OK NOW ITS TIME
Member
The conversation between your brother and you is mind tingeling Thank You.....
The conversation between your brother and you is mind tingeling Thank You.....
Perhaps another vein to explore is the coinsiding existence of capitalism within a communistic society. Although it sounds counter-intuitive to think the two could co-exist, I think that is what we are finding in China right now. In many respects I think they are running into the same problems and I think the problem began when the regained control of Hong Kong. Although the concepts of capitalism were despised, the fruits certainly were tasty.
But should you want to peruse the subject further, C.S. Lewis in his excellent text on his rational conversion to Christianity (Mere Christianity), was similarly perplexed in that apparently the major religions of the world warn (perhaps forbid?) the practice of lending for profit, which is indeed capitalism at it's core. I concur with others that the conversation is fascinating and when continued could go at the same off on 1000 different tangents only to return to th original question...only to start down yet another path.
Gary comes from a law and theologian background so his opinion is shaped more along the lines of the moral question. I find that just about everyone regardless of economic belief accepts some manner of gov't oversight or action in the economy and it's most often to maintain some measure of balance of right and wrong. Protect against fraud and unwarranted aggressions. I see that as a moral position and not as a matter of economic science. Again, as you rightly pointed out, how many goat trails do we have here? Can any of us even collectively count that high as in not enough fingers and toes.
I liked your point about the larger universe or the smaller mirco-verse and in the case of the latter, we can effect it eg intervention but left to it's own, it does self organize and it tends to self cleanse and self repair itself. It's lessons of sustainability and best allocations of resources are worthwhile to consider. If it's micro world is externally intervened in, there is an explosive reaction of growth but then the growth faulters unless intervened again. At some point, all intervention fails because the pure scale at which it exists is now beyond support and the collaspe is far, far worse that it would be had no intervention ever taken place.
Obviously the larger universe I doubt we could effect at all but the same is still true. It also self organizes along certain natural law lines but as you correctly pointed out, the paths are numerous and unlimited. Intervene here and the unforeseen gravitational forces might bring on unintended consequences or a 2nd earth might move in next door. And I'm betting the former would be the most likely result. We may not understand all the laws that govern such actions but on a general point, they do seem to always follow a consistant pathway. Night sky looks pretty much the same night after night in our lifespan. Why don't we as a people follow such consistant path?
Whether capitalism and democracy can work together as good as that question is, a larger question to me is can real democracy work at all where total transparency in the public sphere is so lacking? Could a lack of transparency or rather full disclosure of information cause wrong choices and thus benefit those who would use capitalism for other means? Is capitalism itself the evil or does it's mixture with the state produce those results? Again, we're right back to numerous choices and numerous perspectives or as you said:
But then just thinking about it is sometimes the reason for the journey to begin with!
Interesting topic ... I may not shun Current Events like the plague if you are posting.
I'm a strong individualist (whatever that may be) and so I tend to think of a holistic system's impact on the individual.
The government's role tends to be for the common good which means rules and regulations and their effects tend towards a lower overall effect and outcome but a higher mean for the individuals with a tendency towards a normal bell curve for distribution of individual wealth.
Capitalism/Free Market tends to produce a higher overall outcome but a lower mean for the individual and a flatter distribution to the lower and higher points along the x-axis for the distribution of individual wealth.
The balance between these two competing influences in our society seems to be what the fuss is all about ... hopefully neither side ever wins.
" A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage."
Sir Alex Fraser Tytler ( 1742-1813 )
Scottish jurist and historian
There is certainly something to be considered in how capitalism and communism can coexist. In some sense, I feel like China was sort of forced into it; the majority of wealth and power in the world had become concentrated in the West and there was very little possibility (as I see it anyway, which is perhaps not saying much) of getting a real economy going without engaging the rest of the world - and that meant opening up China to foreign investment.
Also, the recognition that China had a labor force that surpassed almost any other in the world probably didn't hurt - seeing how NAFTA and other treaties had moved production from high-cost labor locations to low-cost labor locations, it stands to reason that at some point some enterprising individual in China said "We should try that; our cost of living is so low we can produce cheaper than almost anyone else."
That realization was perhaps a result of institutional changes post-Mao, as implemented by Deng Xiaoping, although who can say.
I might also add that I think (I stress that part), even though there is a lot of China-phobia around the world today, the government has a deal with the people - your standard of living will go up, and we get to stay in power. If the economy over there ever started to really shrink, there is a real possibility of social upheaval.
Agreed; if I understand you correctly, I think the Soviet economy would be a good example of this - centrally planned and directed, it became a sort of monstrous zombie economy that was unable (or not allowed, which is effectively the same thing) to act according to certain "natural" laws.
Again, agreed; the problem with intervention in any system is that the system does not care about intentions, good or bad; I would defer to Chaos theory in this regard, of which I have no in-depth understanding, but enough to say that I think the point stands, at least in a general sense - I wouldn't consider a large economy to be totally deterministic, for example.
On the other hand, though, part of the "system" that is our political and economic landscape is the pressure of the people - and, sad to say, the people often demand empty gestures and actions to assuage their own insecurity about the impotency of government. That is to say, giving the government the benefit of the doubt and suggesting that they know intervention has unforeseen consequences, they are still under enormous public pressure to do at least something. This might not be the fundamental cause of the arrogance of government intervention, but it certainly doesn't help matters.
It certainly makes sense (to me, at least) that if the people surrender their right/ability to know what is going on, they have little ability to defend themselves from the powers that be. As an aside, to me that is what is meant by the phrase "information is power."
sorta like when two Mets fans get together....lolIt's as if those two are the only ones in the room...
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The Soviet Union and it's most infamous 5 and 10 year plans would be a good example but let's not ignore our nation's own efforts at such modeling. We sugar coat our own efforts to hide the fact we do the very same thing but we call them budgets. Is extracting out wealth from one economic sector in the form of taxation to then be redistributed into another sector via tax cuts and credits really any different from actually owning all mean of production? If the end result is to plan and control the outcome, how is it different? And how is it we demand gov't to give us jobs any different from what the average Soviet citizen might have done in bad times and yet we're the capitalist nation? Maybe the average American really does know their station in life after all.
If the old Soviet Union became a zombie (excellent illustration on your part) model using planning models, what are we becoming using large national centered budgets? Marx said that capitalism ultimately on it's own ends in socialism and so far in this area he does seem to be batting 1k! Economist Joseph Schumpeter also agreed although Schumpeter wasn't looking for the same outcome or reasons as Marx. Schumpeter also had some interesting remarks on democracy in light of capitalism too if you wanted to look that up sometime.
It's as if those two are the only ones in the room...
Feel free to add your own thoughts; there is no monopoly on wisdom here.
Truer words were never spoken.there is no monopoly on wisdom here.
I find this rather provoking, considering some of my thoughts as of late (the past months or so). I have been reconsidering how I view the purpose of federal taxes; more specifically, I've been thinking about the dual meanings of taxation. Which is to say that in theory, taxes provide revenue and all that of the conventional wisdom; however, operationally speaking (or, in practice, which is somewhat clearer), federal governments have unlimited funds available to them - at which point, taxes are no longer required to generate revenue.
I've been pondering that taxes then become a form of regulation, which the federal government can use to throttle different sectors of the economy. A sector in a slump (e.g. manufacturing) could be given large tax incentives to relocate/start anew in this country, while firmly established sectors (e.g. financial firms) could be taxed at "normal" rates (relative to the rest of the economy).
Several problems with this approach - fundamentally, though, if money was really infinite then there arises an issue with inflation as viewed in the context of the quantity of money.
I hasten to add that these thoughts are limited to federal taxation, as state/municipal taxation is used for revenue.
I ran across Schumpeter a day or so ago when solidifying my thoughts in some earlier posts, although probably did not give him the proper amount of attention; I may revisit it today.
The question is, who has the representatives ear?Definitions of Public Policy and the Law
In any society, governmental entities enact laws, make policies, and allocate resources. This is true at all levels. Public policy can be generally defined as a system of laws, regulatory measures, courses of action, and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by a governmental entity or its representatives.
TREASURY DEPARTMENT
Washington
(The following address by Roy Blough, Director of the
Division of Tax Research Treasury Department. was
delivered before the Tax Institute, New York on
February 7, 1944.)
THE INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX AS A METHOD OF
INFLATION CONTROL
capitalism and democracy are competing systems
I agree that taxation acts as a throttle but even more to the point, acts as a method of redistribution. Our central gov't creates budgets and in the background of these budgets are the same mechanisms of central planning and thus re-allocation of resources not from natural market forces but in many cases in spite of are required in order to achieve an end result. That end result is not always for the noble benefit of society but rather to the benefit of the privileged and connected closely aligned to policy makers. This from my POV is where capitalism and free market or laissez faire inhabit very opposite ends of the economic spectrum. The former IMO is a purely statist model and the latter of a non-statist or no-statist model.
Problem is this view conflicts totally with the 2 party state ideal of capitalism as good cop/bad cop. One side sez capitalism is a blessing and the other sez it's a curse while neither side realizes capitalism is in truth promoting both points of view in order to benefit itself. We hear time after time Obamacare is socialist and yet who here besides myself has looked at the 5 year stock chart for United HealthCare Group for example? I guess since Obama came into office, United Healthcare's stock has tanked, about to close the doors in the face of pure socialism but yet since Obama took office, the company stock has nearly tripled and since Obamacare was signed into law in May 2010' it's nearly doubled. Hell, if socialism is that good for United Healthcare's Stock, bring it own for all the rest right? Not only does the "Obama is a socialist" crowd have a problem in the case of United Healthcare, so to do the folks who say Obama is going to protect us from the greedy corporations. When are we going to stop eating the blue pills like candy?
And then we have another word that enters the fray and that is "public policy" which is another central planning ideal IMO. A website devoted to opposing domestic violence against women I thought gave a pretty good general defintion to what public policy is:
Definitions of Public Policy and the Law
In any society, governmental entities enact laws, make policies, and allocate resources. This is true at all levels. Public policy can be generally defined as a system of laws, regulatory measures, courses of action, and funding priorities concerning a given topic promulgated by a governmental entity or its representatives.
The question is, who has the representatives ear?
Public policy is just more Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann PR term to concoct a word change that hides what is really central planning. Propaganda is still propaganda and we need to understand that it's not required to have a Hitler or Stalin present in order to see it's effects. In fact, Hitler got his propaganda model from a purely American source. Funny how the elements of the American political left and political right scream about the media and they both are correct and yet they stay divided because they've been conditioned to do so in the face of a common foe. United We Stand, Divided We ....?
But one other area that taxation comes into play is as a mechanism to harvest out excess dollars to control inflation. I realize that statement may seem as outlandish as little green men and I understand that but if one were to understand the nature of money creation in a fractional reserve system by the central bank, great start there is the Fed's own Modern Money Mechanics, it might begin a process of understanding that at the least, this might be plausible. And this idea has not been excluded at all from being visited by gov't itself and it's discussion as relates to public policy. Consider this:
Here's the address I first ran across this speech in the 1980's in an IRS archive and thank god someone placed it on the internet. I'm also not suggesting that the income tax's exclusive use is inflation control but it is a part of the larger economic policy IMO. Interesting enough it also speaks to your idea of taxation not needed to finance gov't but what the resulting effects might be if we took that approach.
A less scrupulous individual might read that and say "See! The Man wants everyone to be poor." I don't believe this is what Mr. Blough was driving at, but again, it struck me for that reason.Admitting that inflationary pressure would be less if more citizens were so poor that they could not reach this minimum standard, it is still appropriate that pressure to reduce spending should be applied only to the excess over minimum standard.
And in discussing capitalism as an economic model and democracy as a political model I found this 25 minute video interview of interest. The interview is with 2 evolutionary psychologists and comparing tribal society man evolving into market economic man and yet how tribal instincts play out in this process. This also reminded me of a piece from Harvard Business Review circa 1998' and How We Are Hardwired in Human Behavior.
Both I think are worthy of note and the latter also has much to say as to workplace conditions as a broader context addition to the original point of this thread. As to what purpose taxation serves, again full transparency to the public in order to have a fully informed voter is a must and I would thus ask, where is the mainstream media in all of this? The info's not secret at all so why hasn't the MSM covered these issues before? Forget the illusions of political sides in the case of the media but rather ask the question why have they all been silent?
It wasn't meant as a slam by any means--the two of you are simply at another level all together.
I didn't take it as a slam; you are an intelligent person, as are others - I wish everyone would chime in with thoughts. Frankly, I crave intelligent discussion here (read: online; not specific to BC) because it is so hard to find it in that overrated place called "the real world."
I just read post #36. It is 7:19am, I have had my two cups of coffee, and have no idea how you can produce such indepth dialogue at this early hour and wonder why someone such as yourself is loading packages on to a pkg car. You, sir, are clearly underemployed.
I aspire to be the CEO of UPS one day; I need to pay my dues before I make the move into management.