I'm not advocating we go to past systems that are proven to not work. I believe that we as a species can come up with a better, new economic structure that can actually elevate everyone to a base...
Ironically, I'd argue the issue is even worse in those systems due to the natural tendency to centralize things, and it's a major reason why the USSR could never compete with the West.
Look at all their own industrial disasters, and the covers ups. I mean Chernobyl is a perfect example, and way, way worse than anything Boeing did.
I'm not advocating we go to past systems that are proven to not work. I believe that we as a species can come up with a better, new economic structure that can actually elevate everyone to a base level of comfort and limit the out-of-hand acquisition of wealth. We're the smartest animals on the planet to our knowledge, we can do this.
You're arguing against social Darwinism not capitalism. That same idea is compatible with socialists economics so it's not really an argument against or for either.
Thanks for providing the correct term. But whatever you want to call it, it seems to have ultimately dominated the entire mindset of too many societies in the absolute worst way. And it still makes me sick.
other companies, like Airbus are stepping and will out compete them in the long run.
I hope you're right. I hope that Boeing being held accountable won't just cause Airbus to get better at covering their tracks.
I'm European and I think (uneducated guess) that it won't cause Airbus to cover their tracks. I think it's diferent mentality in US and Europe. Thinking about such things brings back (in my mind)...
I'm European and I think (uneducated guess) that it won't cause Airbus to cover their tracks. I think it's diferent mentality in US and Europe.
Thinking about such things brings back (in my mind) the thread about why Europe can't amass wealth. I think (again' just my guess) that we are not thinking the way US citizens do.
The goal here in Europe is not to be the wealthiest by how money one has. I believe we create, how to put it, ... wealth that can be touched. Ie. if there is a company startup, it may not be just to get big quickly and then sell of to highest bidder to get themost money. If the company is successful, it will.probably keep running on its own. There are certainly startups that just want to get the most money, I'm not fooling myself by thinking there are not.
About people - we tend to make our home permanent, we don't luve on ten different places throughout our lives. That means building house that will last 100+ years because we are (very likely) not moving out. Some people buy their cars to have them as long as possible not falling for "oh, they have new color this year, we have to have that".
I think this mentality, that is not revolving about creating the most (personal) wealth but rather about keeping going for as ling as possible, will keep Airbus from covering up anything.
The capitalism we see in US is different. Executives and shareholders MUST get their money and it MUST be more every year. This system is unsustainabke in long term. There is nohing like endless growth.
And before anyone asks - no, I don't know about anything better. And this is definitely not "Inlike burgers. Oh, so you hate hot dogs" situation. I don't think communism or socialism are the saviors.
Where's that user who made that topic about capitalism being a "good thing"? @pyeri? This. This is why capitalism is bad in the long run. Keep cutting corners, keep trying to please the...
Where's that user who made that topic about capitalism being a "good thing"? @pyeri?
This. This is why capitalism is bad in the long run.
Keep cutting corners, keep trying to please the shareholders, the CEO's annual bonuses that increase every year. The quality of your product is obviously going to drop. And in this case, that drop in quality can cost hundreds of human lives.
It's the same as the train derailment that happened in East Palestine, the chodes at the top of Norfuck Southern kept pressuring the supervisors to pressure the workers in the field to work harder and faster and ignore safety checks. And what happened? A huge disaster that harmed a community that the rail line ran through.
Unregulated Capitalism makes me sick. In order to "win", others must lose. The harder everyone clamors for victory, the more people will be buried in defeat.
It all boils down to matching industries to the right incentive and regulatory structures, because consumer and producer incentives and behaviors differ between industries. Low-regulation markets...
It all boils down to matching industries to the right incentive and regulatory structures, because consumer and producer incentives and behaviors differ between industries.
Low-regulation markets work very well for consumer goods and industries where the stakes are low and consumer comprehension is high: thanks to markets, we enjoy an unfathomably diverse and affordable abundance of foods, clothing, electronics, furniture, culture (films, TV, music, theatre), and so on.
But low-regulation market behavior is unideal when there are certain considerations of societal harm or limited consumer comprehension. For example, we could let the market organically figure out airplane or drug safety, but most people lack the capabilities to do so, and many people would die in the process, which is obviously undesirable. So here an expert regulatory body represents the interests of an idealized rational consumer.
Price controls disincentivizes production and capital investment (why build more production if there are better rewards elsewhere?) but also incentivizes cost cutting in order to minimize loss of...
Price controls disincentivizes production and capital investment (why build more production if there are better rewards elsewhere?) but also incentivizes cost cutting in order to minimize loss of margins or even maintain break-even cost, so quality decreases.
A price control example is rent control. Some may argue that landlords may withhold maintenance to get tenants to move, and that’s true. But often what happens is that over many years, cost of living and services skyrocket, making it infeasible to maintain let alone update an apartment.
Where are price controls an inherent part of socialism though? Price controls, specifically rent control in your example, is a band-aide mechanism meant to place regulation on problems manifested...
Where are price controls an inherent part of socialism though? Price controls, specifically rent control in your example, is a band-aide mechanism meant to place regulation on problems manifested by capitalism. What part of price control do you see inherent in socialism?
This is a huge problem with critiques of socialism. When you ask for examples of where socialism is bad, people point to issues that are currently present in our existing economic organization, seemingly forgetting that we live under capitalism.
It's the old "Millions of people have historically died under communism/socialism" dodge. The United States has operated under capitalism throughout the duration of it's existence. Has no one died under it/from it? 44 million people in the US face hunger including 1 in 5 children. Grocery stores throw out TONS OF USABLE FOOD per year. Are those facts somehow compartmentalized away from capitalism?
I gotta be honest with you man, I have no idea what you're talking about here. You critique socialism and communism by saying cost cutting is inherent in both of those modes of economic operation...
I gotta be honest with you man, I have no idea what you're talking about here. You critique socialism and communism by saying cost cutting is inherent in both of those modes of economic operation and then go into a diatribe about how resource acquisition comes into play. Maybe I'm just being an idiot here, but resource acquisition and cost cutting seem like two different concepts. You also make some sort of pass at saying there's a need for increasing efficiencies which seems to be less of a necessity under socialism/communism than capitalism.
Under capitalism as a capital owner, if a resource is scarce that you need to produce your product, there are avenues that you can pursue to keep your pricing competitive but ultimately at the end of the day, the cost of the resource is the cost of the resource. The easiest and most direct method you have at your disposal as a capital owner, is to reduce operating expenses. Things like firing staff and squeezing more hours out of existing employees, reducing benefits, and extending useful life of capital beyond safe operating lifetimes (think of something like using a piece of machinery beyond useful safe life) are all mechanisms that reduce operating expenses and keep profits high.
Under socialism, a democratic organization of the workforce would see the scarcity of the resource needed and people would work together to identify how to keep producing the product while paying everyone what they deserve... because the workers own/are the means of production. Whether that manifests itself in the form of everyone electing to take less pay, people electing to lower benefits, or some other method of preserving the business, it has to be decided on by everyone. The key feature here is that while resource scarcity is the root problem, under a socialized organization of the workplace, people are still employed and provided for according to the tenants of socialism. The main motivator here is not achieving profit/generating profit for a capital owner/capitalists. The motivations are 1) providing a product and 2) ensuring that everyone creating the product is adequately compensated for.
So considering the above modes of operation, we go back to cost cutting and the societal implications of that. Under a capitalist (person)/capitalism, you have one person or a small group of people making decisions about how to navigate resource scarcity. You have fewer moral filters to go through. It's infinitely easier for one or two people to make a decision to use lower quality steel that could cause structural problems in a building or to remove hours spent QA'ing/firing QA people to check and make sure bolts are properly tightened on the fuselage of a plane.
Comparatively speaking, in a business organized under the tenants of socalism, workers own the means of production and therefore have to democratically choose to lower the quality of steel or reduce the hours spent QAing products in order to offset resource scarcity to keep costs lower.
Like I said, I could be just a dense idiot here, but I simply do not get the connections you are making here. I also don't even want to touch on your comments about planned economies right now because that's a whole other ball of wax.
I think if you want to make this point it’s better to link this article in the original thread — we could spend forever tagging each other on various topics re: capitalism vs socialism to the...
I think if you want to make this point it’s better to link this article in the original thread — we could spend forever tagging each other on various topics re: capitalism vs socialism to the detriment of the rest of Tildes.
I understand the sentiment here, I'm not a huge fan of capitalism myself. As I said in the post, greed is just barely tolerable emotion which is above fear/envy but still in the dark realms. It...
I understand the sentiment here, I'm not a huge fan of capitalism myself. As I said in the post, greed is just barely tolerable emotion which is above fear/envy but still in the dark realms. It still has as much chance of going wrong as the others.
But consider that when capitalism goes wrong, you get this inequality and quality issues but when socialism goes wrong, you get psychopaths like Pol Pot and Fidel Castro!
Also consider that the root issue here isn't the system of free market capitalism but the scarcity of resources (for which many humans compete) and lack of ethics or empathy in society.
Finally, let me cede that just as greed and fear can act as check/balance on each other, we might need both capitalism and socialism in certain ratio for policy making? This ratio will vary for each country/culture/tribe since we are all different.
I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not saying we adopt broken systems like those used in Cambodia or Cuba. I'm saying we as a species can come up with a system that elevates the base level of comfort for...
when socialism goes wrong, you get psychopaths like Pol Pot and Fidel Castro!
I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not saying we adopt broken systems like those used in Cambodia or Cuba. I'm saying we as a species can come up with a system that elevates the base level of comfort for everyone and limit out-of-hand wealth acquisition.
If you ask me? Greed is the opposite of empathy. Greed is fueled by desiring more for yourself while ignoring the needs of other people.
I live in a society where capitalism is 110% the way of life. If you don't stay extra hours at your job every week? No way you're getting a promotion. Forget if you have a family you love and want to spend time with. You can maybe work your way up in the company, but not without taking the role of a slave first.
I had an amazing job (designing LEGO models for LEGOland parks) for what I thought was a good company. When COVID hit? Literally the week before the pandemic gained it's full momentum, the company very abruptly laid off 60% of it's work force, cutting those human beings off from their health benefits. The next week, there was a meeting with the CEO - some stuffy jerk who lived on the opposite side of the Atlantic ocean from me and my coworkers. During the meeting, he said, and I quote;
"Things may look rough, but the most important thing is cash, cash, cash, and fortunately the company has a lot of cash."
Once again, he said this after deciding to cut off 60% of the workforce from their health benefits. It disgusted me. I saw the company's true colors. I had immunocompromised loved ones and the company refused to let me work from home, despite my job being 99% on computer. I quit working for them by choice shortly after.
(Not to mention these jagoffs forced me to use my Paid Time Off to care for my newborn son and cancer-stricken father before allowing me to use Family Medical Leave.)
This is whatIsee greed creating. And when I see somebody suggesting greed is even barely a "good thing" I feel like that's extremely short-sighted and focusing too much on short-term gains for one's self, rather than the long-term betterment of living conditions for other human beings in society.
Love Canal, Colonial Plantains, East Asian Sweatshops with suicide nets... Hell, just look up the Wikipedia entry for Superfund sites in the US. Capitalism usually supports the dictators in far...
But consider that when capitalism goes wrong, you get this inequality and quality issues
Love Canal, Colonial Plantains, East Asian Sweatshops with suicide nets... Hell, just look up the Wikipedia entry for Superfund sites in the US.
Capitalism usually supports the dictators in far away lands doing horrible things because it gets us cheaper bananas. Horseshoe theory basically says that the people crazy enough to overthrow the crazy guy running the place are likely crazy too though... I think that was the plot of far cry 4.
I'm not advocating we go to past systems that are proven to not work. I believe that we as a species can come up with a better, new economic structure that can actually elevate everyone to a base level of comfort and limit the out-of-hand acquisition of wealth. We're the smartest animals on the planet to our knowledge, we can do this.
Thanks for providing the correct term. But whatever you want to call it, it seems to have ultimately dominated the entire mindset of too many societies in the absolute worst way. And it still makes me sick.
I hope you're right. I hope that Boeing being held accountable won't just cause Airbus to get better at covering their tracks.
I'm European and I think (uneducated guess) that it won't cause Airbus to cover their tracks. I think it's diferent mentality in US and Europe.
Thinking about such things brings back (in my mind) the thread about why Europe can't amass wealth. I think (again' just my guess) that we are not thinking the way US citizens do.
The goal here in Europe is not to be the wealthiest by how money one has. I believe we create, how to put it, ... wealth that can be touched. Ie. if there is a company startup, it may not be just to get big quickly and then sell of to highest bidder to get themost money. If the company is successful, it will.probably keep running on its own. There are certainly startups that just want to get the most money, I'm not fooling myself by thinking there are not.
About people - we tend to make our home permanent, we don't luve on ten different places throughout our lives. That means building house that will last 100+ years because we are (very likely) not moving out. Some people buy their cars to have them as long as possible not falling for "oh, they have new color this year, we have to have that".
I think this mentality, that is not revolving about creating the most (personal) wealth but rather about keeping going for as ling as possible, will keep Airbus from covering up anything.
The capitalism we see in US is different. Executives and shareholders MUST get their money and it MUST be more every year. This system is unsustainabke in long term. There is nohing like endless growth.
And before anyone asks - no, I don't know about anything better. And this is definitely not "Inlike burgers. Oh, so you hate hot dogs" situation. I don't think communism or socialism are the saviors.
Where's that user who made that topic about capitalism being a "good thing"? @pyeri?
This. This is why capitalism is bad in the long run.
Keep cutting corners, keep trying to please the shareholders, the CEO's annual bonuses that increase every year. The quality of your product is obviously going to drop. And in this case, that drop in quality can cost hundreds of human lives.
It's the same as the train derailment that happened in East Palestine, the chodes at the top of Norfuck Southern kept pressuring the supervisors to pressure the workers in the field to work harder and faster and ignore safety checks. And what happened? A huge disaster that harmed a community that the rail line ran through.
Unregulated Capitalism makes me sick. In order to "win", others must lose. The harder everyone clamors for victory, the more people will be buried in defeat.
It all boils down to matching industries to the right incentive and regulatory structures, because consumer and producer incentives and behaviors differ between industries.
Low-regulation markets work very well for consumer goods and industries where the stakes are low and consumer comprehension is high: thanks to markets, we enjoy an unfathomably diverse and affordable abundance of foods, clothing, electronics, furniture, culture (films, TV, music, theatre), and so on.
But low-regulation market behavior is unideal when there are certain considerations of societal harm or limited consumer comprehension. For example, we could let the market organically figure out airplane or drug safety, but most people lack the capabilities to do so, and many people would die in the process, which is obviously undesirable. So here an expert regulatory body represents the interests of an idealized rational consumer.
What parts of socialism would encourage cost cutting? I'm talking specific economic drivers not blatant malpractice.
Price controls disincentivizes production and capital investment (why build more production if there are better rewards elsewhere?) but also incentivizes cost cutting in order to minimize loss of margins or even maintain break-even cost, so quality decreases.
A price control example is rent control. Some may argue that landlords may withhold maintenance to get tenants to move, and that’s true. But often what happens is that over many years, cost of living and services skyrocket, making it infeasible to maintain let alone update an apartment.
Where are price controls an inherent part of socialism though? Price controls, specifically rent control in your example, is a band-aide mechanism meant to place regulation on problems manifested by capitalism. What part of price control do you see inherent in socialism?
This is a huge problem with critiques of socialism. When you ask for examples of where socialism is bad, people point to issues that are currently present in our existing economic organization, seemingly forgetting that we live under capitalism.
It's the old "Millions of people have historically died under communism/socialism" dodge. The United States has operated under capitalism throughout the duration of it's existence. Has no one died under it/from it? 44 million people in the US face hunger including 1 in 5 children. Grocery stores throw out TONS OF USABLE FOOD per year. Are those facts somehow compartmentalized away from capitalism?
I gotta be honest with you man, I have no idea what you're talking about here. You critique socialism and communism by saying cost cutting is inherent in both of those modes of economic operation and then go into a diatribe about how resource acquisition comes into play. Maybe I'm just being an idiot here, but resource acquisition and cost cutting seem like two different concepts. You also make some sort of pass at saying there's a need for increasing efficiencies which seems to be less of a necessity under socialism/communism than capitalism.
Under capitalism as a capital owner, if a resource is scarce that you need to produce your product, there are avenues that you can pursue to keep your pricing competitive but ultimately at the end of the day, the cost of the resource is the cost of the resource. The easiest and most direct method you have at your disposal as a capital owner, is to reduce operating expenses. Things like firing staff and squeezing more hours out of existing employees, reducing benefits, and extending useful life of capital beyond safe operating lifetimes (think of something like using a piece of machinery beyond useful safe life) are all mechanisms that reduce operating expenses and keep profits high.
Under socialism, a democratic organization of the workforce would see the scarcity of the resource needed and people would work together to identify how to keep producing the product while paying everyone what they deserve... because the workers own/are the means of production. Whether that manifests itself in the form of everyone electing to take less pay, people electing to lower benefits, or some other method of preserving the business, it has to be decided on by everyone. The key feature here is that while resource scarcity is the root problem, under a socialized organization of the workplace, people are still employed and provided for according to the tenants of socialism. The main motivator here is not achieving profit/generating profit for a capital owner/capitalists. The motivations are 1) providing a product and 2) ensuring that everyone creating the product is adequately compensated for.
So considering the above modes of operation, we go back to cost cutting and the societal implications of that. Under a capitalist (person)/capitalism, you have one person or a small group of people making decisions about how to navigate resource scarcity. You have fewer moral filters to go through. It's infinitely easier for one or two people to make a decision to use lower quality steel that could cause structural problems in a building or to remove hours spent QA'ing/firing QA people to check and make sure bolts are properly tightened on the fuselage of a plane.
Comparatively speaking, in a business organized under the tenants of socalism, workers own the means of production and therefore have to democratically choose to lower the quality of steel or reduce the hours spent QAing products in order to offset resource scarcity to keep costs lower.
Like I said, I could be just a dense idiot here, but I simply do not get the connections you are making here. I also don't even want to touch on your comments about planned economies right now because that's a whole other ball of wax.
I think if you want to make this point it’s better to link this article in the original thread — we could spend forever tagging each other on various topics re: capitalism vs socialism to the detriment of the rest of Tildes.
I understand the sentiment here, I'm not a huge fan of capitalism myself. As I said in the post, greed is just barely tolerable emotion which is above fear/envy but still in the dark realms. It still has as much chance of going wrong as the others.
But consider that when capitalism goes wrong, you get this inequality and quality issues but when socialism goes wrong, you get psychopaths like Pol Pot and Fidel Castro!
Also consider that the root issue here isn't the system of free market capitalism but the scarcity of resources (for which many humans compete) and lack of ethics or empathy in society.
Finally, let me cede that just as greed and fear can act as check/balance on each other, we might need both capitalism and socialism in certain ratio for policy making? This ratio will vary for each country/culture/tribe since we are all different.
I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not saying we adopt broken systems like those used in Cambodia or Cuba. I'm saying we as a species can come up with a system that elevates the base level of comfort for everyone and limit out-of-hand wealth acquisition.
If you ask me? Greed is the opposite of empathy. Greed is fueled by desiring more for yourself while ignoring the needs of other people.
I live in a society where capitalism is 110% the way of life. If you don't stay extra hours at your job every week? No way you're getting a promotion. Forget if you have a family you love and want to spend time with. You can maybe work your way up in the company, but not without taking the role of a slave first.
I had an amazing job (designing LEGO models for LEGOland parks) for what I thought was a good company. When COVID hit? Literally the week before the pandemic gained it's full momentum, the company very abruptly laid off 60% of it's work force, cutting those human beings off from their health benefits. The next week, there was a meeting with the CEO - some stuffy jerk who lived on the opposite side of the Atlantic ocean from me and my coworkers. During the meeting, he said, and I quote;
"Things may look rough, but the most important thing is cash, cash, cash, and fortunately the company has a lot of cash."
Once again, he said this after deciding to cut off 60% of the workforce from their health benefits. It disgusted me. I saw the company's true colors. I had immunocompromised loved ones and the company refused to let me work from home, despite my job being 99% on computer. I quit working for them by choice shortly after.
(Not to mention these jagoffs forced me to use my Paid Time Off to care for my newborn son and cancer-stricken father before allowing me to use Family Medical Leave.)
This is what I see greed creating. And when I see somebody suggesting greed is even barely a "good thing" I feel like that's extremely short-sighted and focusing too much on short-term gains for one's self, rather than the long-term betterment of living conditions for other human beings in society.
Love Canal, Colonial Plantains, East Asian Sweatshops with suicide nets... Hell, just look up the Wikipedia entry for Superfund sites in the US.
Capitalism usually supports the dictators in far away lands doing horrible things because it gets us cheaper bananas. Horseshoe theory basically says that the people crazy enough to overthrow the crazy guy running the place are likely crazy too though... I think that was the plot of far cry 4.