USA was 3 hrs away from Economic, Political Collapse... last Sept.

POSTED BY: pizmobeach
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 4, 2026 11:44
VIEWED: 42658
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Originally posted by SignyM:
"While there is an economic argument for taking care of people, you will not find that argument in capitalism."

"Is there anything 'in capitalism' that precludes it?"

Yes, it's precluded by the drive to maximum profit.

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your argument assumes that maximising profit must come at the expense of people (or such is 'true capitalist theory')...

But it's common sense that to maximise profits in the long term you need to take care of people to some extent at least in the short term - even slave-holders would feed their slaves to get profit from them... and so, how would a 'true' capitalist have operated things differently sig? Starved his slaves to save money on food and maximise short term profits, and then work them to death?

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ask you to cite a proper definition of capitalism sig; if you can show me the requirement for maximising profit in the short-term I'll accept your argument. If not, it kind of seems like you've made up your own definition of capitalism along the lines of 'human greed and short-sightedness distilled down to pure evil'


Heads should roll

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Your assumption works only if there is a shortage of labor, which makes the laborer "worth" something. But as long as there are people desperate to work for a pittance under any circumstances, it makes more financial sense just to burn though the population and toss 'em out when they're used up.

BTW- slave-owners pretty much burned through slaves, too. Conditions in the the indigo and rice plantations and pine -pitch areas pretty much guaranteed that slaves died of malaria and malnourishment in about 18 months. So it was a death sentence for rebels and runaways And the lifespan on cotton plantations wasn't great either.

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what makes people the way they are.

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By now I got a pretty good idea of the whats, it's the WHYS that I tend to focus on, hence my favor for the Jungian Shadow Question.
"What do you want ?"
As a measure of a person.

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When you consider Wulf and AnthonyT - two people with similar experiences and divergent results - it's seems to me that inborn differences can direct our responses. We are not born blank slates.

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We're born with potential leanings, but that's all they are, is potentials, and while they can and do bias responses, they seem more tendancy than predestination and as such can be subverted by environment, experience and acts of will.

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And I'm not sure you can make up for lost opportunities, there may be periods of development that close, never to be reopened.

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That's what I refer to as the calcification process - best example of it is how the difficulty in learning new languages spikes and keeps rising past a certain point, puberty and the early teen years also have a strong calcifying effect on mentality - and while it's sometimes possible to pry those windows back open, it's usually in response to something so traumatic that it's left a permanent schism in a persons thought process, which serves as the lever to do so, and is often not worth it if they have achieved passable functionality since the act of prying the window back open is horribly traumatic in and of itself.
While it's not really, yanno.. "never", it's close enough for most folk to be regarded as such.
Doc Perry's work tends to focus on the windows of early development and would have more information on this topic at that point - my own work tends toward the latter windows where the "final polish" goes on someones mentality before it's all locked into place and hardened.

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But, nevertheless I think it's possible (for those with reasonably intact neurology, as most of us are here) to change yourself by changing the balance of your responses and reactions from trauma-based ones to positive ones.

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Reasonably intact neurology - yes, not easy, but entirely possible.
The hard part is when the trauma-based experiences have occured early enough to "stick" in very low levels like motor memory or the autonomous core/stem responses, that's almost unfixable, but in very rare cases retrainable.
(and I highly suspect the flaws that cause Tourettes reside there)
The later the trauma comes, the less "deep" into the brains development it lingers, and is as such easier to overcome and deal with.
Radical change is fairly rare, cause some wounds never do heal, and some take so much time to cure that our current system is uninterested and chooses to just slap a symptom-treatment band-aid on it for economy of effort.
Reason I detail this - is that I have stong empirical evidence that not only is it possible for those with an intact neurology, it's actually possibly although not so easy, for those with a damaged one, with the assistance of a "re-balancing" effort aided by a safe, predictable, structured environment that doesn't feed the inputs that screwed it up in the first place.
Perry does touch on this in some places himself, the importance of that environment to rebalance a screwed up HPA response system.

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It's always possible to stunt someone achieving their potential as a person. But it's impossible to instill something that isn't there.

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Yes, sadly, which is why not all people can be... "repaired", cause there's nothing that was once there to repair.
That's also one of our Shadow Questions.
"Have you ever known love ?"

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If you make the effort to reawaken that child and parent it in the way it should have been parented, that self can become the new you. And by that I mean rediscover those qualities and then find a way to act on them as an adult.

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Truth is, doll, that's the ONLY way some of these folk will ever get any better, and one reason we try so hard to get to them when they've not forgotten who or where

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And we need to stop rehearsing pain and loss, and start rehearsing a way to move forward.

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Good words to live by.

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You say what we tell ourselves, about ourselves, is very important, and this I will not deny, but here it a matter for you to invest a little thought in when you have the time. Why then, do I take such great pains to express that I am not noble, decent, or even a very nice person at all ?

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I'm sure I can't figure it out but maybe Rue can.


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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Originally posted by citizen:
I think it was earlier in this thread that I original asked, but could you provide any examples of purely capitalist economies?

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Sorry it took me a while to figure out why you kept asking this - in response to my request for an exanple of an exemplary, 'pure' socialist state?

I suppose 'pure' isn't necessary, I just wanted an example of a success story that was fundamentally socialist in its economy - its industry predominantly collectively owned.

In response to your question I can list several fundamentally capitalist economies that are successes, and maybe you can inform me if they're 'pure'.

Your example Denmark, has a capitalist economy, regardez:

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Denmark, with a free market capitalist economy, and a large welfare state...

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark

I think wikipedia is going off the dictionary definition of capitalism like me; essentially, an economic system whereby the means of production is privately owned.

As for your argument that counts social welfare spending as part of an economic system - because (correct me if i'm wrong) it impacts the population who then work in the system. Let me ask: is all politics socialism? Because all politics not just welfare spending, exists to impact the population - and therefore is impacting the workforce of the economy.

Is for example a policy of zero-tolerance policing in a city to tackle rampant crime rates and better establish the rule of law an economic policy, because it affects the society and thereby the workforce and the economy?

If a government launches a war for foreign oil, to keep oil prices cheap for the population at home - this affects the workforce
and their performance in the economy. This means that the policy of imperialism by your argument is part of a country's economic system - socialism?

Please explain what national policies (as well as the welfare state), should be considered part of a country's economic system, and why.


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Originally posted by SignyM:
Your assumption works only if there is a shortage of labor, which makes the laborer "worth" something. But as long as there are people desperate to work for a pittance under any circumstances, it makes more financial sense just to burn though the population and toss 'em out when they're used up.

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There's a demand for labour and a finite supply (which can be exhausted), so that means it is automatically worth something. And worth more if the labour required is skilled, etc. Circumstances where it is profitable to burn through labour would be exceptional (difficult to imagine in fact), and it seems strange to define an economic model as only workable in contrived exceptional cirucmstances...

Even paying starvation wages to your workforce so that they only starve slowly is still taking care of them to an extent, and so doesn't qualify as 'pure' capitalism by your current definition... Which I'm still waiting for you to cite btw - should be an interesting dictionary I feel.

Or should we just agree that there isn't anything after all 'in capitalism' to preclude taking care of your workforce?

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There's a demand for labour and a finite supply (which can be exhausted), so that means it is automatically worth something. And worth more if the labour required is skilled, etc. Circumstances where it is profitable to burn through labour would be exceptional (difficult to imagine in fact), and it seems strange to define an economic model as only workable in contrived exceptional cirucmstances...

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Except that it occurs all the time, all over the world: most of Southeast Asia,, the Marianas, virtually all of South and Central America... and back though history to the sweatshops of immigrant America and Victorian England. So how can you claim that burning through a population only occurs under contrived, exceptional circumstances when it seems to be the rule rather than the exception?

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Why then, do I take such great pains to express that I am not noble, decent, or even a very nice person at all ?

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Keeps you on your toes. People who think they're generally the good guy, the noble and decent hero, can so often be found persecuting others, because they're noble and decent so their acts are justified as serving a higher and better purpose.

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Originally posted by kpo:
Sorry it took me a while to figure out why you kept asking this - in response to my request for an exanple of an exemplary, 'pure' socialist state?

I suppose 'pure' isn't necessary, I just wanted an example of a success story that was fundamentally socialist in its economy - its industry predominantly collectively owned.

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Seems a very unfair restriction to place on me, especially since you're not content to adhere to it yourself. I'm not allowed to discuss the positive merits of Socialist Social programs on an economy, but you are allowed to describe them as nothing more than a drag on the well functioning capitalist economy? I can see the rhetorical allure for you, but I don't see what is in it for me.

You brought in socialist socail programs into the argument, not me. It was you who said they have an net negative impact, I merely pointed out that the evidence is quite the opposite, that countries with more socialist social programs have better performing economies. Now you seem to want to restrict it to only the socialist economic policies?

I'm just saying that it seems unfair that you're willing to discuss socialist social policy impact on economies, right up until the evidence turns against you.

At any rate, a socialism is a very broad subject, encompassing some forms of public ownership, but those are a sub-set of socialism, not the whole thing. Socialism != Communism. Socialist economic policies would be market regulations. Regulations are a socialist economic policy, not a capitalist one. To that end I'll give you a partially socalist economy:
The United States. It has market regulations, enacted by a central state authority, the government. Denmark counts there as well. In fact there are no economies that I can think of, that don't have some form of market regulation, thus socialism.

All major economies are mixed economies, termed by wikipedia as:

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A mixed economy is an economic system that incorporates a mixture of private and government ownership or control, or a mixture of capitalism and socialism.

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(emphasis added)

So there you go, my example of any successful economies that include socialist elements, are all of them.

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I think wikipedia is going off the dictionary definition of capitalism like me; essentially, an economic system whereby the means of production is privately owned.

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There's a lot more to the definition than that. There's many different types of economies, and most of them have primarilly private ownership of production. Denmarks direct economic policy is mostly capitalist, but it's also a mixed economy so it does, in fact include socialist aspects. But again, it was you who brought socialist social programs into consideration in economics, not me.

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As for your argument that counts social welfare spending as part of an economic system - because (correct me if i'm wrong) it impacts the population who then work in the system. Let me ask: is all politics socialism? Because all politics not just welfare spending, exists to impact the population - and therefore is impacting the workforce of the economy.

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It was a counter-argument to YOUR argument bringing in welfare spending as a drag factor on an economic system. If you want me to ignore the positive aspects on the economy, YOU have to ignore any negative ones, or you're just framing the debate, and using sophistry. So let me ask YOU that question. Is all spending, government or private economic policy?

It was your argument that social programs affect the economy, I just ran with it.

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Is for example a policy of zero-tolerance policing in a city to tackle rampant crime rates and better establish the rule of law an economic policy, because it affects the society and thereby the workforce and the economy?

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No, but wanting to now restrict it to direct economic policy now the evidence has turned against you, is sophistry.

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If a government launches a war for foreign oil,

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