RE: Myths Of Our Economy: The Middle Class
Now that these socialist influences are all but dead, we will only see a further acceleration in the growth of the gap between the rich and poor and a further dwindling of the middle class. In both the Steemit economy and the traditional economy.
Socialist influence are very much alive and rotting everything from the inside out, very nicely..
We are heading to communism through crony capitalism.
(Communism being a centralized means of production. 5 world mega corporations with a central bank is a close to communism you can get without using the label)
Free market capitalism (impossible with a central bank), destroys monopoly.
Government regulation stops free markets, and promotes monopoly.. - it then becomes crony capitalism, which is much closer to communism, that any capitalism.
(Non of this above pertains to blockchain/steem - on that I have no clue where we are headed! lol)
Capitalism isn't an ideology...It's a natural system of exchange -' I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine', in it's most rudimentary form.
It was happening every day worldwide, before people could use words properly..
Kids get it free markets. It's that simple.
Swaps. It happens millions of times a day.
No central planning or stupid people who think they can organize an economy.
There is no need to - it looks after itself through price discovery.
We need no intellectuals to tell us different ideologies - for that's all they are. (ideas)
Free markets are not ideas, they are just a simple natural dynamic, with no need for any ideology to validate it.. that's in the realm of others who try..
(p.s. I used to be a socialist)
My creaky old brain is now remembering marvelous discussions I used to have with aforesaid finance professor in college... concerning "free markets" vis-a-vis the philosophies of whether we live in "a world of plenty" or "a world of scarcity."
Free markets work beautifully under the worldview of plenty, because true meritocracies become possible. The guy who makes the best widgets gets to charge more; the guy who makes shitty widgets has to charge less. Participants have the freedom to pay a lot for a deluxe widget, and a little for a crappy one. Market forces work.
But it seems almost inevitable that some operators don't WANT a meritocracy; they don't WANT "plenty"... so they introduce the manipulation of "scarcity." Rather than striving to make the best widget, they instead sabotage their competitor, or burn their factory, or poison their crops. OR they seek to control the marketplace by creating "artificial" scarcity (think the Hunt brothers and silver). Even without government intervention, we now no longer have a "free" market; we have contrived scarcity.
Now, it could be argued that "people have the option to NOT buy those goods!" which is perhaps true until we get to "essentials," like certain medical procedures and drugs. "Here's your choice: Pay my price, or permanent disability. The clock is ticking." Fear is a powerful motivator. Just watch the crypto markets...
I used to be a socialist, too... and I love free markets. I know I would "do right" by a free market. My stumbling block always is the same, however: In a "no rules" free market, how to we handle the psychotic evil geniuses who care only to manipulate markets for gain, not to be "honorable" participants?
Property laws.
The real use as to why laws were designed..
If these are used properly - all the problems are dealt with ....and with crony capitalism these laws are used to compound criminal behavior..
Thanks for responding in such a clear and well worded manner, @lucylin :-) You illustrate in this response all the misconceptions about capitalism, communism and socialism I see very day in the defense of our failing capitalist economy.
Crony capitalism or a plutocracy in which the greatest financial powers literally buy the political power, killing democracy underway, is the end-station of any economic model based on the individual accumulation of wealth. Your "free market" seized to exist when we stopped "swapping", as you call it. Heck, individual freedom seized to exist as soon as we stopped swapping the stuff we made, grew or killed our-self. As soon as we discovered the power of community and started organizing ourselves in communities with shared commonalities, the simple swapping stops because you don't make your own stuff anymore. Almost all you consume is produced by other people and the fact that we're able to produce a vast surplus compared to our individual needs is also because we organize labor in our communities. It's not too hard to understand, I hope, that simple swapping doesn't do justice to that kind of communal organisation. And you can see this with your own eyes. There has never been a free market after the stone age, and there never will be: or would you rather return to the stone age?
In my opinion the illusion of a free market isn't possible without the central banks. How else would you sustain the illusion of eternal growth? These central banks, as well as all other forms of kartels, are the exact consequences of your free market ideology. Individual producers can swap and form a free market. We have evolved however and we consume only stuff made by organized groups of other people we'll never meet. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but social organisation demands planning. Central planning even. Maybe something like a government..? Don't plan everything, but at least plan the avoidance of the natural tendency of capitalism to devolve into a plutocracy. They also call it "socialism for the rich", maybe you confused that, I don't know. And what do you think about FDR? Was he a communist to?
Like I said: they trade personal stuff. We're grown ups: we don't trade dolls. It's that simple.
They're as natural a dynamic as us building cities and roads between cities. Hence all the rules and regulations. See how that works? Organisation demands planning. I hope you can fathom that.
That's just a quick Wikipedia lookup; how do you not see that all freedom in that system seizes to exist at the very beginning of the definition, namely "private ownership"? How do you determine who privately owns what without a large body of laws and regulation to protect that private property? How can you not see the need for regulation on wage labor, the price system and who or what decides what competition is fair? And who warrants the producing class won't form their private socialist system by forming kartels, because together they best assure their continued profitability? The argument that it's the governments fault while the government does exactly what the capitalist lobbyists ask for, is laughable in my opinion.
Well, I think it's safe to say that I respectfully disagree with almost all you say here ;-) You use the same arguments I see a lot of anarcho-capitalists use, and that also an ideology I cannot agree with, for much of the same reasons I state here. Thanks again for your generous response though, I really do appreciate that and hope to see you back here in the future :-)