Has capitalism "failed"?

[Duxuk]

Corbyn said, in his conference speech, that capitalism has failed. He pointed particularly to the crash of 2008.
Capitalism has now been used as the only possible means to make the populations of formally socialist/communist regime more wealthy and less likely to revolt.
Wealth creators in capitalist systems create wealth for themselves which, in turn, passes wealth to all through taxation and earnings.
So if capitalism has "failed" what are the failures and how do we cure them.
I'll have a beer to consider the options.:grin:

 

[GerritT]

Politics have failed. Can't blame a capitalist for gaining capital, but can blame a politician for not being able to redistribute it a bit.

 

[druid]

I think that capitalism has "failed" as it was allowed to run amok without any real safegaurds in place (see 2008) Since then, capitalism has ceased to exist. What I mean by that is governments through their central banks are intervening in all markets thereby not allowing capitalism to exist. The Japanese government now owns more than 10% of the Nikkie index in an attempt to prop it up. This is in effect being purchased with future tax dollars. The US government routinely intervenes in the stock markets to "soothe" them whenever natural selloffs occur. They (the US Fed) does not have to disclose how many stocks they have purchased by printing money......not sure how this can end well when all major governments are doing the same thing. Its odd....but when industry and governments are in bed together...its called fascism. Didnt we have more than one major conflict to rid ourselves of these types of regimes???

 

[Slid]

Actually capitalism is just "investment to increase production" and nothing more. Its roots can be traced to the dawn of industrialisation, with which it is closely linked. If you look at a graph of human population (world) you will notice a very steep upward curve in the rate of increase around 1800. A very mixed blessing indeed, was industrialisation and its facilitator, capitalism.

Most of what is complained of as "capitalism" reflects long pre-existing traits in the human make-up. The notion of "investment to increase production" has been largely rejected across Western Europe since the end of the last war, of course.

As an observation, British society appears to sliding towards one in which the only "investment" of any real value is land and property. The "use of the ownership of land and property to control other people" is an excellent description of a feudal society and that would not be widely recognised as a "good thing".

 

[Bigcol49]

Hi!
Interesting article in The Grauniad: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...talism-tories-thatcher-treasury-cupboard-bare

 

[bigbud78]

Corbin would have us like Venezuela in a heart beat if he could, no idea what the answer is stuck. Were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

 

[bigbud78]

Hi!
Interesting article in The Grauniad: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...talism-tories-thatcher-treasury-cupboard-bare

Just read this, yeas very interesting and does seem very informed :thumb:

 

[Druncan]

Strange his quote; Britons know the 11 most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from a Virgin call centre and I’m here to help.” Oh yeah, but,,,

The "theory of the firm" in economics that I was taught 20 years ago (and still a conservative mantra) was that businesses only exist to make profit. I now think this was an silly simplistic bureaucratic ideal suiting those times. Things have changed, but sadly not Gov't economic policy.
So in 2017 if you value success with a conscientious workforce, you must also add social value by having a staff family ethos. Maybe, Like like Weatherspoons or even more so like Virgin,,,,,
Curiously our business has never ever existed to only make profit. It exists to enable our lifestyle!!! Probably like the other 5.5 Billion SME's in the UK 2016,,,?
The UK gov't is so out of touch it may be on another planet. We are quite well in touch with our SMP's and had regular contact this year. A bit scary actually,,,

 

[Duxuk]

The Guardian article mentioned above has the old leftist problem. It describes austerity as disastrous but fails to explain how public borrowing could ever be paid back. Money Week analysed that the borrowing of Gordon Brown's brief period in charge would cause an exponential rise in borrowing. Borrowing just to pay for previous borrowing, not to pay for public services. We still borrow more than the cost of the NHS each year. Only capitalism will create profitable business to pay taxes to avoid a borrowing meltdown. Though Corbyn may feel that Venuzuela could teach us a lesson.

 

[AdeDunn]

Or, and here's is a crazy out there idea, maybe folks need to stop worrying about how much money the country makes/spends/has and start worrying about how healthy/happy the people living in it are? Heck, extend that to all people and you might even end up with a pleasant world.

But heh, apparently idealism is unfashionable these days.

We haven't had capitalism for a long time now, we've had corporate feudalism, where instead of barons we have corporations and bankers. Just look at how large corporations behave with small businesses, I bet a lot of you know of at least one small business that went under when a corporation failed to pay them for goods or services they provided to said corporation. Only now it's been renamed to "trickle down economics"....

 

[CubaLibre]

[FONT=&quot]Didn't Corbyn say that he wanted a mixed economy? He didn't say capitalism has failed per sa, he said neoliberal ideology was wrong.[/FONT]

 

[simon12]

My opinion if the government has not allowed capitalism to work how it should by regulating to much and also have tried to make capitalism work where it can't, ie privatising the trains cannot work in a free market as you are giving a company a monopoly on it. Free market capitalism can only work where there is free & fair competition. The bank bailout is to me one of the biggest government cock ups, they should have seen the banks as to big to continue not to big to fail and let them fail and bailed out peoples accounts not the banks. Globalisation has been a problem for supply and demand markets as well especially the labour market but in most cases when the government intervenes they make things worse not better.
I would also make the point that issues rising from the thread "Money what is it and where does it come from" are totally down to government regulation. If it was left to the free market interest rates would rise as more people borrow and fall as more people save and there would not be 97% of money in our economy being not real.