dagblog - Comments for "What Is The Point Of All This Capitalism?"

In many ways my last post was

Danny Cardwell — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 02:47:44 +0000

In reply to What Is The Point Of All This Capitalism?

In many ways my last post was a response or supplement to this one. I really enjoyed reading this.

You probably meant the divine

moat — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:38:52 +0000

In reply to What Is The Point Of All This Capitalism?

You probably meant the divine right of kings but I like the idea of a divine right of Kinds: A hierarchy of categories that allows a person to run their finger down a list to find their location.

That kind of GPS is a powerful thing. Whatever else you may or may not strive for, it gives you an address. And you can be found there.

Simply ascribing to Marxism does not solve the problem because his system got too confident about where everybody was. But Marx's criticism of the "natural" locating device of Capital still is the thing to attend to: The market as found truth.

The appeal of capitalism as a social solution is that it doesn't require democracy. Beneficial things happen through the process of market selection. The Hayek point of view was that politics introduced deformations of something that can take care of itself, if permitted. Unlike some of his brethren, he pointed out that some institutions were still necessary for other things. At a minimum (since that is where we are now) a simple list of those other things would be helpful right about now.

We have thrown everything out. What can be let back in?

We rarely do cost/benefit

ocean-kat — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 18:42:19 +0000

In reply to What Is The Point Of All This Capitalism?

We rarely do cost/benefit analysis that take into account all or even most of the factors. Speaking of Staples, I read an article some years ago that looked at the contention that they had created tens of thousands of jobs. The article looked more deeply at the claim and suggested, with figures etc., that all Staples had done was to replace non-franchised print shops and their workers with less and mostly lower paid workers.

Good for stock holders but is this the model we want to follow?