Yup. “Capitalism” has become a punching bag for people who are frustrated about some form of government protectionism or lack of interventionism. If you ask someone to define it, you’ll get wildly different answers based on whatever they’re frustrated by. The real problem is cronyism, where the “haves” get special treatment from those in power so both sides benefit.
Example w/ Musk and Trump
As an example, look at Elon Musk buddying up to Trump. There are two explanations (probably more) here:
Musk actually thinks Trump is the best thing since sliced bread
Musk wants protectionism in the form of more EV tariffs, which will absolutely benefit his cash cow, Tesla
This all happens under “capitalism” because Musk is motivated to get more capital, but it’s happening through government, which ends up essentially as a government subsidy of Tesla (and other domestic EVs) using taxpayer dollars (in this case tariffs). It’s not a direct handover of cash, but when your foreign competition needs to charge twice as much as they normally would, there’s less motivation for your company to drop prices.
Capitalism is intended to be a system where the market is largely separate from the government, but everything is co-mingled and people point to the knotted mess as “capitalism,” when really it’s a mess of different political ideologies all messing with market forces. What we actually need is for more capitalism, as in less government interference w/ the market, so market forces can actually fix things.
Potential solutions to better use market forces
This means:
less protection for corporations - rich people using tactical bankruptcies indicates a broken system
fewer regulations, but higher penalties - regulations reduce the penalties for bad action to a fine, we need lawsuits and jail time
fairer tax system - we currently reward capital gains far more than earned income, we exclude a significant amount of inheritance from taxation, and we have structures (trusts and whatnot) to further protect money from taxation; the tax system should be drastically simplified to reduce abuse
enforce anti-trust more consistently and frequently
There’s certainly more we could do, but the above should significantly help correct the major problems we see today. Right now, it takes a massive scandal for a wealthy person or very large business to fail, and the above would dramatically reduce the scandal needed to cause one to fail.
“More capitalism” doesn’t mean screwing over the poor either. In fact, if you look at the Nordic countries, they’re actually more capitalist than the US ins many ways, and they have solid social programs. The difference is that there are clearer boundaries between government and the market, so you don’t end up with as much weird “collaboration” between companies and the government.
I personally believe in UBI/NIT (Universal Basic Income/Negative Income Tax) instead of most welfare programs (perhaps keep Medicare/Medicaid, but replace Social Security, food/housing assistance, etc) to minimize the disruption of natural market forces. That would be a very capitalist-friendly solution where the government and the market stay in their own lanes.
It’s basically UBI, but with income caps. So if you make above a certain threshold, your benefits reduce and completely disappear by a second threshold.
Thats a pretty thorough reply which gives some further insight into the issues we’re facing. While the ideas certainly makes sense in a vacuum (especially with governments and markets staying in their lane), there is a major issue in that the very politicians managing the government would have a pretty big conflict of interest which would prevent the sort of reforms necessary, as most politicians would fall under one or more of the following:
They own/run businesses from prior to running for a political position- there’s always going to be a subconscious bias towards playing favours especially as they can go back to said business if they don’t last a term
They have a stake in the businesses that are in the free market
They could be receiving gifts and/or contributions from businesses that have a vested interest in having a politician that aligns with the business’ political agenda, including having a position for a politician if they lose a re-election bid
It’s really difficult to see how the government can be separated from the free market if the politicians are closely involved with the businesses, which can later be deemed as “too big to fail”.
Yeah, we need a lot of reforms to fix underlying problems that get in the way of progress. Some things that I think can help:
voting reform - STAR, approval, or even ranked choice voting to better reflect the will of the people
electoral reform - some solution to gerrymandering, either algorithmic redistricting or (my preference) proportional representation
reduce obstructionism - in the US, I’d prefer for the House to pass laws, and for the Senate to ratify them with a high vote tally (say, 60% to block a piece of legislation)
These are large shifts in how governments are organized, and potentially could be passed through large-scale public protests, like the Civil Rights Movement in the US. The public is incredibly hard to motivate, so organizers need to be really careful about which causes they push for. My preference is the second, because I think it has the best chance of creating positive, long-term change, and it’s something that’s pretty hard for politicians to competently argue against.
Your reforms sound good, but aren’t pragmatic. Today’s system requires you to have lobbyists to push an agenda through. Who is going to fund the lobbyists to make these reforms happen.
Also, even in an ideal capitalism, there is still an injustice at the heart of the system. The employer-employee contract violates the tenet of legal and de facto responsibility matching. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, but employer is held solely legally responsible.
My issue with this line of reasoning is that it largely ignores risk. The risk an employee takes is the risk of missing future wages if the venture fails, but they have no risk of losing past wages. The risk an employer takes is loss of invested capital and thus loss of past wages and the ability to continue the venture.
The problem, IMO, is that we’ve overly protected the employer so their risk is mitigated, but we have done little to protect the employee. Likewise, wages can become uncompetitive because our legal system tends to benefit larger companies over smaller companies, so it becomes incredibly difficult to unseat a dominant company, even if your product is better (large company can waste smaller companies’ capital with frivolous lawsuits and unnecessary red tape).
That said, if employees want to take on the risk an employer takes on, they can either become an employer themselves (i.e. start a business) or form a co-op with other workers. However, many are uncomfortable with taking on that risk, so they apply for jobs instead of creating their own.
If we go with a socialist system, we’ll still have employers and employees, but we’ll just socialize the risk and dilute the profit motive, which I think will stifle productivity. Why work hard if the potential upside to you for outperformance is small? Let’s say you’re in a co-op with 9 other people with equal split of profits and you’re twice as productive, you’ll only see 1/10 of that come back to you. Why do that when you could be the employer and see a much larger share of the profits?
The issue here isn’t with capitalism as an idea, but that we’ve allowed such a disparity between productive work and profits, and I think the reason for that is government protectionism, not capitalism.
Today’s system requires you to have lobbyists
Exactly, the problem isn’t capitalism, but government. If we swap capitalism for socialism but leave the government structure in place, we’ll have the same problem. If you think shareholders are bad, you won’t want to see what happens when politicians run businesses…
Creating or joining a worker coop is a much more actionable political step that someone could take then completely transforming the government. If the worker coop movement grows big enough, it could acquire the economic power to purchase it own lobbyists to influence the political process to hopefully pass those reforms
3/5
The idea that the employer is production’s whole result’s just appropriator due to the risk they bear is tautological and circular reasoning. Risk, in this case, refers to bearing the liabilities for used-up inputs, which is production’s whole result’s negative component. It ignores the joint de facto responsibility of workers in the firm for using up inputs to produce. By the norm of legal and de facto responsibility matching, workers should get the whole result of production
It is irrelevant that some workers don’t want to be held responsible for the positive and negative results of their actions (the whole result of production). Responsibility can’t be transferred even with consent. If an employer-employee cooperate to commit a crime, both are responsible. This argument is establishes an inalienable right i.e. a right that can’t be given up or transferred even with consent like political voting rights today
If an employer-employee cooperate to commit a crime, both are responsible
Sure, if they’re both aware of and complicit in committing the crime. But in most cases, the employee is unaware of the crime, or commits it under duress. If the employer orders the employee to commit the crime as part of their job, the employer should take the larger (if not total) share of the consequences due to the power dynamic.
A huge part of prosecuting a crime is establishing motive, and duress should move most, if not all, of the guilt onto the employer.
A group of people is de facto responsible for a result if it is a purposeful result of their intentional joint actions. The pure application of the norm that legal and de facto responsibility match is to deliberate actions. The workers joint actions that use up inputs to produce outputs are planned and deliberate. They meet the criteria for being premeditated. The workers are not under duress in normal work, and consent to the employer-employee contract.
If a worker voluntarily commits a crime for their employer, that is still inalienably their decision. Yes, the employer told them to do it, and that gave them a reason to do it, but having a reason doesn’t absolve them of guilt or responsibility for their actions
Worker coops can have managers. Managers’ interests can be aligned with the long term interests of the firm by giving them non-voting preferred shares as part of their compensation. Managers will make sure workers they are managing perform. The difference is that these managers are ultimately accountable to the entire body of workers and are thus their delegates.
Profits/wages don’t have to be divided equally among workers.
I’m going to use multiple toots since I’m on Mastodon
Managers’ interests can be aligned with the long term interests of the firm by giving them non-voting preferred shares as part of their compensation.
It really depends on the specific form of socialism. If we look at the most influential forms (say, USSR or China), the decision makers are politicians, so they’re more motivated by power and influence than the good of the whole.
IMO, socialism can work if it’s practiced by smaller orgs and not as a government structure. So unions and co-ops, not planned economies.
I’m not a socialist because I think markets are useful and haven’t seen a planned economy proposal that seemed plausible. Worker co-ops and unions aren’t socialism in 20th century sense because they are technically compatible with markets and private property.
An economic democracy is a market economy where all firms are worker co-ops, so I was speaking about managers in a worker co-op
The empirical evidence I have seen on worker coops and employee-owned companies seems to suggest that worker-run companies are slightly more productive.
I oppose socialism as I think markets are useful. I advocate economic democracy
In an economic democracy, the employer-employee contract is abolished, so workers automatically legally get voting rights over management upon joining a firm.
Yup. “Capitalism” has become a punching bag for people who are frustrated about some form of government protectionism or lack of interventionism. If you ask someone to define it, you’ll get wildly different answers based on whatever they’re frustrated by. The real problem is cronyism, where the “haves” get special treatment from those in power so both sides benefit.
Example w/ Musk and Trump
As an example, look at Elon Musk buddying up to Trump. There are two explanations (probably more) here:
This all happens under “capitalism” because Musk is motivated to get more capital, but it’s happening through government, which ends up essentially as a government subsidy of Tesla (and other domestic EVs) using taxpayer dollars (in this case tariffs). It’s not a direct handover of cash, but when your foreign competition needs to charge twice as much as they normally would, there’s less motivation for your company to drop prices.
Capitalism is intended to be a system where the market is largely separate from the government, but everything is co-mingled and people point to the knotted mess as “capitalism,” when really it’s a mess of different political ideologies all messing with market forces. What we actually need is for more capitalism, as in less government interference w/ the market, so market forces can actually fix things.
Potential solutions to better use market forces
This means:
There’s certainly more we could do, but the above should significantly help correct the major problems we see today. Right now, it takes a massive scandal for a wealthy person or very large business to fail, and the above would dramatically reduce the scandal needed to cause one to fail.
“More capitalism” doesn’t mean screwing over the poor either. In fact, if you look at the Nordic countries, they’re actually more capitalist than the US ins many ways, and they have solid social programs. The difference is that there are clearer boundaries between government and the market, so you don’t end up with as much weird “collaboration” between companies and the government.
I personally believe in UBI/NIT (Universal Basic Income/Negative Income Tax) instead of most welfare programs (perhaps keep Medicare/Medicaid, but replace Social Security, food/housing assistance, etc) to minimize the disruption of natural market forces. That would be a very capitalist-friendly solution where the government and the market stay in their own lanes.
First time hearing negative income tax but sounds like an idea i had after a nice walk after the edible kicked in lol
It’s basically UBI, but with income caps. So if you make above a certain threshold, your benefits reduce and completely disappear by a second threshold.
Milton Friedman was a pretty notable supporter.
Thats a pretty thorough reply which gives some further insight into the issues we’re facing. While the ideas certainly makes sense in a vacuum (especially with governments and markets staying in their lane), there is a major issue in that the very politicians managing the government would have a pretty big conflict of interest which would prevent the sort of reforms necessary, as most politicians would fall under one or more of the following:
It’s really difficult to see how the government can be separated from the free market if the politicians are closely involved with the businesses, which can later be deemed as “too big to fail”.
Yeah, we need a lot of reforms to fix underlying problems that get in the way of progress. Some things that I think can help:
These are large shifts in how governments are organized, and potentially could be passed through large-scale public protests, like the Civil Rights Movement in the US. The public is incredibly hard to motivate, so organizers need to be really careful about which causes they push for. My preference is the second, because I think it has the best chance of creating positive, long-term change, and it’s something that’s pretty hard for politicians to competently argue against.
Your reforms sound good, but aren’t pragmatic. Today’s system requires you to have lobbyists to push an agenda through. Who is going to fund the lobbyists to make these reforms happen.
Also, even in an ideal capitalism, there is still an injustice at the heart of the system. The employer-employee contract violates the tenet of legal and de facto responsibility matching. The workers are jointly de facto responsible for production, but employer is held solely legally responsible.
@technology
My issue with this line of reasoning is that it largely ignores risk. The risk an employee takes is the risk of missing future wages if the venture fails, but they have no risk of losing past wages. The risk an employer takes is loss of invested capital and thus loss of past wages and the ability to continue the venture.
The problem, IMO, is that we’ve overly protected the employer so their risk is mitigated, but we have done little to protect the employee. Likewise, wages can become uncompetitive because our legal system tends to benefit larger companies over smaller companies, so it becomes incredibly difficult to unseat a dominant company, even if your product is better (large company can waste smaller companies’ capital with frivolous lawsuits and unnecessary red tape).
That said, if employees want to take on the risk an employer takes on, they can either become an employer themselves (i.e. start a business) or form a co-op with other workers. However, many are uncomfortable with taking on that risk, so they apply for jobs instead of creating their own.
If we go with a socialist system, we’ll still have employers and employees, but we’ll just socialize the risk and dilute the profit motive, which I think will stifle productivity. Why work hard if the potential upside to you for outperformance is small? Let’s say you’re in a co-op with 9 other people with equal split of profits and you’re twice as productive, you’ll only see 1/10 of that come back to you. Why do that when you could be the employer and see a much larger share of the profits?
The issue here isn’t with capitalism as an idea, but that we’ve allowed such a disparity between productive work and profits, and I think the reason for that is government protectionism, not capitalism.
Exactly, the problem isn’t capitalism, but government. If we swap capitalism for socialism but leave the government structure in place, we’ll have the same problem. If you think shareholders are bad, you won’t want to see what happens when politicians run businesses…
5/5
Creating or joining a worker coop is a much more actionable political step that someone could take then completely transforming the government. If the worker coop movement grows big enough, it could acquire the economic power to purchase it own lobbyists to influence the political process to hopefully pass those reforms
3/5
The idea that the employer is production’s whole result’s just appropriator due to the risk they bear is tautological and circular reasoning. Risk, in this case, refers to bearing the liabilities for used-up inputs, which is production’s whole result’s negative component. It ignores the joint de facto responsibility of workers in the firm for using up inputs to produce. By the norm of legal and de facto responsibility matching, workers should get the whole result of production
4/5
It is irrelevant that some workers don’t want to be held responsible for the positive and negative results of their actions (the whole result of production). Responsibility can’t be transferred even with consent. If an employer-employee cooperate to commit a crime, both are responsible. This argument is establishes an inalienable right i.e. a right that can’t be given up or transferred even with consent like political voting rights today
Sure, if they’re both aware of and complicit in committing the crime. But in most cases, the employee is unaware of the crime, or commits it under duress. If the employer orders the employee to commit the crime as part of their job, the employer should take the larger (if not total) share of the consequences due to the power dynamic.
A huge part of prosecuting a crime is establishing motive, and duress should move most, if not all, of the guilt onto the employer.
1/2
A group of people is de facto responsible for a result if it is a purposeful result of their intentional joint actions. The pure application of the norm that legal and de facto responsibility match is to deliberate actions. The workers joint actions that use up inputs to produce outputs are planned and deliberate. They meet the criteria for being premeditated. The workers are not under duress in normal work, and consent to the employer-employee contract.
@technology
2/2
If a worker voluntarily commits a crime for their employer, that is still inalienably their decision. Yes, the employer told them to do it, and that gave them a reason to do it, but having a reason doesn’t absolve them of guilt or responsibility for their actions
@technology
1/5
Worker coops can have managers. Managers’ interests can be aligned with the long term interests of the firm by giving them non-voting preferred shares as part of their compensation. Managers will make sure workers they are managing perform. The difference is that these managers are ultimately accountable to the entire body of workers and are thus their delegates.
Profits/wages don’t have to be divided equally among workers.
I’m going to use multiple toots since I’m on Mastodon
It really depends on the specific form of socialism. If we look at the most influential forms (say, USSR or China), the decision makers are politicians, so they’re more motivated by power and influence than the good of the whole.
IMO, socialism can work if it’s practiced by smaller orgs and not as a government structure. So unions and co-ops, not planned economies.
I’m not a socialist because I think markets are useful and haven’t seen a planned economy proposal that seemed plausible. Worker co-ops and unions aren’t socialism in 20th century sense because they are technically compatible with markets and private property.
An economic democracy is a market economy where all firms are worker co-ops, so I was speaking about managers in a worker co-op
@technology
2/5
The empirical evidence I have seen on worker coops and employee-owned companies seems to suggest that worker-run companies are slightly more productive.
I oppose socialism as I think markets are useful. I advocate economic democracy
In an economic democracy, the employer-employee contract is abolished, so workers automatically legally get voting rights over management upon joining a firm.
My understanding is that companies run by their founders are the most productive. Once that’s handed off, motives change.
I’d like to see the research you’ve found though.
I’ll also have to read more about economic democracy, because I’m not familiar with it.