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Is Capitalism flawed? I used to believe that Capitalism solves issues, but if I really look around me, it actually only creates more issues that were not here before.

> There are many rich people with tons of capital but there are more unemployed people that will not have access to that

> People are living in luxury mansions and driving very expensive car, and then kids are starving in other places

> Profits of companies is going up, but real wages going down, people are living paycheck to paycheck

> Everyone is in debt, nobody has any savings, and most people are working part time jobs

> Nobody has a house, nobody can afford one, yet real estate speculators own thousands of them

> Banks have trillions of $ of money, but they still charge you 50$ / transaction because of their greed

> People have no future prospects, no career opportunity, they just live from paycheck to paycheck trying to pay off the debt and buy some shit GMO food filled with poison, because why sell healthy food to the public when the GMO food is more profitable?

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It looks to me like Capitalism is flawed. Nobody has any money and everyone is suffering. I think a universal income must be implemented as fast as possible.

Capitalism creates great income inequality, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is a scientifically proven those who make $75,000+ annually are essentially as content with their lives as multimillionaires. The reasons for this are many, but mostly because the rich work more hours... even though they have more, they spend way more time working and therefore have far less time to actually enjoy the fruits of their labor.

No shit, where I live you are lucky if you make 5,000$/year

I'd be happy too if I had 75,000$, but guess what I don't. And if I seriously don't find some good business opportunity, then with the wages that my country provides, I'd have to work like 1000 years to earn that kind of money.

And there you have others that make 75000$ /year. Fucking wealth inequality.

I think people confuse capitalism with wealth inequality. Two distinctly different & separate topics.

There have been prosperous eras of capitalism where wealth inequality was extremely low. Past eras of high wealth/wage inequality were marked by class warfare & revolution. To help put things into perspective, during the dark ages working class peasants/serfs enjoyed as many as 189 official holidays/days off from work. In the modern era, the average worker might enjoy 104 holidays/days off from work per year. This invokes instances where benefits reaped from advancing technology & productivity do not trickle down to the poor or middle class.

One issue with the modern era is digitization and proliferation of information on a worldwide scale making it easier for wealth inequality to flourish. Consumers & average people don't often use technology or the internet to plan boycotts, unionization, pooling of resources and other cooperative efforts to further their plans or make life better for themsleves. Large corporations, banks, states however do use the internet and communication to coordinate and push many agendas which benefit themselves.

In virtually all instances where capitalism is blamed for something, its easy to substitute wealth/wage inequality as a better explanation.

No, it is not. The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Everything is as it should be.


"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

Henry Ford

$5000/year?  Holy crap, you must not live in the states.  $75k isn't even a great salary these
days either here.  Guess that's why signature campaigns are so popular.  It's not chump change.
Of course capitalism is flawed,  but so is socialism and other forms of society.   But I'd much
rather be a capitalist than whatever alternative there is.  At least I have a chance to get rich on
my own and not have to worry about a government like, say, China.   Everything is flawed.

Yeah and i guess not only him,but me also one of them who's having a money for under than $5000/year.
based on my estimation average salary in my country around $3000/year and we worked for more than 10 hours,
(more likely slavery other than working)
and what OP said was half correct and half incorrect,everything what he said was real and i can see it in my own country.
it's total flawed system for some people,but most of the using their authority to create their own wealth.

the real question is,what we can do to make it better ? nothing,because human is a passionate being,
if he can create 1 ship,he will create another one and another.

When someone says that capitalism is flawed he usualy means that someone was charged for smth, fired from his job, underpayed etc. In most cases it was a result of different kinds of state intervention or someone lobbied smth through the state. And that is usualy the weak link of the system, not the capitalism.


GMO food with poison lol. That's the best part of the post. Says a lot about OP

Capitalism aids in wealth creation and helps lift people out of poverty.
If you think that the situation is bad in capitalist countries, you should visit countries with socialist / communist leanings. Things are much worse.

Fundamentally it is my belief that the state is nothing other than glorified cult behaviour, and that the issues used to justify the redistribution of wealth and others forms of central planning are in fact issues created by prior acts of the state itself. To put it simply, human beings continue to project their own fears into reality. Human beings are psychologically scarred from the brutal process of evolution, and we are in a collective state of stockholm syndrome.

The belief in the supposed "natural" concentration of wealth that is claimed we would see in an economically free society seems to be the equivalent of saying that in a free sexual market the beautiful would get more beautiful and the ugly would get uglier, thus we should demand the state force beautiful women to sleep with ugly men to correct this flaw in the structure of evolutionary reality. The reality is that it has been theorized that everyone is actually getting more beautiful, which is to say that outside of disfigurement from either accident or abusive diet, or those with a fundamental genetic flaw (downs, etc.), the most ugly people of today are significantly more attractive than the most ugly people of centuries prior.

^^^ Because people in US have it far more worse then in North Korea or Venezuela...


Every economic system is flawed but capitalism creates competition and with competition you have improved products which can lead to inovations, more jobs for various new positions,etc... While something like socialism stagnates because there is no need for improvement, everyone has everything and everyone should be happy with it.

Capitalism is flawed, but that's happens in any other system. Although, it's proven that it's the most equal system, just have a look at countries with Communism, such as China, the middle class is almost non existent in many areas and the majority are poor, living with only a couple of dollars per day.

Good question.  Capitalism is just theoretical.  I don't believe there is any place that has pure capitalism.  You have something called capitalism, but it's mixed with socialism and a corrupt government that favours special interests at the cost of the general public.

Anytime there is sociopathic leadership, there will be the introduction of luxury while others starve, without giving a shit.

The current monetary system, central banking and the way governments operate are largely responsible for the polarity you've outlined.  You print money out of nothing and you go to jail.  The federal reserve does the same and not only is it okay, but you can become a debt slave to someone that has done literally nothing for you.  But you can't be that guy  ;)

Perhaps for some capitalist people will become a power for a country. Capitalist system is almost similar to communist. I think so. This in my opinion will only benefit some parties only. Especially for the government. This will trigger its citizens to work harder. Just imagine if this will change for the better. I do not think so. This system will only benefit some parties only. But on the other hand can harm others

I agree with you, I have a friend live in Vietnam. This is country have communism as China, but the economic in this country is worse than China very more. He said every day he just want earning 2.5 dollar per day can help he stay alive, but he don't know that amount with Bitcoin user as pay fees lol!

I learned something new the other day. The earliest known version of Monopoly, known as The Landlord's Game, was designed by an American, Elizabeth Magie, and first patented in 1904 but existed as
early as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of Economic rent and the Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value taxation.

She wanted to demonstrate the flaws in a Capitalist economy, where only a few people succeed and become filthy rich and millions suffer in poverty. We are seeing this now, where we have a few filthy rich people and a much smaller percentage of people in the middle class <declining daily> and Billions of people living in poverty. The middle class has to carry the biggest portion of the tax burden to help the poor and they are slowly moving from middle class to poverty.

This will also spill over to Bitcoin later, because the filthy rich will buy all the coins to store their wealth and the rest will play with the scraps for it to retain it's value. < Bitcoin Whales >

OP, all your points from first post can be reduced to one single point - income inequality. But is it really a bad thing? People are not equal in their abilities, and pure capitalism rewards people for their usefulness for others. It's impossible for everyone to be rich, drive Lamborghini and own a yacht, there's not enough resources for that. But under capitalism things actually improve, poverty in the world decreases, and quality of life of poor people now is much better than 100 years ago. And there's no alternative to capitalism, all other centralized systems fail to create economic growth - check out how people were starving to death in communist countries, or how socialist countries have constant shortages of the most basic goods.

But communism will only cause more trouble than capitalism, imo. At least in capitalism you're able to generate a decent amount of wealth for yourself if you're hardworking and have creative ideas(obviously if you're just son of a rich ass businessman that will give you a definitive edge too).

Communism is only going to be exploited by those who run the regime as we have seen over and over in history. And in the end it just ends up being a defunct model, and a reform to capitalism occurs or the system just implodes.

Of course capitalism is flawed, look at social inequality. But there isn't really one simple answer that will solve everything unlike what propaganda tells you.

What country are you talking about? Due to lots of social programmes, different foundations or just voulanteers. If you talk about countries that drown in powerty they never had anything close to capitalism so don't blame it.

Any system is as flawed as the people behind it. Think about this, a dictatorship can be the perfect system for any country as long as the leader and his people are benevolent.

The only way to revenue share with rich people vs workers is decentralized community.
Its similar to dictatorship . Dictators manage community only if they are leader.
If community stop supporting dictators they are nothing. Its same .
If workers stop working for less money so who is going to work?
You will see in real world what i am trying to say. Its not really far from now.

This will start in USA and jump to EU soon. USA economy is not going good. And Trump will crash USA economy as soon as possible.

Well guess what in the rest of the world the average wage is like 1$ or 2$ / hour

I would just earn that kind of level of income. In the US i think the minimum wage is like 15$, so you guys earn a lot more.

Yes welcome to Capitalism my friend, a few rich countries earn good money, the rest of the world is fucked and should live in slums.

Socialism isn't all too bad in my opinion, some of the richest countries in the world are partially socialist.
I think in some ways it's really good to have some socialist aspects in society, such as basic healthcare and subsidized education.

Just look at most western European countries, quality of life there is really decent, but they do pay more taxes for it.

Then problem I see with capitalism is that is has been "gamed" to be profoundly unfair. If markets and individuals really were able to compete equally, then capitalism would reward hard work. As it stands the wealthy have locked up the system to preclude anyone from getting ahead. So they just leach off the work of normal people while contributing almost nothing.

I doubt that can stand for another 20 years. There are changes coming. 

No economic system is perfect but the issue is that of all, capitalism is what I see as most liberal one to face unlike other despite the challenges you have there which are equally true but at the same time its not all bad for capitalism in the sense that we have seen people who have come from the lowest part of the earth and made it to the top because of the liberalism that have come to stay and several people are still struggling everyday to make it to the top because they believe it is possible for them create value and by so lift their families out of poverty.

If the capitalists applied the "true" capitalism in all the meaning and rigor of its original theory, humanity would be happy
The finance is not only useless and dangerous (we've seen enough lately), but these is just crazy casinos where reason and sense no longer have place: for which humans, machines that "decide" in nanoseconds, work?

capitalism, aka, buying tings and selling things in a marketplace setting, isn't an issue.

It has brought more people out of poverty than any other economic plan in history has ever come up with.

It is still being improved to this day, but for the most part it is a good thing.

You do not have to strain so hard and tell bad capitalism, because we have already seen in Socialism and even communism in the Soviet Union and even in several post-Soviet countries that preach this policy to this day. And we can say with confidence that the difference between socialism and capitalism is very large.

I think it has played it's role, but hopefully will come to an end in my lifetime where we can move to better system.

Your post only confirms my long-term suspicions

I always thought you were a sort of communist deep inside, though you desperately rejected such suspicions. Regarding the question asked, capitalism is certainly not without its own flaws but it is still the best thing that most closely matches human nature in respect to economy (extreme egoism between individuals). In other words, it seems to be the only way or approach that is sustainable in the long run, over hundreds of years. And let's get things straight, people on average live a lot better than they lived a hundred years ago

Capitalism is definitely flawed so also is socialism or communism and every other forms of economic system we have in this world but when it comes to capitalism one factor that I prefer it over other forms is based on the fact to believe in individual ability that if you determined to change your status, there are routes to go about it and seizing opportunity that comes at the right time in which if you are lucky you can amass as much wealth as possible and be a force to reckon with in the society.

There is no perfect system of economy...whether you are talking about capitalism, communism or anything that may end with ism. It is primarily because we are all human beings and we are not perfect. A system can be perfect in papers but once it is implemented the weaknesses of human nature may pulled the plug out.

Capitalism is not bad in itself if the people can easily compete in an open and fair marketplace. Capitalism should be providing an equal playing field but should not be giving any guaranteed and equal results. The freedom to pursue one's dreams via entrepreneurship is one of the best avenues created by capitalism that we should not discourage.

Capitalism with a heart (as against unbridled capitalism)can be the best ways we can deal with poverty and inequality. Socialism in its purest sense has proven to be not better than capitalism that is why many former communist countries have already abandoned that ideology many years ago.

I am not a "communist deep inside" , what the hell does that mean?

No I actually hate communism, it destroyed half of the world. But I also recognize the obvious flaws of capitalism.

So there should be a 3rd kind of system beyond these 2 that would be better for humans.

All talk and no walk

So you came here claiming that capitalism is bad, okay with that. Now you claim that communism is in fact badder and you say that there should be a better system than these two. And what is it specifically? What is your point beside mere enumeration of capitalism flaws, which we all are more or less familiar with? What is this "universal income" if you don't actually imply a variety of communism? That's what I mean by you being a "communist deep inside" (deep inside your self)

We know that it is fkawed and rich become richer and the poor became poorer especially in the this world where crabmentality is at its best. What you're saying is the wrongs of the world and the negativity of life and we're tired of that yet we still digest the same system? Why? Because nobody wants to pay the price yet everyone wants change. To your own bunny wallet to home to banks and government everything is settled for the sake of all of us. Taxes and fees are along the way to make better services. The system is good enough because we are the one who will be benefited by all of it. The people behind is the problem. We're being provided by lies and shadows behind because of greed.
There a simple solution to capitalism. Gave all your extra money to the poor and help them learned all the basic in order to have a work. Yet sometime people are lazy enough and full of mouths and doubts. We're taking a lot hell more than that nowadays and yet like I've said  Nobody wants to pay the price .

That's how the world works these days because some people, let's call them "global elites" who control world economics through banks systems, they want to make it happen.
Most of countries in this world have debts to bank, and that's how they are doing something such as pushing countries to regulate or give them profits from agreements. Do you know how much USA debt to private central bank? More than all of US dollars in circulation.

If you look back in the past you could see that no type of socitey is perfect. Capitalism also has its bad sides, especialy in some countries, but maybe is the best type so far. And  there will always be rich and the poor no one can't solve this and we could never be equal. Maybe is time to invent some new type of society but how shoul it look like and will it be applicable in real life?
Afterall, Bitcoin is also one of the products of capitalism.

You guys might hate capitalism all you like, but remember that capitalism is essentially a free market, and any other system will always be a planned economy. And it's obvious to me that any planned economy system is not compatible with something as free and decentralized as Bitcoin. It removes ability to print more money, seize your funds easily, it's hard to trace and immutable, so there's no way any economically authoritarian system would allow it as legal payment method.

In General you are right, but there is one inaccuracy. Even under capitalism it is impossible to allow to the market was completely free. In all capitalist countries there are antitrust laws. This regulatory method allows you to control the market, so it is under capitalism, too, is not free.

Surely, it is. That is the reason economists always stress on implementing Capitalism in only those countries which are rich enough to sustain person-to-person competition.
Coming to your listed points, all points stress on single idea and that is "Capitalism widen gap between richs and poors." No doubt its true enough. But this doesn't make the Capitalism failure. Capitalism is important form of economy setup and the one resulting in most growth as well as economic development. Thus, it is important for global development.

Every system comes with its excellance. We only people make it flawed. Some people perform capitalism affecting  economy doing illegal activities.
Thus the government is slipshod and responsible

But you make it sound like only these 2 systems can exist, if you don't like one you must choose the other. Sounds like a false dichotomy.

Why can't there be a 3rd way. And what does UBI have to do with communism?

Communism was all about enslaving people in labor camps, UBI is about helping the poor. I think there is a lot of difference between it.

I never said it's a total failure, I said that it has flaws and has to be fixed.

I recognize the technological advancements caused by Capitalism and that is good.

But on the other hand people are getting poorer each day, and jobs are lost to automation. How do you solve that issue?

I think a universal basic income is needed.

To be frank, you simply don't, automation is bound to happen, just check how much artificial intelligence has developed, or the increase of machine usage in factories.
There's not much to do for the people who are getting poorer each day.

Universal basic income will be needed eventually but we are currently still in a resource scarce world and capitalism is the only system that is efficient as it uses peoples greed to incentivize them towards production.

The line starts to get blurry though and its hard to say when UBI needs to start and how much it should be.

Capitalism is based on very solid foundations, I am never a capitalist, but I have, unfortunately, seen the most harmful of the real, capitalist system.

What is UBI specifically?

Who is going to pay it and why helping the poor this way is going to change anything? I guess it should be as cleas as day that it won't make them rich. We already have social benefits to be paid to the unemployed and disabled (obviously, different countries have different systems in place), but this is utterly inconsequential to either capitalism or communism. That is to say, these benefits don't change anything in particular in the social and economic order of the state. So how exactly is this universal income going to change the current lay of the land?

The renegade economist Michael Hudson is in my opinion right about the current economical model. We are heading towards the feudalism. The reason for that, is not what we call capitalism, or something like that. The reason for that is a profit taking from a rent. People are aquiring the gains from the rent. There should be a division from wealth - which could be a knowledge, money, means of production etc., and distinct it from the unjustified gain like from renting something. There is nothing wrong with being wealthy - its a problem of defining wealth and making it distinct from being a rentier.

If someone for example is giving the factory to workers, he should have something from it. Thats just. But.... the gain from the fact that he have factory should be minimalise to some time. For example a 20 or 30 years. If that would not happen there is no difference between the factory owner and feudal nobility, that capitalism was suppose to make obsolete.

The problem with this system is ujustified rent seeking - the definition of feudal model in itself.

Capitalism does not offer you complete freedom. All states that have capitalism type of government do have laws to control their markets. In general, there is no system in the world that allows complete freedom to the members of the state. All in one way or another are continuously trying to rule innocent people.

Without any perfect system, it always carries holes, the problem is the time when it occurs, bitcoin is also a typical example, the bitcoin flaw is not enough blocks to make quick transactions.

Capitalism is only for the benefit of rich and not for the poor.Banks are an important aspect of capitalism.They collect deposits from middle class people,pay them very low interests and lend that money to big investors and rich people.Also,they charge heavy transaction fee for even smaller transaction mounts and sucked money of poor people more.Thats why satoshi created this revolutionary digital currency,bitcoin with decentralized nature.He wanted to free people from bankers and find a system in which money could be sent P2P without indulging banks at a very low fee.Bitcoin is almost achieving what satoshi dreamed and now it has become the worst nightmare not even to banks,but also to capitalists who think that they only deserve to be rich people.

In some ways capitalism is a flawed system, the rich are getting richer, but capitalism has the means of making anyone rich overnight, there are stories of people becoming rich because of the concept of their ideas. The rich are rich because they dream and they had the opportunity of pursuing their dreams.

Capitalism solves lots of issues. It is an amazing system, which facilitates growth of economies at rates the likes of which have never been seen before. However, no system is perfect. Inherent in capitalism are flaws, just like any other ideology. MAny people do not agree fundamentally with capitalism. When new systems arise, there is always strong support by many people (otherwise they could not arise to begin with). Look at National Socialism - was easily as popular as capitalism and collapsed in just 20 years.

Universal Basic Income may be a question of whether a private sector can create jobs more efficiently and effectively than a state can provide welfare. New programs like UBI require the introduction of new tax hikes to create a revenue stream. This can be a real issue in countries like the united states where many support single payer healthcare but few support additional tax hikes for funding purposes.

Capitalism makes it easier than all other political regimes, however, it is not the only mode that can do that. Many countries are moving towards capitalism, but I think they need a long period of time to change.

As you introduce the concept of universal basic income, I would like to plot the example of government sector in my country. In India, government job means total job security and stability as well as regular pay. Thus government employees are off standard and public sector in India is much behind the private. Thus introducing universal basic income will leads to huge decline in global productivity. And what about new innovations taking place everyday??

Yes there is, you can add UBI.



Automation is displacing many jobs.

If there are no jobs, there is no income. The corporations will have nobody to sell their products and services too. It's the tragedy of capitalism.

Worker income shrinks due to greedy corporations, and then their profits shrink too, since nobody is left to buy their stuff.

The only solution is UBI, the corporations should pay a % of their profits into an UBI system which gets redistributed across the people.

It could work perfectly, everyone wins in the end.

The only model common in capitalism and an democratic organisation is ,The Rich Become The Richer and the poor remain the poorer.There is no cure,this is how the system have been designed and that's how it's going to be in the future. Capitalism isn't in favour of the poor,never was.

I cringe when I see somebody ask the question without first defining the term "Capitalism".
 
First, tell us how you define Capitalism because otherwise you will get a hundred answers, none of which may even be addressing the same idea.

I'll answer your questions using what I consider to be the traditional definition, from Dictionary.com

CAPITALISM - "Also called free enterprise, private enterprise. an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, characterized by the freedom of capitalists to operate or manage their property for profit in competitive conditions"

So the distinction that needs to be made is whether you are referring to a free market system (purely private property) or a mixed socialist economy (where the government intervenes when it sees fit). The essence of Government is being a monopoly on the use of force. In other words, if you don't comply, men with guns will eventually kidnap you and throw you in a cage. When the Government pokes its finger into the natural, voluntary, free movement of individual exchange, it is much the same as stepping on an Ant hill or maybe burning down part of a forest ecosystem. People will simply route around the inefficiency e.g. black markets.

If you define Capitalism as what you see in most Western countries today, than you won't agree with me. For the sake of argument and simplicity though, I think it makes sense to view the Economy as an ecosystem or natural order composed of Billions of actors working independently, yet also cooperatively through free exchange. The saying, "Live and let live" really sums it up well I think. The people that seek to intervene, manipulate and control the economy are extremely arrogant, economic illiterates who probably do not even have their own lives or families sorted out yet, most likely due to their own uncertainties, fears and lack of moral compass, they wish to impose their will on through the power of state legislation instead of leading by example.



There will always be rich and poor. Dominant or weak. Free markets will not create a utopia where everyone is equal, however they will give everyone the best chance.

Government exacerbates the problems you've highlighted because the rich and corrupt simply capture it and use legislation to make themselves richer. It's the collective delusion that state power is legitimate, which gives these sociopaths the opportunity to control us. Why do you think Bill Gates can't just create mandates and expect people to obey? Because he has no coercive authority! Microsoft is nobody, but call yourself a Government and now you have legitimacy in the eyes of the slaves. In fact, Slaves will beg you to increase your power because they believe it's moral and legitimate.

In a free market, entrepreneurs must necessarily provide value to many people in order to become wealthy. They need to persuade you to buy their products. Unrestricted competition keeps their greed in check.

In socialism, government claims they need to forcibly intervene to keep business in check. In other words, people (government) claim that using coercive power is sometimes necessary because the market is inherently flawed. Once you go down the road of excusing violence, you never come back!

So in my opinion, Free Market Capitalism is not flawed, nor is it a "system" that has been imposed. It is simply the natural order or an ecosystem composed of billions of individual actors, exchanging voluntarily. When somebody violates your private property by using physical force or fraud, then they should be punished obviously, but we don't do that by granting a complete and total monopoly on that "justice system" to a government. If we do, then the question is, who will regulate the regulators? Who will investigate the investigators?

Crony Capitalism, Crapitalism or Socialism are the terms I would give to the corrupt systems we currently have in the West. If you want to define Capitalism this way, than I would completely agree with you that it's very flawed.

To be fair, most flaws will self-correct. For example, in the venture capital industry, we have seen a decade-long scam of taking limited partners for a ride, raising big funds, extracting large management fees to the tune of millions annually, and then returning negative on the investment. This, for sure, has already started self-correcting.

Capitalism is the best system we've found thus far to organize societies. The malice and competitive nature of mankind is bet confined in the capitalist system. Capitalism leads to great inequality and other problems, but the alternatives aren't any better.

We can't have an ideal world, but we can improve it. The banking system is a scam, we can improve the rules of the capitalism with decentralized technologies such as bitcoin.

If you have better alternatives, then im willing to hear that.

I agree with what has being said about how capitalism is the best we've found thus far and I honestly don't know any alternatives, but this "the rich work more hours" narrative is one of the biggest bullshits ever. The rich work smarter, not harder.
The working class spends most of their time working. Established rich families just live off dividends. If you have 10 millions in the bank, you can sit on your ass all day as you get dividends from safe stocks. That is what all these rich kids from instagram do. Oh and now they even get more money by flaunting their wealth on social media since these rich guys get tons of followers which leads to ad revenue.

The people that go from nothing to rich are the ones that spend the most hours trying to figure out a way to get rich (assuming you just don't luck out), but after that, once you are established with enough millions, you can live off passive income and do fuck nothing if you don't want to.

I work my ass off all day, then spend the little amount of free time I have researching crypto stuff trying to get rich. I laugh at the idea of all these rich cunts working more time than me.

I agree that in capitalism it has all this, but it is still the best system

I certainly understand your apprehensions

But I guess we are far from it (provided we ever come close to). Automation leads to unemployment in certain fields, this goes without saying. But so far, it has also led to the creation of more jobs in a lot of other fields and also certain fields themselves. Introduction of computer made quite a few people jobless at first but then it gave rise to whole new sectors of economy (computer engineering, software development, telecommunications, etc). As to me, there is no need for the introduction of such a system

On the topic of jobs & automation.

Automation kills many more jobs than it creates.

No one wants to admit that but it is true.

Slavery/indentured servitude/sweatshops/prison labor also kills more jobs than it creates.

As does outsourcing/offshoring of jobs, etc. As that tends to be an exploitive practice.

Can you prove that?

So far I haven't yet seen anyone coming up with strong facts actually supporting this claim. On the other hand, automation itself requires higher division of labor and that directly supports the opposite claim, i.e. it contributes to creation of more jobs. Basically, you can't have it both ways. Either you accept that automation as such requires more advanced technology itself (but that necessarily means more people are required to support it) or this is not actually an improvement or advancement in technology (since it destroys more jobs than creates). With your other claims I basically agree

Capitalism is certainly flawed. The end goal is, in fact, inequality. If the goal for capitalists is capital accumulation, the result for the majority of the population is rent extraction (paying rent for housing, living on wages rather than having access to capital, paying interest due to no access to money). In this way, capitalists accumulate and wage slaves as a whole become poorer and poorer.

Part of the problem in these discussions is that capitalists conflate "competition" with "capitalism." I am not against markets at all; free markets and competition are vital. And it is true competition which can actually address inequality, because in the context of free markets, prices tend to approach the cost of production (due to many competitive producers vying for market share). The problem under capitalism is that 1) governments are used to enforce monopolies and 2) even absent governments, private militaries hired by landowners are used to enforce monopolies. True competition under capitalism is impossible.

I didn't search the web to get you proof, but just logically, if we look at a modern production facility or factory, many stages of production are automated, using programmable robots to do repetitive tasks.  Sure there's a team that needs to program and maintain those robots, and although it's a much more intelligent team, the number of general labour jobs that are replaced are much greater.

For example, you could replace 500 general labour jobs with robots and maybe a team of 20 engineers.

I don't believe there's anything wrong with automation replacing jobs.  We just need to aim for more intelligent jobs or have a more socialist approach where it's not absolutely necessary for everyone to have a job and earn revenue.  Robots work 24/7 and don't need to get paid or take breaks.  That wealth can be shared.

This is what people typically say

They innocently assume that all this automation appears out of thin air like banks are creating money. But industrial production is not banking. All these robots have to be first designed and then manufactured somewhere, and I promise you that somewhere deep down the line there will always be quite a lot of human labor involved. To get an idea, look at the history of automotive industry. It seems like it destroyed quite a few jobs in some sectors but it created many more jobs in other sectors as well as created entirely new ones. It's the same with automation and robotics, they just move human labor to other fields, and since they are more complex technologies, this necessarily means that more human labor is required in other fields. In other words, you can't escape the complexity loop

But average people cant take complex jobs.

Not everyone can be an AI programmer, a mechanical engineer or a mathematician.

Most people are bartenders, supermarket clerks or similar king of jobs.

Here is the news for you, they are already phased out:

* https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/5/13842592/amazon-go-new-cashier-less-convenience-store


The simple jobs get phased out as fast as lightning. The complex jobs remain for the latest, but they will be phased out too. After all an AI is probably a better engineer than humans.

There is no solution to this than to just abandon this flawed system.

Offcourse there are threats to some basic jobs from automation. There is no deny to that. A report by the McKinsey Global Institute concludes that  5 percent of occupations are likely to be completely wiped out by automation. We just can't escape that.

There are flaws to all systems and so does capitalism. But the simple fact is that where open markets exist with competition, people get more prosperous. If we look at socialism/communism as applied in its most ‘pure’ applications, millions ended up starving in China, Russia and elsewhere because the system simply was inherently dysfunctional. Free market capitalism has its downsides but at least it consistently delivers growth.

A few hundred years ago people were completely illiterate

They couldn't even read (let alone write), and so what? Complex jobs can be simplified to the point when your average Joe can do them (this is what division of labor basically means). Indeed, the jobs that can be automated will be automated, but the great divide remains unshaken, i.e. some jobs can't be done by robots, as simple as that. Apart from that, what AI are you talking about? This field has been stagnating for over fifty years already. All the recent "advances" have been entirely due to quantitative improvements only (more memory, more processing power, more specialized chips, etc). There is no true artificial intelligence as of yet and may never be (in the sense we think of it), it still essentially comes down to an incredibly complex set of conditions (if-else)

I'm no economist but even a brief look at most country's history would show that you can't beat capitalism when it comes to generating wealth and improving the overall income of people. Even avowedly communist China has adopted capitalistic practices. I suppose they'd still be eating sparrows if they didn't.


I'd rather have automation over sweatshops, those people are not getting their fare wages. Of course, that means those people would then need to find some other sources of income. In the industrialized world, I think automation is not as a do-or-die case. Just find some other field that can't be automated yet.

As for outsourcing, it's as natural as countries focusing on what product they can make best. If an American won't take $400 a month to answer irate customers, then find someone in India or the Philippines to do it.

Capitalism is indeed flawed, so much of inequality to the point the working class got abused. They worked really hard, their labor is not equal to the income they earning. So much for the other side, unlike the working class,  less physical labor but they have millions of earning. I don't have any oppositions to the capitalism system because it is already inevitable, but i think one we can change, one of the many flaws we can removed slowly is the mindset of capitalism towards the workers. Like for example giving them incentives and reasonable incomes, proper treatment e.g giving respect.

I don't believe capitalism is flawed because comparing it to other economic system, its still the best. People get to be rich and even contribute to the society, the ability to grow to the highest is not limited by the society, you create a path for yourself to the best of your ability. You decide if you want to stay in the hood for the rest of your life or you want to get out and dine with those that matter all by yourself and not limited by the society that is what capitalism promises and that's why I don't see it as flawed under any circumstances but not perfect.

In IT world the general situation is mostly similar to irl jobs. You might not have eniugh abilities to become a software developer but it requires quite a few skills to become a tester. The solution for lower qualified employees will always be found in the market. Getting a job in capitalistic country nowadays is easy as never before.

They still are...


No you can't dumb down complex engineering jobs, it doesnt work like that ,you need brains there which a large part of the population simply doesnt have.

And it's not a question of whether that job an be automated, its a question of time when they will be. Even the engineering jobs can be automated.

Meet engineerbot2.0, I bet he will do calculations much better and with much more precision and care than your average engineer.

It will be like from the movie Terminator, the robot will design a better robot and that will design a better robot.

There will not be much use left for humans, I hope it doesnt end like in the movie but if we want to make use of the robots then we can let them work and we should live off their production.

With all the social economic systems in the world, capitalism is still the supreme because several others have failed but capitalism is still standing despite it's flaws across the globe and even countries that have embraced other forms of economic systems have to realize that capitalism breeds individual quest to achieve development because there is a sense that you get to eat from your personal effort or profit compared to doing it for the state or even the community as other economic systems have professed to be the best.

It is better than what we had before, but it still has obvious, major flaws.

So it seems like something better could exist out there that doesnt have these flaws.

That largely depends on your point of view

Regarding your other points, they didn't go very far from someone claiming some 50 years ago that now when calculators could calculate faster and with higher accuracy than any human would, the end of humanity was near. Now calculators can calculate orders of magnitude faster and with even higher accuracy and precision than ever before, but did the end become nearer? Further, we basically don't know what being a sentient being means, so all such assumptions and ideas about the Terminator style future are mostly speculations. And while you may have some substance behind your claim that the majority of population don't have enough brains (though this is debatable), the technology may be specifically intended to address this issue. In fact, even simple calculators do exactly that, though on a rather primitive level, of course

http://s019.radikal.ru/i617/1708/ab/e50d0350bbc9.jpg

After all, any technology hinges on making human life better and easier in some way or other

Transhumanism? I havent considered that possibility.

Although I am not sure people will like this idea, that is by definition the extinction of humanity as we know it now and being replaced by cyborg, half sentient robots.

We dont even know if robots can have consciousness, so I am not sure humans would welcome the idea of being "augumented", we have no idea what that experience will be like and we  are familiar with what we know already.

The Best system? @_@

Capitalism is an economic form of slavery...in one case, you buy a man and take advantage of his work. In the other case, one buys the conditions of possibility of work, and therefore, under ordinary conditions, the survival of a man, and one takes advantage of his work.
The aim is thus the same: to take advantage of the work of others (which is the own of capitalism, since its purpose is to increase the capital by making the right investments).

But you certainly should have

Though I wouldn't call that transhumanism or any other such scary word. In fact, we are moving in that direction all human history. Even a simple and rough stone axe can be considered as a tool augmenting human capabilities. Any working vaccine heavily tampers with human immune system (since otherwise it wouldn't work), so we are effectively already there (and for many years at that), whether you like it or not. In other words, it is a matter of degree, not of kind. Regarding experiences, what do you feel when you calculate some fancy numbers using a calculator? I don't think it would feel particularly different if you had a sort of "calculator" built directly into your brain (this is indeed an oversimplification of matters but it outlines the whole picture nevertheless). If anything, humans will remain the same humans in respect to their self-recognition and self-awareness

Like everything in human history and life is flowed, capitalism is flowed too. It have its good things and also it have its bad things. I agree with what you wrote, and i do not deny that. I think that in order for us to evolve we need to go true some certain things, capitalism maybe is one of those. I believe that in future there will be arrangement that will be better.

Under capitalism, everyone has the freedom and the right to own property, start a business, own the ideas or inventions they patent. There are many benefits to capitalism which celebrities, schools and media ignore due to them all having pro-socialist/anti-capitalist bias. Many immigrants from foreign lands move to a capitalist country, start a business which they use to buy a house & put their children through college.

Under socialism, people do not have the freedom or right to own property, patent their ideas or inventions or even start a business. The state owns and controls everything. These limitations restrict progress, development and innovation in civilization. The united states being a hotbed of inventions and R&D is due to it being a capitalist society.

As bad as capitalism can be in some instances, socialism is always worse.

Capitalism is not flawed. I do think that all economic systems have a right to exist. Vicious only those who receive the right to realize the idea of development of the country. They always put their own interests above those of the state and is able to ruin any good idea.

Equity is always better than equality. We can't snatch someone's income just because he is earning more than others as his earnings are owed to his skills, talent, experience etc. However mere capitalism should not be implemented, it should be mix with element of equity comprising just, fair treatment to everyone. So mixed economy is best alternative.  

Its wrong to assume, that capitalism had ever worked. The USA capitalistic success is a myth most of the time. USA had developed rapidly thanks to world wars and the decline in europe economy.

Usa was mainly a country that had a stunning inefficiency and corruption never else seen in the world. It still has and still will have. That would be seen by everyone how inefficient USA is, if not OPEC and oil based dollars would save its economy.

Its all fraud - there is no good capitalism. If not electricity, and combustive engine there would be no place for growth, no matter what economic system we would live in.

The only real wealth is technology - not economic systems. We should not fear using the technology, and learn about the new ones. Thats the only way for more wealth.

We should abandon the rigid school system that makes people stupid and make new ways of teaching and learning. Talking about economical system is basicly a talk who takes from whom - thats a theft. We need to focus on wealth creation not its distribution.

I don’t really believe a rich man works more hours than an average man.
Rich men employs the average and poor to work in their favour. So I think an average and poor man works much more, while the rich man eats the bigger cake.

I agree with your basic description of capitalism, it is really slavery, specially when you consider the fact that most of you earnings go to tax, shelter, food, transportation to and from work, healthcare, 10 different insurances you need to have because you cant afford to not have them, and at the end of the day youre working for fuck all, most factory workers have no savings at all and literally live from paycheck to paycheck and are to scared to leave their job due to the fact they cannot afford to be unemployed for a week because they have a family to feed. This is, for want of a better word, slavery. Just prepackaged in bullshit to make it seem attractive to the average human being.

But the real tragedy is: what is the better system?

I like the idea of an open source society of sorts, kinda like what Jaque Fresco described (Resource Based Economy). But I don't see it in practice. While im willing to give up on dreams of ridiculous opulence if it helps making an RBE viable, it doesn't matter, because in practice there will always be someone that gets a monopoly of power and subjects others. It would take maybe a couple thousand years for the species to get anywhere close to that. Until then, you better be getting some money because otherwise you are fucked.

On the basis of this is the inheritance system, I do not think that if I get rich a day, I will not leave my children inherited, because I will start the process to donate the inheritance system to human beings.

capitalism is the best model out there.  To me the only caveat is that people still need to have compassion and help those in need.  Capitalism affords people to make that choice.  Hopefully, their moral code helps to make sure they do the right thing.

This holds true in any circumstance

As they say, it is better to cry in a Mercedes than on a bus. That said, I don't really think we need a few thousand dollars years to see changes (any changes, for that matter). Could someone imagine today's world (I refer to Internet obviously) some 50 years ago? I suspect no one could. In this manner, we can't really say what we we are to expect and likely see with our own eyes (as well as feel with our skins) what the world will be in another 50 years. More specifically, the core change might be the destruction of power monopoly. Till cryptos came about, there had always been a state monopoly on money (even when gold was money), but this is no longer the case. And if something like that happens to power monopoly, the effect would be even more dramatic and profound

Capitalism has a lot of problems. But it seems to me that he is invincible. I recommend reading the books and small articles of the Slovenian political philosopher Slavoj Zizek. You can find it on the Internet. He wrote a lot about the problems of capitalism from the standpoint of modern Marxism. He opens our eyes to modernity.

In a capitalist country with 2 million people, all 2 million have the freedom to start a business, innovate, build better things.

In a socialist country with 2 million, only a small fraction will have the freedom to start a business, innovate, build a better product.

Capitalism although not perfect is a superior system for innovation and advancement. This is why russia and china have been forced to adopt free markets of capitalism over time. Its also the reason why venezuela a country rich in oil has suffered by attempting to nationalize toyota and making constant attacks on the private sector under a pro socialist banner which have reduced standard of living to a dramatic degree.

The thing socialism is best for is keeping people from having electricity and modern plumbing the way socialist north korea forces its people to live in an era before electricity was discovered. Socialism is only good for restricting innovation and progress and keeping people enslaved.

I tend to disagree with this

I don't deny that capitalism is better than socialism overall provided all other things are kept equal, but this is not the case in real life for the most part. More specifically, if we are to remain honest, only a small fraction out of 2 million people in any country may actually start and successfully run a business even if they allegedly have (or do not have) the freedom to do so. First of all, not all humans have the propensity to run their own business at all (in fact, only a tiny fraction can). Further, in today's capitalistic system it is next to impossible to start a business given that all profitable markets have already been seized and divided by those mega-corporations. Your only chance is to be the first to enter some new field when it hadn't yet been conquered by corporate monsters and become that monster yourself before the rest of the pack. Otherwise, you will be quickly run over by competitors (but that's not bad in and of itself, of course)

Yes, capitalism is very flawed and there are many major problems with it that are not properly addressed. People / investors are so fixated on profits that it is causing major damage to society as they are willing to go to never seen before lengths to gain money.
However, capitalism does open up the windows to many opportunities for people to do, so I guess it has its pros and cons. But capitalism will soon tople itself with more and more money being printed and the bubble we are living in soon to burst.

Capitalism is an efficiency based system, so I can't see how it's flawed...
People make it a flawed system when they mix capitalism with politics and oppression, and at this point it may not even be called capitalism anymore.

It is flawed, but do we have a better system to replace it with?

Until we have AGI that can essentially automate everything or some kind of hyper advanced tech such as star-trek-eske molecular assembler + nuclear fusion power we will still need jobs (or some kind of incentive scheme), including a large number of jobs that people would not like to do. Plus the pesky problem of ownership of resources. Many of these techs are coming no doubt (and even more revolutionary stuff, such as nanobots that slow/reverse aging), but not as fast as many think due to physics and $$, so no tech is gonna save us of the difficult issues in the next years ahead. Actually, many of the technologies in the pipeline will cause enough social problems as it is (think L4 Autonomous vehicles, delivery drones, crypto, cas9, etc).

In absence of magic tech where we all could pursue leisure as we please, either exploring the rest of the universe or a virtual world, we have to deal with some unpleasant realities of our system and society. Whatever the model we pursue as a replacement, I believe companies will still exist in a way or another and will need consumers to buy their products with the goal of profit to the shareholders. It’s in their best interest not to shrink their consumer base too much, even if that pool can’t afford it, hence lending. That leads us to markets, complex financial instructions, etc. And soon enough we have more or less the same as today. In essence, the system is as flawed as we humans are.

I read about ERP on blockchain, guys says there that  they can breakthrouth capitalism. Their site www.darfchain.com (http://www.darfchain.com/?from=btt_num), are they say truth?

That is not true. You only have the freedom to innovate if you have capital to start up a business.

How to get capital?

1) Well either you are born in a rich family ( which most of us arent)
2) You apply for a business loan from a bank

But here is the catch, the bank requires a collateral. So are you willing to put your house as collateral (if you even have one, usually you have that under a mortgage already), given that 90% of small businesses go bankrupt after 6 months or something like that??

Yep small businesses have a 90% failure rate, and then you not only lose your business but also your house that you put up as collateral.

Brilliant isn't it. Now you are a homeless guy enjoying the wonders of capitalism.

There is no perfect system because all the systems are made by man who is not perfect in anyway. However, human beings can be so creative and full of ideas and so far many of the good ideas have been applied. We are not yet a perfect society nor we will be but looking at the history we already made so many progress.

As to starting a business, there have been so many success stories where entrepreneur started with only a limited capital...sometimes they saved from their meager income so that they can start a small business that eventually flourish. Remember that in many cases, limitations are usually started in the mindset.

In many of these success stories, there would always that element of sacrifice, hardwork and not complaining on things everyday but just continue on doing the things that can help the business in anyway.

The question is: Are we ready for those things?

I always strongly disagree with this stance

I have already written a good amount on this before, but it seems to be worth repeating again. As I claim, capital is the last thing you need, while the primary thing that you actually want to find first is a selling idea. It could be said that a good idea sells itself on its own. If you have such an idea, investors will be happy to provide you enough capital to bootstrap it. The problem with businesses that go bust within half a year is that they are looking to push forward something which is of no particular interest to ordinary folks

Basic premise - all businesses are capital intensive. Not strictly true. A lot of businesses have been started in a garage, with a good business idea.
You could have a day job and save the capital required to start a business (In the services sector) in a year's time.

This shocks me, as the minimum wage in Thailand is 300 baht (~$8.50) per day or ~$2230 per year. The average wage is obviously dragged down by the vast majority of farmers, but the minimum wages in Bangkok are a lot closer to $3800 per year. For that reason, it seems difficult to believe there are many English-speaking nations where the average salary would be $3000 per year.

Yes, no system in itself is flawed or destructive but the people who implement these systems make them useless. Our politicians always try to mold these systems according to them whether its capitalism or socialism or any other system. I never curse systems; I am always against the executioners.

My country is a socialist country. However, the stratification is evident between the poor and the rich, and between business owners and workers, they generate profits based on product price increases and low wages. But there are still a lot of people who accept jobs because they are afraid of unemployment. The rich find ways to get richer, they never share their wealth with the poor. Perhaps because of integration with the world that my country is gradually showing signs of a capitalist country. In addition, there are also many benefactors who help the poor and disadvantaged people, but this rate is very low. I need a fair and happy society

In every climes of the society, the rich does not owe the poor any explanation for them being rich or for them being poor and that is the opportunity capitalism provides because not all those that are rich today are from rich families and some change the stories of their generation through their own individual effort because the environment and the economic system they are part of give their opportunity. Its not all perfect for capitalism but its still better than others in my opinion.

Yes just like other systems.

This is pure capitalism at work. Investors and limited partners come to realize that funds are not performing, and they pull the plug on them. Non-performing funds die, those that do well survive, new funds crop up and the industry as a whole gets right-sized. Some looters get away with their riches, but mostly, their careers are over.

Capitalism works by maximizing profits by means of automation but in the process destroys the value of the products it produces. The danger is in capitalism ability to self disintegrate without ability get itself together on it's own and thus make societies descend into perpetual pessimism. Capitalism is a flawed system, but all other systems are even more flawed.  Are we doomed? I think not. The solution will come from technological advancements - as always.

Could you expand more on this?

Especially on the emphasized part? I don't understand how capitalism "destroys the value of the products it produces". What do you mean by this? Further, you say that capitalism is prone to disintegration but we have capitalistic societies successfully existing for many hundred years already (say, in Britain). So it is not clear either what you mean by this. And what about "descending into perpetual pessimism"? This sounds particularly interesting despite being sort of pessimistic. Care to explain?

The problem with us people, we are very dependent to our government. We do not initiate ourselves to look for opportunity on our own to change our lives. Then if we suffered financially, we blame others specially the government for not doing their job but the truth is, we ourselves should be blame on what we are suffering right now. Because we cannot stand on our own. We are too lazy to think of an idea how we can survive and change our daily living. Government cannot help us if we cannot help ourselves.

Well I think the real flaw is that job opportunities are less and there are a lot of people who wanna grab that .. government can't just produce job there is a fix number of it.. in fact its not government's fault but of the people who are not keeping a check on this ever increasing population..

Its really hard to handle this big of a mess.. also we do need to be more creative and innovative in order to survive in this world...

Its just that not everyone can afford because of lack of education or lack of job opportunities thus we do need to solve it ourselves rather than seeking help from government.

capaitilsem makes awesome pay disparity, yet that isn't really an awful thing. It is a deductively demonstrated the individuals who make $80,000+ every year are basically as substance with their lives as multimillionaires. The purposes behind this are numerous, however generally on the grounds that the rich work more hours... despite the fact that they have more, they invest much more energy working and along these lines have far less time to really appreciate the their rewards for all the hard work.

Yes. Karl marx done as much book Capital, Volume i demonstrates this imperfection Also lands on unavoidability of class war What's more transformation of the attempting class against the elites. The fundamental thought will be that capitalists don't go through the benefits (the capital), Yet instead re invest it.