Currently 66% of all new businesses fail within 10 years. We seem to survive. People move on.
?? Right. We already agreed on that. I mean, commodity based currency doesn't prevent bad educational systems either, but again that's a different issue.
Are all Climate crisis deniers conspiracy theorists?
- Thread starter Quantum Quack
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You are devoting the majority of your replies to these odd irrelevancies.
Why?
You posted yet another disagreement with "that". I replied. If you intended to post agreement, now would be the time to correct your quoted post.
Nonsense.
It means that the exchange of capital determines ownership of economic resources - what ownership means, what kinds of "control" (and responsibility) such purchased ownership entails, what motivates the actions of the owners of resources, are other matters entirely. Profits, for example, need not be involved.
They are not. Badly governed financial systems often cannot function, or even continue to exist. Badly governed market-based financial systems (capitalist or otherwise) are especially short-lived, in general - most markets are quite fragile in the face of organized crime, few currencies can survive a lost war.
You said you could not imagine a system in which half the participants fail. We have one right now - small businesses fail at greater than that rate.
Then it's not capitalism. The goal of capitalism is profit; check the dictionary.
They are orthogonal. You can have a terrible government and a robust economic system, and vice versa. Yes, poor economies and poor governments are often short-lived, as are countries with poor militaries, poor sanitation and poor food /water safety laws. That does not mean that all those things are inextricably linked somehow.
Not a capitalist one.
There is no such thing as "the goal of capitalism".
But allowing for your fog-brained vocabulary and continual deployment of irrelevant concepts in these discussions, we can consult a dictionary for whatever it can tell us:
e.g. American Heritage Third - chosen because unlike a rigorous theoretical definition it does mention both "profit" and (bizarrely) "free market", as is necessary for replying to you, but manages to not step on its dick completely as you can see:
"An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market"
Other than such flaws as failing to differentiate capitalism from feudalism, corporate socialism, etc, - historically rather important distinctions but nowdays ignored by most Republicans (along with the rest of history) - that seems to work ok here.
Note the central, key, all-important role of government - one needs a market, "ownership" of the means of "distribution" (this apparently does not include things like roads and ports, for some reason) , a currency, and other infrastructure unavailable without large, intrusive, and competent government.
That role is commonly denied by Republican capitalists in the US, almost as a matter of principle.
And that seems to bear directly on the common - almost reflexive - denial of AGW by Republican "capitalists".
sculptor
Valued Senior Member
ok
just to be clear
lighting a fire in Australia, ain't likely to warm Iowa up
thanx anyway
I'm glad you're immune. Very few places are so lucky.
Of course you can have a robust economy and a terrible government. Hopefully I won't have to provide examples. (Although the way you've been going . . . .)
Wikipedia:
"Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit."
The IMF:
"The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit. As Adam Smith, the 18th century philosopher and father of modern economics, said: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Both parties to a voluntary exchange transaction have their own interest in the outcome, but neither can obtain what he or she wants without addressing what the other wants. It is this rational self-interest that can lead to economic prosperity."
Investopedia:
===========
Main Characteristics of Capitalist Economies
By KRISTINA ZUCCHI
Updated May 7, 2019
There are several different types of economic systems employed by nations. Two such types, socialism and capitalism are the most common. . . . there are several traits that are common among all capitalists. . . .
2. Profit Motive
Companies exist to make a profit. The motive for all companies is to make and sell goods and services only for profits. Companies do not exist solely to satisfy people's needs. Even though some goods or services may satisfy needs, they will only be available if people have the resources to pay for them.
================
Perhaps thinking before you post will prevent you from stepping on your dick so often?
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
This makes no sense. Free markets appear always if government does not suppress it and the other actors are not strong enough to suppress it. This holds for everything, starting with illegal things like drugs and prostitution and ending with capital. And, no, ownership does not require market exchange. Market exchange is only necessary to establish a market price. Legal inheritance is completely irrelevant, the only thing done here by the state is to steal a lot of what is inherited and to restrict the freedom of the owner to decide who inherits.
Of course, nobody decides about inheritance after his own death, this decision is done before. And in a civilized society, this decision is simply accepted. Governments, of course, cannot leave the death of some owner unused to rob at least some part of what he owned. And one has to be a really rigid state worshipper to sell this robbery as a "service". (To classify such extreme state worship as "libertarian" is simply funny.)
Capital exchange does not define ownership, it cannot define ownership. Ownership is a presupposition for exchange of ownership rights. (And, of course, here ownership is also defined independent of any government, it simply means de facto control which is accepted by the society which is relevant for the particular market. So, on illegal markets the ownership of the exchanged goods is often illegal too.)
It does not prevent bad government, but essentially reduces its power to do evil things. So, the government can print some amount of paper money larger than the amount of commodities it owns. But this ends much faster with a bank run and the following bankruptcy of the government. Instead, with paper money you end in hyperinflation.
Nonsense. Capitalist free markets require intrusive, competent, and sophisticated government - they are unstable.
You cannot have a robust capitalist economy and an incompetent, bad, dysfunctional government - your slide into adjectives such as "terrible" forestalled.
Apparently you have no better comprehension of your own links than of my posts, or the English language in general.
You said this:
As you can read in your links, as well as in my dictionary reference and quote (you have yet to consult a dictionary yourself, apparently), that was nonsense - capitalism is, by definition, the category of economic systems in which ownership (of the means of production, especially) is established via exchange of capital. There are several different kinds, or systems, based on that - none of them have "goals", any more than backhoes have goals.
Briefly, here:
Capitalism doesn't necessarily involve profits (examples: residential housing purchases, subsistence farming on purchased land, purchased membership in institutions such as libraries or fishing/hunting clubs, various forms of insurance, etc).
capitalist development does not necessarily involve profits (research and development is often a cost, not a profit - the money spent on it is subtracted from the profits, if profits are being accounted at all).
it doesn't need a market at all, much less a "free" one (corporate capitalism is an enemy of free markets, and will destroy them unless prevented by government. Organized criminal capitalist enterprise, capitalist slavery, and the like, often dismantle even distorted markets in favor of monopoly and monopsony).
And it certainly is not defined by the features it shares with feudalism, corporate socialism, commodity bartering, and a half dozen others. The Egypt of the pharaohs did not have a capitalist economy, regardless of its profits and what it did with them.
Capitalism does not have motives, any more than it has goals - or fur, or a long tail that hangs down behind. Motivation by profit is not a defining feature of capitalists, either - some are so motivated, some aren't.
Meanwhile, the IMF is not a reliable describer of what is "essential" in any economic system - lots of happy horseshit about competition and austerity and so forth;
In the real world, lots of non-capitalist setups feature people who want to make a profit (create a surplus, stockpile a safety margin, etc etc). Remember when you recommended checking a dictionary?
No, I did not.
Not even close.
You are posting an increasingly large proportion of increasingly strange garbage, predominantly personal attack. That is of course the standard, stereotypical wingnut approach here - some have filled pages with it, abandoning reason and discussion altogether - but you were claiming to be some other kind of Republican.
Suggestion: quote rather than paraphrase. Assuming you are not trolling on purpose, that might be one way you could check yourself ( at least limit the tinfoil stuff to direct misreadings, rather than ideologically distorted and stereotypified "memory").
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And enforced - defined, even - by the government. Inheritance in a capitalist system is a government service - without a government, it does not happen.
In a society unwilling to fall under tyranny, the government limits the accumulation of wealth.
And of course in a free market capitalist system inherited wealth would be forbidden - nothing more directly conflicts with the basic principles of free market exchange than inherited wealth.
It's the only kind there is.
Without it one is limited to scavenging, expropriation by force, destruction ritual or otherwise, burial as grave goods, etc.
Not possible. Whatever entity defines ownership in a society - has that capability - is governing that society.
History says otherwise.
Nobody said it did.
Nobody said it did.
You are having a whole series of reading comprehension problems - try quoting, and then not substituting your own vocabulary in the reply.
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
Nonsense. It happened everywhere, with or without governments. Your fantasies have nothing to do with basic principles of free markets.
Nice description of robbery. The robbers also like to limit the accumulation of wealth of their victims.
No. That some parts of the property may be buried or destroyed for religious reasons is, of course, a possibility. But nobody is limited to this.
With such a definition of "government" all your claims about what the government is doing become irrelevant nonsense. In this case, anarchistic societies have also automatically a government. So, it is all a word game. The intention of this word game is obvious - defense of state government, because this is what people associate with the word "government".
A quite cheap and dirty trick.
The reading comprehension problems are on your side. If I explain you some elementary facts, which you seem to ignore, it does not mean that you have explicitly claimed that these facts are wrong. In my answers, I give arguments, instead of simple "no, this is wrong" answers.
Iceaura: " it's hard to imagine a steady state economy persisting through half the participants failing." You don't have to imagine it; you can observe it in real time.
Here's the easily located posting:
But to respond as if you had addressed my posting: Nowhere that I can see.
Just for starters: Where are we to observe this steady state capitalist economy with its persistent churning? Nowhere with industrial capitalism of the US type, of course - growth is famously necessary to keep that genus from collapse, and even a partial and passing neglect of strict curb and regulation leads to buildups of accumulated wealth choking exchange and grinding the market's gears to failure of various kinds.
- - - -
"It" happened nowhere without sophisticated and competent and firmly regulating government.
As you will discover if you attempt to present an example.
That's not a "definition".
Reading comprehension starts with the meanings of ordinary words.
You have posted several simple, elementary, and obvious misreadings of my posts in this thread alone. I directed your attention to a few of them - they remain uncorrected.
In other words, although the familiar tipping point reached by all wingnuts is one you passed long ago, the post I responded to by twice pointing out that "nobody said it did" is more easily found - linked above - and illustrates the common difficulty and question faced by those responding to the thralls of US fascist propaganda,
especially when these thralls have done weird stuff like downplay or deny AGW in a science forum on the grounds that its various risks and ramifications are the creations of bribery, threat, mutual self interest, political pressure, organized exaggeration, and other such conspiratorial factors,
which is: Are you lying, or are you stupid?
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
That's playing word games. However you name that sentence, it shows that we have very different definitions of government (I hope this the same as "the entity which is governing that society").
Instead, to clarify the definition would be more helpful. The "entity" may be, last but not least, simply some members of a group with some more moral authority, like the oldest members of a teenager gang. The base of ownership is, even in such gangs, not the leadership of the gang, but that the gang members will insist on their own property rights. Even if these property rights are completely ignored by any governments, parents and other authorities outside the gang and the gang leaders may disagree, the simple gang member may be nonetheless able to defend his property rights. Who, in this case, has defined ownership in this gang? Is it an "entity" at all? Does it "govern" this "society"?
If you use a notion of government so that the informal leaders of a teenager gang are a government, ok, then you have to replace "government" in everything I wrote with something like "government of a state".
Let's look at the details of the other "nobody said it did". You wrote:
I answered
I have replaced here "determined" by "defined". These are simply different translations of the same German word "bestimmen". https://www.dict.cc/?s=bestimmen Whatever the differences, it is only a cheap word game given that my objection remains valid in the variant with "determined" too:
Capital exchange does not determine ownership, it cannot determine ownership. Ownership is a presupposition for exchange of ownership rights. Ownership already has to be determined before it can be changed by market exchange.
The other one is simply an open lie. You wrote:
I answered:
Your reply:
Have a good day, Nobody.
They are not synonyms. If you replace words with other words, you have changed the meaning of the sentence etc. If you do that with my posts, you will have created a different post with a different meaning - no longer mine, but yours.
Irrelevant to my posts - not interested. Get a dictionary.
It does, in fact, determine ownership in a market capitalist economy - by definition.
You buy something, you own it. A pile of capital itself can buy and own something, in many capitalist setups - no human being involved.
Words have meanings, whether you know them or not.
So?
You have a reading comprehension problem.
I don't know if it's because English is a foreign language, or you don't read very well in general - can't tell - but if you cannot establish ownership via market exchange of capital you don't have market capitalism. That's kind of basic. Of course ownership itself exists in all kinds of different, non-capitalist systems - feudalism, say, or some kinds of socialism -
but we were discussing climate change denial and its connection with conspiracy theories, within the understood context of a capitalist system.
I nominate the "deep state" conspiracy theory, as an example and starting point for a discussion of how climate change denial emerges from capitalist presumptions carelessly derived.
Schmelzer
Valued Senior Member
Of course, I have used my word in my answer. I have correctly quoted your words. So don't whine. Better stop make a big deal out of irrelevant differences (irrelevant because my argument stands even with your original word). Moreover, stop lying (as in the second case).
The ownership was determined before I have bought it. It was owned by the guy who sold it to me. Else I could not buy it.
Market exchange changes ownership. It doesn't establish it. But, ok, let's get a dictionary:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/establish
- to institute (something, such as a law) permanently (no, the ownership of the seller was already instituted, )
- to make firm or stable (no, it was already firm and stable)
- to introduce and cause to grow and multiply (no, the ownership of the seller was already introduced, and does not grow or multiply)
- to bring into existence (no, the ownership already existed, as the ownership of the seller)
and so on.
Of course, in a market capitalism, exchange of capital goods should be allowed. That's a different question. You admit yourself that ownership can exist also in societies without a capital market:
And this ownership is useful even if one is not allowed to sell the property. One is allowed to use it, and often one is allowed to lease it to other people.
(What holds for legal markets in relation to ownership - the ownership of the seller has to be established before it can be sold - holds similarly for illegal markets too, except that from a legal point of view there may be no ownership, but, instead, illegal possession. But you cannot buy on an illegal market drugs which are not possessed by the drug dealer. Possession is simply the de facto ownership in illegal markets.)