I can nearly pinpoint when American Capitalism started to die

[Bitcoin-hotep]

Capitalism was great when the alternative was monarchies and dictatorships But when the enemy of Capitalism became Communism that is when problems arose

Communism and socialism are not bad at their core Government working for the people is not a bad thing
So the fact that we completely reject the idea of a government that is nothing but a service industry Actually hurts us in the long run

Sure we are capitalist but monarchs and dictators are no longer the aristocratic ass holes... Capitalists are

Communism is where the people own the factories What is unamerican about that?

[Mike Christ]

The issue is in defining people: some define people as individuals, some define people as the state.

[Wilikon]

Capitalism was great when the alternative was monarchies and dictatorships But when the enemy of Capitalism became Communism that is when problems arose

Communism and socialism are not bad at their core Government working for the people is not a bad thing
So the fact that we completely reject the idea of a government that is nothing but a service industry Actually hurts us in the long run

Sure we are capitalist but monarchs and dictators are no longer the aristocratic ass holes... Capitalists are

Communism is where the people own the factories What is unamerican about that?

Why a need for factories anyway? It is not like coal mining holes with slaved children are in big demand nowadays unless of course you live in... communist china.

3D printing at home on a massive scale for real products is the next industrial revolution. It will make capitalism and communism obsolete. Sure this is science fiction right now, but so is a communism utopia. People can barely print out a functioning gun. No way you can print an iphone now. But it is coming.
Government will eventually regain its purpose as a central nervous system and not a all knowing brain deciding how individuals can live their life based on centralized planning.

This is The Shape of Things to Come.

[Lethn]

lol when we have 3D printing for metal then that will be the revolution, there will only be so much you can do with only plastic.

[compro01]

lol when we have 3D printing for metal then that will be the revolution, there will only be so much you can do with only plastic.

We already have 3D printing for metal.  It's called Direct Metal Laser Sintering or Selective Laser Melting and you can buy the printers right now. They're just really expensive (upper 5 figures or more) at present.

[Wilikon]

lol when we have 3D printing for metal then that will be the revolution, there will only be so much you can do with only plastic.

http://makezine.com/2012/05/14/jay-leno-scans-and-prints-replacement-car-parts/

[Lethn]

Nice! going to be interesting when it all gets a lot cheaper

[Wilikon]

Nice! going to be interesting when it all gets a lot cheaper

We are on ENIAC price regarding 3D printing but eventually smart phones are almost reusable tech right now so will this tech. It is coming. We should not recycle old ideas that never worked and think for what is next.

[elchelito]

Capitalism was great when the alternative was monarchies and dictatorships But when the enemy of Capitalism became Communism that is when problems arose

Communism and socialism are not bad at their core Government working for the people is not a bad thing
So the fact that we completely reject the idea of a government that is nothing but a service industry Actually hurts us in the long run

Sure we are capitalist but monarchs and dictators are no longer the aristocratic ass holes... Capitalists are

Communism is where the people own the factories What is unamerican about that?

very true!

communism is always seen as the devil when you talk to hardcore capitalists because it endangers the free markets and such. well but the free markets really endanger us as people.

[Rassah]

Communism is where the people own the factories What is unamerican about that?

If you believe that people who are best at doing specific things should be the ones doing those things, and that people who work better than others should get higher compensation, then you shouldn't be for Communism.
If you believe that positions like manager or factory owner should be voted on, whether or not the person being picked actually knows how to run things, and you believe that everyone should get the same amount of pay pased on the job position, regardless of how hard they work or how difficult their job is, then you should be for Communism.

[elchelito]

and you believe that everyone should get the same amount of pay pased on the job position, regardless of how hard they work or how difficult their job is, then you should be for Communism.

I don't think that would be very fair. But it's also not fair for someone to earn 20 million a year and the other guy 20 k. He couldn't possibly work that many more hours...

[freedomno1]

I do lean towards to socialist aspects of society while wanting high efficiency and freedom
Slow Health care systems do not help there is room for capitalism in the society where governments are not as effective in doing everything themselves, they are not a do all system they are just a component of society, the cog in the machine we all agree exists in one form or the other so we can live our normal lives.

Governments designed to help people are not a bad thing at all, as long as they don't go over that line between
personal privacy and intervention into a normal persons life aka spying.
I guess the hot topic right now is sorting through big data sets to determine correlations, make them significant and then apply them to a variety of fields, including health care etc.
But its important to be careful with the double edged sword to not invade to far into a persons personal life in order to ahem advance the needs of society

That said capitalism will probably change into something else, similar to how Soviet Communism transformed to Chinese Communism in China because it had a different situation than the Soviets, or Cuban Communism influenced the rise of the socialist lines in Latin America, the same can be applied to American Capitalism with other countries such as Canada or even Britain.

Somewhere in that mix is probably room for a meshing of different ideas from different political and economic systems to make something that excels especially well overall.
Whether its education reform to be more competitive on the world scale which is an issue for the USA
Technology to improve societies productivity or healthcare that can be adopted by Latin American Societies to reduce wealth inequality which is a serious issue over there.
Or new ideas such as Bitcoin to move forward finance and make it less dependent on any one states financial coffer and for worldwide applications. There is a nexus of different creative ideas applied in different countries that are efficient and all can solve the same problem so finding the ideal for each country is something that the digital age might help to improve as it move society forward towards these new constructs and the flow of information helps people find better solutions faster than they used to.

So yes American Capitalism is destined to die just as Communism in its original form did with the collapse of the Soviet Union
In its place something that tries to remedy the errors of the past will take its place and that will be the thing we will all see soon enough  

Hopefully it doesn't mean invading a country taking all the resources and then forcing globalization on us all or we will go into a whole NWO thread XD

[Foxpup]

and you believe that everyone should get the same amount of pay pased on the job position, regardless of how hard they work or how difficult their job is, then you should be for Communism.

I don't think that would be very fair. But it's also not fair for someone to earn 20 million a year and the other guy 20 k. He couldn't possibly work that many more hours...

Nobody cares how many hours you work. The only thing that matters is what you produced from your work. It is absolutely fair for someone to earn 20 million a year and someone else 20 thousands if the first guy is a thousand times as productive, or what he produces is a thousand times as valuable.

[freedomno1]

and you believe that everyone should get the same amount of pay pased on the job position, regardless of how hard they work or how difficult their job is, then you should be for Communism.

I don't think that would be very fair. But it's also not fair for someone to earn 20 million a year and the other guy 20 k. He couldn't possibly work that many more hours...

Nobody cares how many hours you work. The only thing that matters is what you produced from your work. It is absolutely fair for someone to earn 20 million a year and someone else 20 thousands if the first guy is a thousand times as productive, or what he produces is a thousand times as valuable.

True enough but you forgot to mention pyramid schemes and good old feudalism

[elchelito]

Nobody cares how many hours you work. The only thing that matters is what you produced from your work. It is absolutely fair for someone to earn 20 million a year and someone else 20 thousands if the first guy is a thousand times as productive, or what he produces is a thousand times as valuable.

So you think the top banksters who have been bailed out recently are very productive? You are right that there can be such a measure but shouldn't it be in what they did for society?

The US president earns something like 500k dollars a year right? That's legit because he has so much responsibility compared to the average worker. But how does that compare to a manager earning 20 million?

[Foxpup]

So you think the top banksters who have been bailed out recently are very productive? You are right that there can be such a measure but shouldn't it be in what they did for society?

Nobody said bailouts were fair.

The US president earns something like 500k dollars a year right? That's legit because he has so much responsibility compared to the average worker. But how does that compare to a manager earning 20 million?

It doesn't compare at all. A manager's salary is determined by the free market, but a politician's isn't. If a manager earns 20 million a year, it's because a) the company wants a manager and is willing to pay that price, and b) there's a shortage other qualified people willing to do the job for less.

[Kokomoka]

Communism is where the people own the factories What is unamerican about that?

In communism a tiny elite own the factories, not the people. Under such a system ordinary people have nothing approaching what you might call ownership. I own my shoes because I have the right to use them, and the right to deny others the right to use them. I can sell them if I wanted to. A citizen of North Korea owns absolutely nothing.

But it's also not fair for someone to earn 20 million a year and the other guy 20 k.

It depends. Some hedge fund managers can earn something approaching 20 million USD but this is because they have found some people who have agreed to pay them this amount in return for their services. There is nothing unfair about this. Some earning 20K has found someone who is prepared to pay them 20K but can't find someone who is prepared to pay them more. It they could convince someone to pay them more, they would.

So you think the top banksters who have been bailed out recently are very productive? You are right that there can be such a measure but shouldn't it be in what they did for society?

Only a few banks where able to find someone to bail them out. Barclays found the Qatari sovereign wealth fund. Bank of America and Goldman Sachs found Warren Buffet. There may have been a few more. The rest of the bailouts where paid for by taxation which is extorted from individuals by the government under threat of violence, imprisonment and/or death. This is not capitalism, it is the antithesis of capitalism.

[giantdragon]

It is only a matter of time when the capitalism will collapse under pressure of the technological unemployment!

[Rassah]

It is only a matter of time when the capitalism will collapse under pressure of the technological unemployment!

Are you saying people will stop trading things they own when robots start making everything?

[Anon136]

When you say "the people" i assume the "the people" that you are talking about are not the capitalists, they are probably the workers. Why cant workers own factories under capitalism? most capitalists get their factories by convincing a bank to give them a loan. The bank judges whether to give them a loan based on their assessment of how likely they are to succeed as a business. If worker owned businesses are so great than they should in theory crowed the individual capitalists out of the credit markets. As long as we are talking about capitalism here, if banks are just making genuine mistakes by not realizing that they would make more money by giving loans to businesses that would be worker owned, than those banks should be outcompeted in the free market by any group of people who are smart enough to realize this mistake.

of course this is all just an exercise in abstract thought since we dont have anything even close to capitalism in the united states.