vimothy
yurp
No, my solution would be to develop market mechanisms to protect the environment, something which is happening in capitalist countries and nowhere else (as far as I can tell).
Occupying the Moral High Ground
- Thread starter vimothy
- Start date
No, my solution would be to develop market mechanisms to protect the environment, something which is happening in capitalist countries and nowhere else (as far as I can tell).
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
But doesn't this go against the principles of the free market? Or by 'free' do you now mean 'free-apart-from-environmental-regulations'?
john eden
male pale and stale
Surely you would need a state to enforce these mechanisms?
After pressure from where?
crackerjack
Well-known member
Nah, Sandline are the future, haven't you heard?
john eden
male pale and stale
It's not a free market if there is a state, is it?
Clearly the will of the people has decreed that there should be free education and healthcare, and that the environment should not be destroyed by industry.
Which is why we have them.
Onwards and upwards brothers and sisters!
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
And how far do you go with this? Do you also start sticking in regulations to stop (for instance) truckers driving for 48 hours solid thereby endangering other road users? Or people running factories all night and keeping people awake? And how do you deal with providing things with external benefits, like street lighting? If I don't want to pay for street lights but everyone else in my town does, is there anything to stop me getting them for free? And if I can get them for free, won't everyone else in town have the same idea until we end up with noone to pay for street lights...
Oh, and while you're here (sorry to grill you, but it's quite interesting having a civil conversation with a free market advocate) could you respond to my earlier post about accumulation of wealth?
I believe in a mixed economy fwiw.
vimothy
yurp
The free market is the ideal, the reality is generally a mixture of market and government forces. As a general rule I think that the market is better at managing itself than the government: regulations are bad and deregulation is good. However, it's not a perfect system (the perfect system doesn't exist), it can be tweaked.
Wealth accumulation: give me a minute and I'll try to respond.
(I'm happy to be grilled, btw, I like coming here and arguing with everyone
)
john eden
male pale and stale
The free market is the ideal, the reality is generally a mixture of market and government forces. As a general rule I think that the market is better at managing itself than the government: regulations are bad and deregulation is good. However, it's not a perfect system (the perfect system doesn't exist), it can be tweaked.
Wealth accumulation: give me a minute and I'll try to respond.
(I'm happy to be grilled, btw, I like coming here and arguing with everyone
Clearly I don't agree with your views, but I think that is at least pragmatic.
I just think, for me, the reasons we have regulations are self-evident and you can't have a system where welfare is left to the market.
Re: wealth accumulation, there is something I read once about economies of scale and the development of cartels too. I'll try and dig that out, but the general point was that free trade can be quite difficult if you get big conglomorates vs the little man.
crackerjack
Well-known member
FWIW I'm not a socialist in the command economy/nationalise the banks manner of old. I believe in a mixed economy and consider myself a social democrat (though not SDP as was). I'd put more emphasis on the latter too, since if you lose democracy your chances of socialism are doomed.
Final edit: to that extent, I'd point to the Scandinavian model as a successful example of a system I support.
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vimothy
yurp
I think that you're both right and wrong, but I'm running out of time here and my hangover is really starting to kick in now. It's too bloody humid for me to think, let alone string together anything coherent. I'll get back to you tomorrow.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
One (the) major problem with that kind of free-market survivalism is that basically it favours people who are interested in free-market survivalism. Well fine if that's your game but really it takes more than one kind of person to make a world and a society. Where would all the music and art and film and well, all sorts of other stuff that is done for reasons other than mindless capital gain and/or immediate survival, come from?
Yes I know 'survivalism' isn't the correct word but that's how that mindset appears to me.
There's the big scam right there. Negative interest on capital would encourage spending and decrease hoarding. Money is a tool, not an end. Use it or lose it. Can anyone think of any reasons why this is generally not implemented, other than plain greed that is
Yes I know 'survivalism' isn't the correct word but that's how that mindset appears to me.
There's the big scam right there. Negative interest on capital would encourage spending and decrease hoarding. Money is a tool, not an end. Use it or lose it. Can anyone think of any reasons why this is generally not implemented, other than plain greed that is
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
Under socialism, Venezuela's poorest have seen their incomes increase markedly.
And as far as capitalist nations go, why limit ourselves to the U.S. as an example, as it's a special case. Why not check out Mexico? Neoliberal economy, free market trade, technocratic government, and... sweatshops, mass emigration, skyrocketing drug trafficking, and an economy where the second biggest source of income is remittances. These are inextricable consequences of trade "liberalization" in which Capital now controls the organs of the state.
This thread has gone off in new directions since my last post, but I'd like to correct several misconceptions about Iraq and the insurgency. First of all, there was indeed armed resistance in Iraq throughout the duration of Saddam's rule. Second, lumping every Arab with a gun into one block insurgency is misleading to say the least. Most of the resistance groups are nationalist and against the occupation, and do not target civilians. As this chart (from a MNF report, so vimothy can't merely write off the source) shows, the vast majority of attacks are on coalition forces. However, because these forces largely remain behind walls in the green zone, have heavy armor, and possess the capabilities for long-range bombardments, they have suffered fewer casualties than the civilian populations (who also suffer the bombs and shells of the MNF). The spectacular carbombings of markets and such are the work of Al Qaeda, which was not a presence in Iraq until the coalition invasion, and which has come under attacks from nationalist Iraqi resistance -- Al Qaeda is an occupier too, and should be opposed as one!
bassnation
the abyss
why should the free market run health and education? wheres the evidence that this would be better than the government providing it? some things are too important to be distorted to satisfy shareholder concerns. and as a capitalist no doubt you understand that shareholders ALWAYS come first - this is a legal obligation. this can work providing the ability to pay fat dividends happens to dovetail with the stated objectives of the service provision, but what if they don't? why should health and education be sacrificed just so some people can make money?
even right wing nutjobs in this country hang back from what you are advocating. the thinking in the US is far right of even the most conservative commentators here - and just look at the bloody mess that country is in, wrt to health. people in cuba have a longer life expectancy than some parts of the US for christs sake. that is as damning an indictment as you can get.
sorry if these ideas have already been kicked round upthread, just started reading from the last page.
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
By "negative interest" do you mean negative interest on loans etc? If you do, the reason it's not been implemented is that noone would bother lending anything to anyone because it would both be inconvenient to them and cost them money.
If you effectively mean 'tax on accumulation', we sort of have this with inheritance tax, income tax, capital gains tax and so on. Evidently it doesn't go far enough which is why people from poor backgrounds have an overwhelming tendancy to stay poor and people from rich backgrounds have an overwhelming tendancy to get well paid jobs. I'd go further and stick a fat tax on owning more than one house, for instance...
If you effectively mean 'tax on accumulation', we sort of have this with inheritance tax, income tax, capital gains tax and so on. Evidently it doesn't go far enough which is why people from poor backgrounds have an overwhelming tendancy to stay poor and people from rich backgrounds have an overwhelming tendancy to get well paid jobs. I'd go further and stick a fat tax on owning more than one house, for instance...
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Yes, definitely - as housing is most certainly a basic need. That making money by exploiting the property market is so acceptable and encouraged is pretty despicable really. I'd be inclined to ask how much wealth any one person needs - but I suppose a lot of this is based on some idea of lack and a perceived need to be insulated from potential disaster. Where does that idea come from? Or is it just greed again.
Re: negative interest I actually mean that money held should be designed so as to lose it's value over time. Issued cash could be date-stamped in some way but actually as we move towards a cashless economy this becomes far easier to do.
crackerjack
Well-known member
Chavez has undoubtedly some good, but much of it is financed by an oil boom that can't last indefinitely. His increasingly authoritarian tendencies are also a disgrace.
crackerjack
Well-known member
btw, Gavin, what aboout al-Sadr whose Mahdi army attack the occupiers as well as forming Shia death squads murdering Sunni civilians? Where do they stand on your 'good killers' flow chart?
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