Why is the world in such dire economic straits, and what can we do about it?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Sunday, August 23, 2026 20:19
VIEWED: 10090
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Quote:Nah, I don't think it is good or necessary.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
As far as I can see, that doesn't make capitalism good or necessary, it just makes it wasteful and unsustainable.
I just don't think it is evil, or necessarily evil.
I think it is a neutral tool which CAN be used for good as well as for evil, and sometimes at the same time (as in the Gilded Age).
ETA: Just to clarify, I wasn't making a case for capitalism, anyway. I was making a case for new technology as an anti-gravity device.
ETA2: I should specify, unregulated development of new technology as an anti-gravity device.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Well DT, I noticed you brought no evidence to back up your story about how EU is a basket case because of "socialist spending" so I decided to look it up.
The nations with the most socialist spending (the Nordic nations and Germany) are doing quite well. Several of the nations which needed bailouts (Iceland, Spain, and Ireland) were running their governmental budgets in the black, and had in fact been using the surplus to pay DOWN their debt since about 1997, significantly decreasing their public debt burden from about 70% GDP to about 20-30% GDP in that time. They didn't run into trouble UNTIL the debt crisis, when they emptied their treasuries to shore up PRIVATE banks. The UK was running about even ,,, not either in debt or generating a surplus, and their public debt load was more or less stable from about 1997 to 2007.
So your argument is not at all supported by evidence. The primary cause for the financial crisis was the financial sector creating too much funny money. Again.
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CTS, I think what you are saying is that new technology creates new centers of gravity, and that while money is flowing from one center of gravity to another, at least it is flowing. Right?
First of all, the USA was not the "source" of new technology. All of that work on water-power and the steam engine, and its application to transportation and manufacturing? Mostly England and France. The invention of the programmable water-powered loom: France. (Even hear of saboteurs? They were throwing their sabots into the "new" technology) The self-propelled steam engine, and the steam-powered loom? England.
My sense is that doesn't solve the problem, and doesn't even delay the inevitable bust. When I look at the introduction of new technology (manufacturing) in England, it created a vast underclass of people who were substantially poorer than before: peasants displaced from their small holdings into cities, where they lived (and starved) under bridges and in poorhouses, without even the wherewithal to produce their own food. In other words, the introduction of new technology concentrated wealth more than ever. As an anti-gravity machine, it was a bust.
The saving grace of America was all of that "free" land which created a safety net of a sorts for people unable to find a place in the economic structure to strike out on their own and AT LEAST be able to produce food. In other words, the means of production were more evenly distributed here than elsewhere. I think that is why we never involved in the "year of revolutions" (1848). We were still busy extricating ourselves from an older form of production (slavery).
I think monetarism has been more effective. Governments have been riding monetarism for a long time to delay the inevitable, making money (and allowing private banks to make money) through the creation of debt and "quantitative easing" (ie the equivalent of printing more money!), and that more than anything has delayed the inevitable, as well as making it potentially worse.
Curiously, China is facing the same problem. The introduction of new technology (manufacturing) has created a new class of ultra-wealthy, while itinerant labor and the peasant farmer no longer enjoy the level of support (health care, education, unemployment insurance etc.) that they did in the past. (These are tied to where you are registered; so if you move out of your area of registration to work in a city, you receive no benefits whatsoever, very much like the parish system of charity in Victorian England)
China recognizes that it needs to increase its internal demand in order to keep growing, so they are investing in infrastructure at a crazy rate. However, because of the shadow banking system there are many outstanding loans which can no longer be paid, factory-owners are committing suicide rather than face the illicit lenders.
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Quote:Yes, because while it is flowing, it weakens the centers.
Originally posted by SignyM:
CTS, I think what you are saying is that new technology creates new centers of gravity, and that while money is flowing from one center of gravity to another, at least it is flowing. Right?
Quote:You're confusing the first and the second industrial revolutions. The first (18th-early 19th century), yes, mostly England and France. The second (1865 - 1913), mostly America. I am especially interested in the American industrial revolution because it was particularly unfettered by govt. My hypothesis is, the more unregulated new technology is, the bigger the flow of wealth from the old center of gravity to the new one.
First of all, the USA was not the "source" of new technology. ...Mostly England and France.
Quote:I would dispute the "more than ever." But I expected that we would have disagreements on this point.
In other words, the introduction of new technology concentrated wealth more than ever.
Also, the period of interest to me is the Second Industrial Revolution in America, rather than the first one in Europe. The first one was new technology mired in millenia of oppression. It didn't have much of a chance for anti-gravity to work. It would be like trying a new anti-gravity machine on Jupiter and saying, "Look it doesn't work." No shit. Let's focus on the anti-gravity trial we did on Mars, shall we?
Anyway, I didn't expect you to agree with me. I just wanted to explain my theory. Maybe it *is* wrong. But I would like to see unfettered development of new technology tried for say, 100 years before giving it up as a bust.
ETA: Oh, and about China? It doesn't fit my model. My model requires that ANYBODY must be free (unimpeded by govt) to come up with new technology. China doesn't meet that criterion. Like I said, there has only been one time in all of history that came close to my model, and that would be America 1865 - 1913. Not Europe. Not China. America in the Gilded Age.
New tech alone is not enough.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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" My model requires that ANYBODY must be free (unimpeded by govt) to come up with new technology."
But, uhm, as was pointed out above, it wasn't Americans who came up with the new technologies. So the Gilded Age doesn't meet your criteria either.
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Posting separately on this point - you see freedom to invent new technologies as a necessary crutch for capitalism, a way out of the dead-end of concentration of wealth. But the freedom to invent new technologies has been around for a long, long, LONG time - since way before capitalism - with the invention of language, the bowl, the baby sling, fire, stone tools, agriculture and so on. Invention can and does exist without capitalism. But according to your ideas, capitalism can't survive without invention.
So, why have capitalism?
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Well DT, I noticed you brought no evidence to back up your story about how EU is a basket case because of "socialist spending" so I decided to look it up.
The nations with the most socialist spending (the Nordic nations and Germany) are doing quite well. Several of the nations which needed bailouts (Iceland, Spain, and Ireland) were running their governmental budgets in the black, and had in fact been using the surplus to pay DOWN their debt since about 1997, significantly decreasing their public debt burden from about 70% GDP to about 20-30% GDP in that time. They didn't run into trouble UNTIL the debt crisis, when they emptied their treasuries to shore up PRIVATE banks. The UK was running about even ,,, not either in debt or generating a surplus, and their public debt load was more or less stable from about 1997 to 2007.
So your argument is not at all supported by evidence. The primary cause for the financial crisis was the financial sector creating too much funny money. Again.
I think you are on the money, if you will excuse the expression. There are countries in europe that have been incredibly irresponsible, like Italy, but that is nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with a culture that has scant regard for paying dues like taxes, and big into bribery and corruption. That is why Germany and France are so pooed off with bailing them out.
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Sig,
It's obvious to a 5th grader. Why would I waste my time debating it here? I have actual stuff to do.
Look again at europe's taxation rate, and their degree of govt. control, corporate-govt. ties and their stack of long term liabilities, not to mention their labor situation. I haven't met a european on either side of the political spectrum who hasn't thought it was a serious problem at any point in the last decade, maybe two.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Quote:It was pointed out wrong. Most of the new technology in the Gilded Age WAS American.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
But, uhm, as was pointed out above, it wasn't Americans who came up with the new technologies. So the Gilded Age doesn't meet your criteria either.
Telephone: American
Telegraph: American
A/C current: American
D/C current: American
Airplane: American
Refrigerator: American
Cars: German
Assembly line for mass production of cars: American
Radio: American (though of course, the Italians want to claim this one)
Steel: British
Mass manufacturing of steel through vertical integration: American (not a technological but a logistical innovation)
Yes, there were a number of significant European inventions. And yes, inventions always piggyback on each other such that some claims for credit are controversial. But it is very clear that MOST of the innovation by which we obtained the final products occurred in America during the Gilded Age.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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Quote:Why have a knife?
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, why have capitalism?
Cause sometimes, just sometimes, it is useful without hurting anyone.
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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942, labor activist and anarcho-communist)
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