The world we live in and on has and will continue to face many threats from extinction to survival till its demise in 6.5 billion years from now.
We all know that most of its present day problems have being created and propagated by us humans.
Some are easy to eradicate others not so.
WHY? Because global wealth concentrates is now in fewer hands resulting in inequality destroying our attitudes to world problems.
There is little need to state that there are many form of Inequality.
It come dressed in all colors along well beaten paths.
But one form for me leads to many of the others and that is Income Inequality.
(The income from capital continues growing faster than the income from labor.)
While Economists are conditioned to believe in the optimality of the market the newest economic inequality numbers, which ran counter to the expectations of almost all experts, are frightening.
.That’s why they have been in denial for so long that change is not likely in the short run.
But we have to try, because getting this wrong means that economists promote machine-like models that suggest that it is simply some invisible mechanism (or maybe an invisible hand) that ensures that workers don’t get paid very much, that owners make high profit rates, and that the economy will be just fine under these conditions.
Market forces alone cannot determine who gets wealthy and who doesn’t.
Owners of capital seek higher returns through speculation in financial assets, in effect bidding up prices in an eternal quest for ever higher returns, returns that can’t be matched by investments in productive capital (the returns from which have been declining for decades).
Economics can no longer be accepted as a discrete, coherent discipline. It through inequality has left millions impoverished laying in its wake.
As a result there is tremendous anger, disillusionment and fear. All of which are corrosive to democracy.
Just look at the unfolding elections in the USA.
Nearly total disillusionment with established politics due to a dysfunctional government, with the Republican party now barely a political party with a candidate that has risen out of the poplar base called Trump that the establishment could not squash. The main stream spectrum of world politics is moving to the right. Neoliberal policies have led to declines and near stagnation.
You can rest assured that we are going to see a very ugly scene.
Their solutions are the same old failed tactics.
When both parties kowtow to money, the people’s needs are ignored, and
politics becomes illegitimate.
You might say that redistribution of wealth is theft. But Redistribution of investment Profit for Profit’s sake is not.
You might think that 21st century technology such as the internet is going to change everything. But it is money that is writing the laws, the behind the door trade agreements, through lobbyist undermining democracy. This is happening all over the world.
There is no clear relationship between the total value of capital and profitability.
Whether distributions of income and wealth are partly shaped by social and political relationships – class conflict if you will – or mostly by “market forces.”
The forces of technology are what they are.
Take the contemporary communication technologies it can be used for various purposes, to increase surveillance, to increase power, control or it can be used for to empower people. Technology does not care you can use it both ways.
The technological connectedness is a myth.
If there is to be a rebalancing. The current trade agreements could be designed for the people. They are not.
They are however designed for the benefits of investors. They are not trade agreements except very marginally. That is the reason that they are keep secret, not quite totally as the details are being written by corporate lawyers and lobbyist.
They are however up to now effectively secret from the population.
We can fix the problem, but it will take bold steps. It will take a combined movement not splintered movements to force change. This is highly unlikely.
There is hatred and anger about just about all institutions.
There is only one way to effect redistribution.
Place a World Aid commission on all financial and acquisition activity that are made for the sake of profit. ( See previous Posts)
It is us the tax payer that bailed out the Banks, that paid for the research to create the internet. Are we getting any return on the investment. No.
When you look at the News on your TV you hear little or nothing about one of the biggest Trade deals between the USA and The European Union.
TTIP is about a huge transfer of power from people to big business.
You would think that when you elect people to office they would represent you as a citizen and not negotiate deals that have far reaching implications for the environment and the lives of more than 800 million citizens in the EU and US.
Whether you care about environmental issues, animal welfare, labour rights or internet privacy, you should be concerned.
This deal has being going on behind closed doors for months and months (The 13th round of TTIP negotiations in New York finished this April.) and only thanks to Greenpeace Netherlands have some have some of the classified documents represent more than two-thirds of the overall TTIP text come to light.
Greenpeace identified four main issues of concern:
Long standing environmental protection is dropped
The “General Exceptions” rule, enshrined in the GATT agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is absent from the text. This nearly 70-year-old rule allows nations to restrict trade “to protect human, animal and plant life or health“, or for “the conservation of exhaustible natural resources”
No place for climate protection in TTIP
If the goals of the Paris Summit to keep temperatures increase under 1.5 degrees are to be met, trade should not be excluded from CO2 emissions reduction specifications. But nothing about climate protection can be found in the obtained texts.
Precautionary principle is forgotten
The US wants the EU to replace the EU’s hazard approach with ‘risk management’, disregarding the precautionary principle, [3] which is enshrined in the EU Treaty but is never mentioned in the consolidated text.
Open door for corporate lobbying
The leaked documents suggest that both parties consider giving corporations much wider access and participation in decision-making.
“The effects of TTIP would be initially subtle but ultimately devastating. It would lead to European laws being judged on their consequences for trade and investment – disregarding environmental protection and public health concerns.”
The negotiations about the free trade treaty TTIP take place behind closed doors. The documents about the meetings are not public. That creates mistrust. Nobody knows which positions are talked about in what way. Are citizens losing against corporate interests? Does the lobby industry undermine our democracy? What does the US and what do the European states really want to accomplish?
At the center of public concern stands the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS). ISDS allows foreign investors to bring a claim against the government of their host State if TTIP investment protection standards are breached, for example in the event of discriminatory treatment or direct and indirect expropriation.
The EU and most of the free world is in a state of profound uncomfortable quagmire due to Capitalism Greed.
God forbid we allow or agree to a trade deal that puts profit before people.
One must note that previous attempts to establish such a mechanism have failed and that currently there seems to be little appetite for such a mechanism internationally.
Because they no longer guarantee life and the pursuit of happiness.
I am not talking about you can’t please all the people all of the time.
I am talking about when they come together in the United Nations an out of date organisation with no secure means of funding other than begging. Only when signatory nations are prepared to follow suit with firm domestic policies is a UN aspiration somewhat effective. This never happens on global issues as they are afraid of paying the political price.
On something as fundamental as changing the source of energy which is going to cost trillions. Only governments coming together will there be any effect. They are supposed to be a trustee of the natural resources that citizens depend on for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
In modern society, of course, much of the complexity in our lives is placed there by governments, supposedly acting to “help” us avoid failure or to “protect” us from failure.
Instead they are eroding our liberties by collecting reams of information from your digital footprint. Our societies where you’re free to be whatever you want, feels less and less so each year.
They are selling climate dispensations, flogging off natural resources and revenue earning industries to sovereign wealth funds for short gain profits.
Some failures were obviously. They are failing to adequately address global warming. It seems to me that Politicians seem to think that the Marketplace will take care of it.
More visible recently were the bailing out of high-profile banking institutions which are still considered by the government to be too big to fail without threatening the long-term well-being of consumers and the broader economy.
They have created confusing missions that are not be communicated and embraced, and are were easily undermined by rank corruption and unethical conduct, or are beyond careful monitoring through performance measurement and management. They don’t ‘know’ enough to enable them to make effective decisions about the best way to allocate scarce resources with the top appointees unqualified to lead.
The days are gone when many economists believe in the efficient market hypothesis, which assumes that the market will always contain more information than any individual or government.
The implication is that market prices and market movements should be free from interference because markets cannot be improved upon by individuals or governments. However we all know that the invisible hand of the market place will not bring about the changes necessary.
Which brings us back to the United nations. An organisation so infiltrated by lobbying groups that it is danger onto itself.
The world is in a mess due to greed, and democracy as we know it is under attack from unbridled consumerism and Social Media. We have to accept the reality that markets are not motivated by the priority of care. Nor is it the United nations.
Why don’t we the voters demand better representation?
We must demand that the United Nations pass binding people resolution placing a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions , on all Foreign exchange transaction over $20,000 on all other form of Capitalist Activities that function for profit for profit’s sake.( see previous posts)
This is the only way we can take care of our world make Greed pay for it.
It’s only right that I follow the last series of posts on what is Wrong with a post that asks the above question.
BECAUSE ITS MONEY THAT IS AT THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM.
I guess the answer to the question “What is wrong with capitalism today?” is dependent on who you ask.
Capitalism works for capitalists.
The Problem is 90 percent of us are not capitalists, we are employees.
Without us noticing, we are entering the post capitalist era.
We need to reexamine the models that have gotten us to this point.
Complete change will not happen overnight. Nor will it be built on the back of one investor or one innovative entrepreneur.
It will be something that business owners, investors, political leaders, consumers and entrepreneurs must all work together toward.
Currently, our planet is on track to fly past the 2 degrees Celsius warming that scientist have repeatedly warned marks the safe range for humans on this planet, but at the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy.
The old ways will take a long while to disappear but millions of people are beginning to realise they have been sold a dream at odds with what reality can deliver.
The democracy of riot squads, corrupt politicians, magnate-controlled newspapers and the surveillance state looks as phoney and fragile as East Germany did 30 years ago.
Why should we not form a picture of the ideal life, built out of abundant information, non-hierarchical work and the dissociation of work from wages?
So are we witnessing the first stage of an economy beyond capitalism?
Is technology creating a new route out or is it consolidating power into the hands of a few like Google, Microsoft and Apple?
Will its future be shaped by the emergence of a new kind of human being, reshaping the economy around new values and behaviours?
Will Capitalism as we know it be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which will break through because of what Information technology has brought about in the past 25 years.
It is blurring the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages?
Or is the current wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.
These are all questions to be answered before we see what I call post capitalism.
The Questions are numerous, and there have been hundreds of books, papers, and talks on the subject few however with any positive suggestions.
Before I put the only suggestion that is viable lets start with what is wrong with the present state of Capitalism.
Here is way I see what is wrong;
Today capitalism isn’t about real markets and commodities with the price mechanism being fixed by competing supply and demand, now today it is about casino economics. You throw the dice and when you loose … all that global connectivity means you lose globally. We are all in this together – that is why we call it a global economy – oh apart from the 0.1% – they are the ones throwing the dice. We are just the ones picking up the tab when the bets don’t come off.
Although economics likes to think of itself as a science in reality it ignores the fundamental laws that govern science – the first two laws of thermodynamics. This isn’t a smart thing to do. There actually are limits to growth.
They told us wealth creation was a trickle down theory but in reality it is a trickle up theory. The rich really do get richer and richer and it is not down to merit. The question is what is going to stop them: war or politics?
The big problem is humans are human, both doing bad things and good things. Capitalism only works if enough of us do the right thing.
The price mechanism is faulty unless it includes the environmental cost now and in the future of our consumption. This it doesn’t done at present and we are free-loading off nature.
Often we think it is the only way to do things. It is not the only way to even do capitalism! Alternatives exist, other brands are available. There are even other ways of thinking about economics that we don’t even call capitalism; they may be a bit racy for us right now so lets start with re-imagining what a good effective form of capitalism could be like if humanity fully realized its role and impact upon the planet that sustains it.
Modern capitalism is so big and complex that who can say that really understand it.
I don’t.
But I do understand by building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, Google and such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.
Never has humanity been better fed, lived longer, used more energy and had more stuff than today so what is wrong.
One of the fundamental faults of capitalism is the basic axiom that if everybody tries to accumulate as much property as possible the general interest of the people will be served.
All this seems to do is create exploitation.
The problem with capitalism is that it isn’t very good as what it says it is good at, spreading wealth, enabling good technological progress and helping us become more human, more free.
Adam Smith – you know him graces the back of the £20 note – founding father of modern capitalism back in the 18th century – hero of Margaret Thatcher. When he famously asserted:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
What Smith was talking about was the idea that self-interest – the rational underpinning of economic man – was not only good for you but for everybody else – society.
Unfortunately the line between self-interest and greed is always fine – and we are human man not economic man and we find it very easy to cross that line – or certainly some of us do – lets call them the 0.1% – the 700,000 of us who have a lot – somewhere north of $5 million each.
The consequence of this trend as it unwinds over time is that wealth progressively becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
The rich get richer – that’s that 0.1% again. Or to put it another way wealth stays with those that are born to it and the idea that merit – how good you are at something – determining your economical price in the market place, or wages as most of would say, becomes far less important than we thought.
In fact there are plenty of things wrong with capitalism.
Those that shout this apparent self-evident reality the loudest own the media, the means of communication, they own your stability through the derivative bets they hold and they are telling you don’t blink – this is the natural way of things , capitalism the way we see it, the way the 0.1% see it.
So the more we have of everything, food, power, stuff, the more energy we must use (even if we get more energy-efficient in doing things).
The nitty-gritty of it is we have fucked up the world with Capitalism idealism.
I don’t approve of Communism or Socialism either, the truth is that every system is flawed.
I think a system which is based on an assumption that man is basically piggish and therefore only fit to look after his own needs; such system impedes rather than promotes the good within each person.
Geographers have away of describing this situation it is called the IPAT equation.
Impact = population x affluence x technology. You note there is no Money in the equation.
The impact.
Physicists would call it entropy, biologists pollution and economists externalities – is of an order defined by how many of us are using how much however efficiently.
If you want impact in a nutshell it is climate change, it is salinization of soil, it is depleting geological resources , it is reducing biodiversity.
There really are limits to growth.
Capitalism is a perpetual motion machine, striving for more and more growth makes us in the long run weaker not stronger. Well, if only we were all-knowing, rational and optimal in our behavior maybe it would be so. But we are not.
In the past the trend towards greater and growing inequality has been neutered by war – nothing equalizes society more effectively than war – we do tend to be all in it together at such moments.
Today in our global economy is held together with a digital architecture that enables the reduction of wealth to so much digital code life has become one big transaction.
The most spectacular aspect of this transactional world is the derivatives markets.
(A derivative is a bet on a price changing within a market – say interest rates, or currency exchange values or a commodity price such as that for coffee. The value of all derivatives worldwide in 2013 is thought to be about $1.2 quadrillion although nobody knows exactly as, a like a lot ordinary betting the betters don’t want necessarily want to admit to it.)
So that is $1,200,000 billion laid out in bets about what may or may not happen.
Billions of transactions.
Let’s quickly remind ourselves. The global economy – the real economy – is worth about $85 trillion – that is about 7% of the notional sum bet on what that economy will do.
Now, take a deep breath and think about it.
If you don’t now believe that we could have another global economic crash in the style of 2008 – a massive bursting asset bubble – you need to think again and cast your eyes to Asia – you might be wondering where much of that quantitative easing – free money that the US and the UK created ended up. Try property speculation in Asia.
We are quickly reaching the tipping point where growth in GDP in any particular country comes at the expense of growth in GDP of another.
We do not have global organizations capable of managing these tension points nor are societies willing to curb growth and consumerism.
Capitalism as currently practiced is simply not sustainable.
Modern market capitalism has shifted recently with the emerging supremacy of money markets and the financial system over the actual trade of goods. Under this, you’ll make more money trading in derivatives than actually physically trading in commodities.
Capitalism, or the recent move into financial market dominated capitalism.
The “new capitalism” is based on mathematics rather than trade; credit default swaps over goods and services; when odds are stacked in the favor of big banks because of hedging, derivatives and CDS’s; when there is little to no penalty for market manipulation by investment banks, power brokers, Ponzi schemers … these inefficiencies in the market cause redistribution of wealth to the people in power who design the system.
The mass media is becoming more and more an opiate, an aid for living the unexamined life. replace it (capitalism)?”
Through the millions spent in lobbing reasonable controls upon business have been removed. The desire for economic success and the influence of the powerful elite have ruined the mass media.
Our political problems have deepened with the demise of unions as an effective political force, the continued growth in the belief in the desirability of pyramid economics and class structure (which has been sold by a media controlled by those at the top of the pyramid), and the dependence of our two-party system upon those at the top of the pyramid for funds to cover their election expenses.
Around the world the gains of increased productivity are wasted by this pyramid structure.
For over 40 years I have watched the gradual drift in the minds of the average person from an understanding of our political economic reality and the need for corrective actions.
Those who dominate the means for the production of ideas have served their class well.
This endless cycle of production and consumption for profit is suicide and profit is pretty pointless when we run out of things to burn and things to eat.
I would suggest a world government dedicated to seeing that: (a) everybody was properly fed, clothed, and housed; (b) everyone worked and received a fair return for their work with none receiving too much; (c) intellectual development for all to be encouraged; (d) businesses are the servant to man; (e) the production of war materials end; (f) the ending of all exploitation, including one region by another or one class by another; (g) and the ending of a press which is controlled by those who make up the ruling class.
We is needed is a project based on reason, evidence and testable designs, that cuts with the grain of history and is sustainable by the planet.
Capitalism is not and has never been designed to work in an environment dominated by market controls, regulations, artificial barriers to entry, monetary manipulation and a myriad of other government interventions.
It is Profit at any cost and having taxpayers bail it out when it goes wrong simply means the risk has shifted from corporation to state, or you and me.
Many would say that means a broken model.
Has a new model started. It all depends on what kind of capitalism we are talking about and what force will be applied either at the ballot box or on the barricades or by the Smart Phone or the Gun.
Another question raised about the proposed strategy is whether it actually adds up to the defeat of capitalism.
Do the numerous tactics described above, most of which focus on what not to do, really do the job? How will capitalism actually be defeated? It’s true that many of these recommendations are about what not to do.
this strategy calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization and putting them into building a new civilization. The image, then, is one of emptying out capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and meaning from them until there is nothing left but shells.
To think that we could create a whole new world of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution or the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy.
Our new social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations.
Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinable, because of the inexorable materialist laws of history.
It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and because we know what we’re doing and how we want to live, what obstacles have to be overcome before we can live that way, and how to distinguish between our social patterns and theirs.
To achieve change we need unlimited finance. Where can we find this? We don’t have to look far.
If a new socialist democratic system is to emerge:
We must place an World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $ 20,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. This will created a perpetual funded Fund to address the damage Greed and Profit for profit sake has done. ( See Previous Posts)
Who do we achieve this.
Our lives have been shaped by developments which most of us couldn’t have imagined a decade ago.
In effect, they are nine distinct psychological orientations toward the world that structure our perceptions, expectations, and demands whenever and wherever other human beings may be involved. These instincts represent our most basic assumptions about how the social world works, and that includes how the political world works.
With the power of our Smart phones the new political weapon of the future.
In the next decade upwards of 100 billion objects from smartphones to street lamps and our cars will be connected together via a vast ‘internet of everything’. This will impact every aspect of our lives.
The interfaces to all our devices from phones to computers, cars and home appliances will be highly intelligent and adaptive – learning from our behaviours and choices and anticipating our needs.
To understand the role of capitalism in modern economic times you must understand the word Growth.
Growth at any cost. Which we are just coming to apprentice thanks to the Internet.
For a long time nothing much happened till Wheat conned humans into growing it.
It is not my intention here to address Money and Power. It is sufficient to say that money leads to power and corruption and that all three intermingle in the notoriously subject of Economics.
What I want you to do is to look at Capitalism that founded states and ruined them, opened up new horizons and enslaved millions, moved the wheels of Industry and drove hundreds of species of plants and animals into extinction, plundered the earth resources for profit, promoted science, all to the dethronement of a sustainable planet and ask yourself is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
There can be no doubt without some system the human race would descend into barbarism based on nothing but self-interest.
Our cultural output throbs with this notion of self-interest. Just look at the present Refugee problem facing the European Union.
So would the collapse of Capitalism lead to misery?
Capitalism in all its credulity and inequality reflects mans barbarous nature. Indeed the horrors of ISIS are trumpeted so vehemently by the western press precisely because they fill this narrative.
However a dog eat dog world with which capitalism and the state justify themselves is in part a fallacy.
In fact nature teems with co-operation – both between animals, between species and within the ecosystem as a whole.
We are the same, but it is no coincidence that where we do co-operate these areas are dominated by capital and constructed in a way that systematically reward the uglier sides of our common nature.
We know that the world in unfair where the few have too much and the most have too little.
The feeling that Capitalism, inequality, and injustice are inevitable and the idea that to struggle for a better world is naive is coming to an end.
If we could only entrench the cooperative compassionate and empathetic sides of our nature as dominant values in society we would redesign our Capitalist world – to a world worth while living in.
The current state of our planet is affording all of us this opportunity.
How can we tackle the world problems ?
A good place to start would be to get Capitalism to pay for it.
By placing a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over ($20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all Drilling Wells. This would create a perpetual pot out of Profit for Profit sake that could fund the inevitable cost of climate change.
In doing so we would redistribute the world’s wealth from the whole of the world. ( see previous Posts)
Sooner than later we are going to exhaust the raw materials and energy of the planet Earth. What will happen then?
Which is why, whenever the opportunity arises, we must be prepared to seize it.
bobdillon33blog 