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    What Is The Point Of All This Capitalism?

    By Michael Maiello on Wed, 02/11/2015 - 11:14am | Politics

    If capitalism isn't functioning to make the world a better place for, at the very least, most people, than it is an exercise in cruelty.  If the benefits that accrue to most are dwarfed by the benefits that go to the very few on top, it's just a more complex rationalization of the divine right of kinds.

    You really have to read Mark Bittman in the Times today because he has had one of those columnist moments where he's stopped to wonder "What's this all about?" A search for meaning, he says, is vital to defining our goals:

    "Defining goals that matter to people is critical, because the most powerful way to change a complex, soft system is to change its purpose. For example, if we had a national agreement that food is not just a commodity, a way to make money, but instead a way to nourish people and the planet and a means to safeguard our future, we could begin to reconfigure the system for that purpose. More generally, if we agreed that human well-being was a priority, creating more jobs would not ring so hollow."

    One of the frustrating aspects of debating policy in the U.S. is that goals are often left out of the conversation, in favor of market outcomes.  So much of the policy seems to be, "form a functioning market and you'll like (or learn to like) the results."  It just doesn't work. Markets do some things well but they can't simply be trusted.

    President Obama, today, criticized Staples for telling part time workers that they can be fired for working more than 25 hours and qualifying for benefits under the Affordable Care Act:

    "I haven’t looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security, and if they can’t, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get the Affordable Care Act without cutting wages," he said.

    That's a market failure right there.  Or, it's a market success if you believe that markets should set all of our social priorities.  So it's a social failure.  Or, as Ramona puts it, "We Need Paid Sick Leave Because Workers Are Humans First."  This is an interesting way of looking at Bittman's dilemma -- through the lens of humanism.  If we start the conversation with human needs, human outcomes and human desires, markets become just a tool.  If we start the conversation with markets, a lot gets left unaddressed.

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    Comments

    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?


     


    by ocean-kat on Wed, 02/11/2015 - 1:42pm

    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?


    by moat on Thu, 02/12/2015 - 7:38pm

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


    by Danny Cardwell on Mon, 02/16/2015 - 9:47pm