Capitalism and Firefly
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 16:21
VIEWED: 10053
PAGE 7 of 11
Quote:I think that's oversimplifying just a bit...
Originally posted by Tiger:
I want to be free and you want to be taken care of. That's it in a (very small) nut shell.
Can't we all get along Chrisisall
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Quote:I think people should be free to do as they wish with their money, and since businesses ARE people that includes them.
Originally posted by rue:
As best I can tell, you think that everything good comes from business, even international, corporate, monopolistic business, which (at the same time) you think needs to be divorced from government, which is itself a burden to small business but a ....
It's a little off-topic, but can you explain exactly what it is you believe?
I think the legal fiction that corporations are individuals is disgusting. The legal protection that government gives to large corporations is disgusting. If you want to organize your business into a corporation, go ahead, but you shouldn't be allowed any more protection from your stupidity or misbehavior than joe schmoe shop keeper.
I just want to be left alone! I don't want to be financially responsible for people I'll never meet and I don't want them to be responsibole for me. I don't want to be a part of some politician's grand plan for the future.
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Quote:Like I said, "very small" nutshell.
Originally posted by chrisisall:Quote:I think that's oversimplifying just a bit...
Originally posted by Tiger:
I want to be free and you want to be taken care of. That's it in a (very small) nut shell.
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Um, aren't you overnutshelling it just a bit...?
Chrisisall
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“The guiding principle of capitalism is customer satisfaction.”
Satisfaction is totally subjective and therefore subject to enormous manipulation. Satisfying your customer with an illusion is a lot cheaper than giving the customer the real deal. Long as you don’t get caught. If you can bump the price of a comic book to $20 and convince the customer that the book is scarce, everybody wins, right?
If customer satisfaction is your goal, then the ultimate strategy is to control what customers find satisfying. Pretty smart, eh? You know, mind control, aka marketing and advertising.
Or drugs. If there was no such thing as addiction, I think I’d feel a lot better about capitalism than I do. I spent a lot of my life tied up in the food service industry and the real money there, as anyone will tell you, is in the addictive substances, booz and espresso and sugar and grease. The free market loves addiction. And what is greed if not an addiction to money? And so, the free market loves greed, because there’s a lot of profit to be made off the greedy. You think you’ll make more money selling Hyundais or Porsches? Selling to the greedy and wealthy will always net you better profits than selling to the poor and frugal. Always. And because greed is addictive, instead of just exploiting the greedy, you too become greedy. When an entire culture is addicted to money, you get Reaganomics.
Our consumer culture has even developed an addiction to shopping itself. People call it “retail therapy” and live out their lives in debt.
Capitalism works best in an homogenous community. That’s where you will find that holy grail of capitalist belief, a fair market price. Anywhere else, not so much. Cultural differences breed deception and exploitation. Granted, in some perfect fantasy of utopian capitalism, diversity helps to drive real competition and stimulates all kinds of growth; but as soon as one faction gets the upper hand they will move to consolidate their control of the market and the minorities will be exploited. The most exploited cultural difference in any market is poverty. Poor people, who have to work a lot of hours and maybe don’t have their own car, don’t have the time to go all over town checking for the best price, and are more likely to buy what you’re selling at the price you set. What is convenience for the affluent is mere survival to the poor.
Animals, trees, the natural world, they don’t buy anything, so capitalism doesn’t care if they’re farmed to extinction, clear-cut or strip mined. Capitalism always looks good in the short run, and the United States hasn’t been around long enough to know anything longer than the short run. No more whale oil? We find something new! No more petroleum? Find something knew! The Earth get used up? Hey, that reminds me, there was this great show...
A major reason why capitalism worked so well in the 19th and early 20th centuries (aside from the fact that there was no end to the boom and bust of short-run economies that fueled it) is because back then the big boys (Carnegie et al) were always trying to impress old money with their philanthropy. There were very, very rich people they wanted to get cozy with that thought full-on capitalist acquisitiveness just wasn’t cool. Back then, greed wasn’t good, it was shameful. So they built hospitals and schools to show what decent guys they were. Nowadays, there’s no money in philanthropy.
If ridding the world of its ills were profitable, somebody would have done it by now and retired a rich man.
Look at mass-market TV if you want to see what the natural pressures of a free market will get you. Look at the news. People don’t want to buy what’s good for them or what lasts or even what is true. They want to feel satisfied, and TV delivers every time.
Socialism is never gonna capture the hearts and minds of consumers, it’s just not marketable enough to catch on without being forced. So, until the human race grows up and actually wants what’s good for them, we’re likely to be st
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Quote:Didn't see that one coming...
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
The Earth get used up? Hey, that reminds me, there was this great show...
Besides being hi-larious, you thoughts are, as ever, spot on.
Cheers Chrisisall
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Quote:Part of why international corporate capitalism survives is that people are taught all sorts of nonsense, and it forms an unquestioned basis for their perceptions, thinking, and choices.
it’s just not marketable enough
One bit of silliness is that the US is the best of all possible worlds. People seem to be able to imagine worse societies, but not better ones. (Or, better ones that are palatable. Just look at Start Trek - TNG. Didn’t it all seem just a little thin and lacking in zest?) I think you have to live a fair bit of time in another country with a better standard of living to be able to grasp the reality of a better society. Not utopia, but perceptibly better. But that's an experience most Americans will never have.
Another is that somehow capitalism is 'natural', according to some blurry definition. Usually it's predicated on it being 'human nature'. And when pressed for some basis, what I've heard is either that all previous societies were imperfect until people to evolved up to capitalism, or that all previous societies were essentially capitalistic, or that evolution is essentially competitive and therefore capitalistic, or some other nonsense.
Between the two of these it becomes literally unthinkable that capitalism is a free choice.
And being a free choice, it can be altered or discarded when it ceases to make life good.
Anyway, I can posit, I think, a society where people are truly free. And free of poverty, insecurity, hopelessness, suspicion, and hate, and where the earth will be beautiful, abundant and clean at the hands of man. And I think I can do it with just one non-religious precept. (One of a handful of ideas that did not directly come from someone else, as far as I know.)
If you had to come up with a different rule to live by, what would it be?
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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As a child having our economy explained to me, I had the odd feeling the adults were joking. Me and my friends traded stuff we wanted, or did each other's chores in return for borrowing things, etc. Money was a strange adult concept that only made sense when my dad gave me my weekly allowance so that I could give it to the drug store guy for a comic book.
I long for the economic world Jean-Luc describes in First Contact.
Jabba no barter Chrisisall
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Hey, thanks for the reply. I don't get to the site every day, and if topics get too far down the list, I sometimes lose track.
I too remember my childish confusion over the complicated world of jobs and money and banks.
Rue
If you are wondering what the single precept is, it is "just enough".
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:I would agree with you on that, but I don't think it would sit too well with at least 10% of the U.S. population
Originally posted by rue:
If you are wondering what the single precept is, it is "just enough".
.Seeing sci-fi movies as a kid, I would have thought by now we would have 'evolved beyond' greed and hate, I guess it's in the genome...
Chrisisall
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