Poll: Capitalism dying?

[Person Man]

Capitalism will die sooner or later, but what replaces it depends on how the death of unskilled labor is handled and how we respond to environmental concerns.

That was a winded article, but the jist is pretty simple. There could eventually be a techno-political solution (capitalism will evolve by having the market becoming a more tangible thing than just a way to quantify providence) , a technological solution (finally all the experiments with medicine, space travel, clean energy and artificial intelligence will be successful and things will just materialize) or no solution to our problems (if you can't afford to live , you don't live).

The most realistic situation probably goes between 1 and 3.

[Person Man]

Couldn't "capitalism" or "market based" system mean any system exists where people generally are compelled to perform for each other based or some sort of offer acceptance and consideration?

This could all be based on asking whether or not someone is for "human rights" or "freedom".

[Person Man]

Couldn't "capitalism" or "market based" system mean any system exists where people generally are compelled to perform for each other based or some sort of offer acceptance and consideration?

This could all be based on asking whether or not someone is for "human rights" or "freedom".

A market based system is at least in theory based on mutual consent, but capitalism I would understand as involving the use and investment of capital as central to economic activity (though that definition would describe a great many things not usually thought of as capitalism).

What qualifies as "consent" and "capital". If Republicans got their way much of the consent would be through duress and if Democrats got their way much  consent would indirectly implied through the Democratic process

[Person Man]

Couldn't "capitalism" or "market based" system mean any system exists where people generally are compelled to perform for each other based or some sort of offer acceptance and consideration?

This could all be based on asking whether or not someone is for "human rights" or "freedom".

A market based system is at least in theory based on mutual consent, but capitalism I would understand as involving the use and investment of capital as central to economic activity (though that definition would describe a great many things not usually thought of as capitalism).

What qualifies as "consent" and "capital". If Republicans got their way much of the consent would be through duress and if Democrats got their way much  consent would indirectly implied through the Democratic process

The key is mutual consent, as opposed to collective consent. If someone is commanded to buy or to sell something at a certain rate, that would not be mutual consent between buyer and seller and have no relation to a functional market. Decisions made out of duress on the other hand are not incompatible with a market, though they may be incompatible with a functional economy in other ways.

There are no functional differences between forcing people to trade and uh...Forcing them to trade. I guess in one situation you can go live in the forest. How many people do you think think about that?

[Person Man]

People being poor is obviously a flaw. You could argue that it's a flaw that would exist in any other system as well and perhaps even be worse or that it's a flaw that's in some way balanced out by benefits that necessitate it as a side-effect, but saying that it's not a flaw at all makes you sound like you care more about their markets as their own abstracted entities than about the actual people who have to live in and use them. Which is a horrible, disgusting way to think.

In fairness, there's a legitimate philosophical position that would make poor members of society a feature instead of a flaw. If one holds that an underclass serves the purpose of motivating people to achieve more and thereby either escape from or avoid entering that underclass, then having some poor people in a society becomes a necessity to the economic system.

This is all well and good, but what "poor" means can be drastically different in different societies and ending up in a society like Victorian Britain where ending up maimed on the job and then starving because you have no natural means of support (which is more or less the natural endpoint of an unregulated market with a labor glut...there's more where that came from!) is naturally morally reprehensible.  Every society has winners and losers, of course, but there's a point at which you need to step in to prevent the economic system from literally murdering the losers. 

Without regulations like, say, the Americans With Disabilities Act, who would go through the effort of setting up ramps that would enable a wheelchair-bound person to even hold gainful employment, when that boss could hire an able-bodied person and save on the ramp?  The society that the blue avatars in this thread envision isn't the fair "people are allowed to fail/be poor/whatever" society they envision, its one where one disadvantage (say, amputee status) reinforces others and culminates in leaving someone totally unemployable and therefore doomed to starvation.

In fairness, there's a legitimate philosophical position that would make poor members of society a feature instead of a flaw. If one holds that an underclass serves the purpose of motivating people to achieve more and thereby either escape from or avoid entering that underclass, then having some poor people in a society becomes a necessity to the economic system.
[/quote]

[Person Man]

This discussion is going well.