by gg3 » Mon 07 Mar 2005, 06:04:23
Bart: or we could end up going for Fascism.
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As MonteQuest well pointed out, capitalism is not identical with free enterprise. You can have a perfectly successful and profitable business that is stable for decades, but in capitalist terms it's a failure because it does not generate sufficient surplus (40% ROE) to attract investors.
Free enterprise means just that: the freedom to start and operate an enterprise as you choose.
No one in their right mind nowadays believes that this is an inherent evil, or that all productive enterprises should be owned by the state or by state-sanctioned collectives, or that the personal possessions of individuals should be confiscated or otherwise collectivized. In fact those positions are straw-men, and cheap substitutes for a reasoned arguement, and they should simply be ignored.
Capitalism is one particular subset of free enterprise, in which entrepreneurs attract outside capital and provide a return on that investment. In the abstract this isn't a problem. In practice it leads to the creation of vast entites whose actions have global impacts, and which are able to externalize costs (such as ecological damage and resource depletion) with virtually no accountability.
In libertarian terms the existence of "legal persons" (incorporated entities) with powers vastly exceeding those of any combination of real persons, corrupts both the market and the political process and must therefore be strictly limited.
If someone wants to argue in favor of the proposition that para-statal behemoths should be able to continue to foist externalized costs upon the general public, let's have at it.
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Wealth vs. excess:
In the abstract there's no problem with individuals having vast personal wealth far beyond their actual needs.
In practice there are two fatal flaws.
One is the creation of aristocracy. The entire premise of our republic was that power is evil, power corrupts, and therefore power must be divided and subjected to checks and balances. Beyond a certain point, a surplus of money becomes an excess of power. The money itself isn't the problem (yet), the power it confers *is.* As a result, an economic aristocracy has arisen to fill the void of political aristocracy. But regardless of economic or political, the result is the same: extreme concentration of power that is anathema to a truly free people.
Two is the issue of distributional equity. In the past one could argue that wealth at one end of the spectrum did not cause poverty at the other end because the pie kept growing, and the rising tide lifted all boats. Anyone who was willing to work could get ahead, and the social safety net could take care of those who fell through the cracks.
However, what happens when the pie stops growing? That's the consensus of opinion about peak oil and similar Malthusian crises: No more growth. No more rising tide that lifts all boats.
At that point, material wealth becomes a zero-sum game: one person's gain is another's loss. If there are 100 people and a fixed supply of 100 widgets that does not grow, and I have three widgets, two other people have none. They can work as hard as they like, but they will still have none.
Here the "hoarder" standard becomes relevant: accumulation beyond a certain point is hoarding, in effect getting something you don't need and can't use, and thereby preventing someone else from having something they need in order to get by.
What do you do about someone who, in time of crisis, has a million cans of soup, a million half-gallon bottles of milk, a million loaves of bread, a million pounds of vegetables, a million pounds of rice, a million pounds of beans, a million bottles of ketchup, a million pounds of ground beef, and so on for another 992 items on the great grocery list...?
Notice that my list here comprises one thousand types of items, and a million of each item: in other words, a thousand million things, which in USA numerical usage, is a billion things.
Just let the implication of that sink in.