be wrong about something this big and something this important to the function of the country/world?
This Story should be marked (Score:2)
Same ol' (Score:3, Insightful)
Equality ebbs and flows with the decades. There was much more inequality in the first half of the 20th century than there is today.
Capitalism just needs some checks and balances, mostly to keep monopolies from forming and to prevent companies that should be competed from conspiring.
Worker rights are a good thing too, but many unions have become the money hungry power behemoths they were formed to fight, so that's a contentious path to navigate.
Mostly it just sounds like poor management; CEOs letting their personal greed take precedence over the good of the company, but OTOH in nearly all cases, if you were to take their salary or benefits and distribute them to the workers, it wouldn't amount to much, especially with large companies.
Not all people work equally hard. Not all people take risks in an equal measure. Life is not equal. But to say Capitalism is dead, especially coming from a billionaire.. something smells very fishy.
Also, if he's trying to reduce homelessness in San Francisco, he's doing a crap job.
It's growing by leaps and bounds, in one of the most liberal cities in the country.
Bring back the corporate death penalty (Score:2)
Once upon a time, corporations used to have to act in the public interest as a requirement of having been granted the privilege of forming the legal fiction that is a corporation. That hasn't been something that's been followed for years and years. And the corporations know it so they feel they can do whatever they damned well please---public be damned and they better not get in the way of our ever increasing profits. Perhaps if the C-level execs at corporations knew that their actions could bring the entir
Re: (Score:2)
Once upon a time, corporations used to have to act in the public interest as a requirement of having been granted the privilege of forming the legal fiction that is a corporation. That hasn't been something that's been followed for years and years. And the corporations know it so they feel they can do whatever they damned well please---public be damned and they better not get in the way of our ever increasing profits. Perhaps if the C-level execs at corporations knew that their actions could bring the entire house down by acting in a way that gets their corporate charter revoked -- and maybe even find themselves in jail or sued to oblivion -- they'd run the business a little differently. As it is nowadays, the shareholders are the only ones policing the way corporations are being run. And, IMHO, they're doing a pretty crappy job of doing it.
To the best of my knowledge the wikipedia page on corporations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] is fairly accurate and I can't seem to find anything that supports your proposition that companies at some point in time had to act in the public interest. Would you care to enlighten me with a source?
Mr. Deed's quote (Score:2)
Sure... (Score:2)
Want to reduce inequality? (Score:3)
Pay your workers better.
But but but that cuts into your profit? Learn to live on less money, like the rest of us.
Anything this particular CEO wants is guaranteed to be 100% against the public interest.
Believe nothing out of the C-Suite.
Market economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The important question in discussing this topic is how society distributes benefits produced by the market economy. In Capitalism, it goes to investors (holders of capital) and this produces wealth inequality. This is undesirable when taken to extremes, as the masses are unwilling to starve to death in the land of plenty. Consequently pure Capitalism is inherently unstable and leads to populism and dictatorship. Social Contract (progressive taxation, social programs) are adaptations that allow Capitalism to remain stable. Unfortunately, self-interest (greed) by powerful people continue undermine this social contract. Consequently we might end up living in post-democratic world and/or experience repeat of the early 20th century revolutions.
Certified B Corps? (Score:3)
Sounds like B Corps [bcorporation.net].
I'm surprised these weren't mentioned in the op-ed.
What is wrong with inequality? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care how much more money someone has than me. Why would I?
What is way, way more important is the FLOOR for how much money most people make. By far, capitalism is the system that prevents that floor being something like people hunting down rats to eat them, as we see in places that have "other" governmental systems like Venezuela.
Sure there are homeless people in the U.S. but no matter how well off place is you'll see some people living like that in a country as diverse in the U.S. Look how much money San Francisco puts into trying to solve that problem, yet cannot.. but by and far even the lowest end workers in capitalist systems are far better off than in communist or socialist countries.
I have travelled the world quite a bit at this point, and that aspect of life repeats itself all over - capitalism I the worst system, except for all the others.
Re: (Score:2)
Leave ruling to the state, just go make money (Score:2)
When I hear the ultra-rich talk like this I'm more hearing "we want neo-feudalism" than that they want a fairer society ...
Greed, not capitalism, is the problem (Score:2)
No we don't (Score:2)
We need to regulate the one we have.
Experiment (Score:2)
Everybody and their dog has a Grand Theory for dealing with the post-industrial revolution. It may just require experimentation to find the right recipe: we can't guess it right up-front.
Machines offer a great opportunity to free us from a lot of grunt-work, but we have to find a way to distribute the wealth they generate to ordinary citizens, yet keep enough incentives in place to encourage efficiency and progress.
Taxing the rich may be one experiment, but another would be printing more money. Inflation ha
Well I guess I sort of agree... (Score:2)
...if we're going to start with confiscatory socialism, we ABSOLUTELY should start with Mr Benioff and friends. Particularly the ones who like to talk about everyone paying their "fair share".
Oh, and let's make sure we're not just talking about income, but wealth.
TYPICAL (Score:2)
Consumerism tries to convince us that just because something is old and worn that it must be discarded and replaced.
We can refurbish our capitalism with regular household items and a little elbow grease!
Fire msmash (Score:2)
Capatalism requires Sound Money (Score:2)
We are now in a world of negative interests, funding infinite malinvestment. Is this what we want?
"Inequality" (Score:3)
I have a hard time taking someone as rich as this seriously about inequality. I have a deep suspicion it's singularly motivated through his desire not to be strung up by a mob angry about his cash pile.
Capitalism is a system which helps push everyone up; stratification ( "inequality" ) of society is a byproduct of such a system, but it's really the only system we've ever discovered which actually incorporates humanity's base instincts. Other economic models simply ignore things like greed or corruption, and that's why they fail; it's not that people are going to suddenly stop being people, after all.
Sounds like this guy has the same idea, which is adorable and speaks more to the economic competencies of a C*O than anything having to do with reality.
Re: (Score:3)
A well-regulated capitalism, maybe, but what we have is corporatism which does pricely the opposite. Trickle-down economics never worked by any meaningful metric. Never. Only trickle-up works. Give a rich man a dollar, he'll hoard it away. Give a poor man a dollar, he'll enjoy it much more than the rich man would, maximizing aggregate freedom and happiness [wikipedia.org], while putting that dollar right back to work in the local economy.
But people call that "socialism"
social threefolding (Score:2)
Social Threefolding describes a Humane Capitalism: http://johnrolandpenner.com/Articles/Steiner-Social.html [johnrolandpenner.com]
and this is the law of the wild,
as old and as true as the sky.
and the wolf who keeps it will prosper,
but the wolf who breaks it will die!
Like the wind that circles the tree trunk,
this law runneth forward and back.
The strength of the pack is the wolf,
and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
(Rudyard Kipling)
apologize afterwards (Score:2)
I don't want to hear these top 0
Been dead for a while (Score:2)
Not for nothing, but Karl Marx predicted exactly this would eventually happen to Capitalism (he wrote a whole book about it 150 years ago). We always knew this was going to happen, and it's actually happened about 30 years ago (think Ronald Reagan's "trickle-down economics"). Everybody from Marx to Piketty told us about the ticking time bomb that was the major flaw in capitalism's design. Let's not be surprised that the day has come.
Re:Been dead for a while (Score:4, Insightful)
What was going to happen, unprecedented prosperity? Because that's what we have.
60 years ago, one average worker could provide a car, house, and vacations for an entire family, and could retire on a pension that could easily cover the expenses for the married couple (whose children have presumably gone off and had children of their own). Now? 2 average people working full time can barely have enough left to pay for the house, child care, education, etc, much less save or go on vacations.
We're in another gilded age: people have stuff, but most of it is crap. Houses are made bigger but cheaper (as in inferior materials, not lower price), appliances made to break after only a few years, pushing people to focus on the "now" and not the "later" (ie. credit card debt), stock prices and valuations that are based on nothing but affect almost everything. Everything looks great on the surface, but scratch away the facade and everything is decayed.
I would like to know... (Score:2)
Who elected this guy, or any other merchant, to decide what kind of society we should be living in? We elect politicians for that, no?
Tell the merchants to go peddle their apples elsewhere. Selling a bunch of crap does not entitle them to be taking decisions on behalf of the rest of society, thankyouverymuch.